If you use the brush tool enough, you'll probably get sick of the few default options that Illustrator provides. Click here to see a more in-depth description of its use. The paint-bucket tool is especially helpful for artists drawing more complex pieces of art with many lines and brushstrokes. You can adjust the paint settings on the side menu if you want it to overlook small gaps. You can adjust this later.) Then, just use colors from the swatch palette to fill areas in your drawing. (If you used the paintbrush to draw your outlines, as I often do, you might find that it makes all of your lines smaller. Click an enclosed shape to form the Live Paint Group, or group of objects that Illustrator will combine into a digital coloring page. To use this Illustrator tool, highlight all of your lines and select the paint bucket icon. However, it can be finicky if your lines don’t touch. Basically, the paint bucket tool will create a coloring sheet out of your lines and allow you to fill in any enclosed areas with a click. The paint bucket tool is a go-to for my illustration method-which you can find here, if you’re interested-and I’m always shocked to learn that not everyone knows about it. The Paint Bucket Tool: Use to fill in closed areas Click here to see more key commands for Adobe Illustrator.
Key commands make the design process much faster. What does that mean? If you make a copy of a shape and drag it a certain distance away from the original shape, pressing command+D will maintain this distance. Technically, this command reapplies a transformation to an object. You can use it for the last tutorial to repeat the rotation steps without having to open the window multiple times. To repeat a command you already did, press Command+D (or ctrl+V on a PC). Click here to learn more about rotating and reflecting objects.Ĭommand+D: Use to re-do your last function. Instead of using Stars, you can use lines and select the bottom of the line as the center point of the rotation. You can use this same technique to create rays. (I like to use 360 divided by the number of stars I want in the ring). Select the rotate tool and set the “anchor point” by clicking directly beneath it (where you’d like the center of rotation to be). You can use the copy feature within the rotate box to make a ring of stars, lines, or any shape.įor example, if you want to make a ring of stars, start by drawing just one. You might just be using the rotate tool to twist shapes and images, but it's also really helpful for making circular copies of small shapes. The Rotate Tool: Use to create a circle or ray of shapes It's very easy to use and often makes a huge difference in your vector’s sharpness! Just select the outline you’d like to correct with your mouse and drag the smooth tool along the curve to flatten the edge. While it’s difficult to get a clean trace from a small file, there is a quick way to fix shaky outlines: the smooth tool! It looks like a crayon with three swoops on the barrel. If you've ever used image trace on a low-quality file, you're probably familiar with the wobbly-looking, rough-edged output that Illustrator provides. The Smooth Tool: Use to perfect a wobbly image trace Whether you’re an amateur artist or connoisseur of Creative Cloud, here are a few helpful Illustrator tools and tricks that you might have overlooked!
#PAINT BUCKET TOOL ILLUSTRATOR WINDOWS#
Between the toolbar and windows dropdown, there are innumerable ways to make subtle differences in a file- so many that you might have a difficult time understanding what all of them do.
#PAINT BUCKET TOOL ILLUSTRATOR FULL#
Adobe Illustrator is full of devices to help any digital artist create a polished icon, vector artwork, or web graphic.