Adobe Illustrator CS5 One-on-One

Filling and Stroking Path

Intersections Dynamically

Live Paint gives Illustrator the ability to detect any color intersect-

ing areas within an illustration. So rather than treating everything

in terms of discrete objects that overlap and cover each other, Live

Paint sees your illustration as consisting of the lines in a coloring

book or the panes of a stained glass window. You don’t need to cre-

ate a specialized object to which you apply your color, you merely

select two overlapping shapes and click on the intersection with a

paint bucket. No need to draw a new shape or create a subpath.

And even better, as you change the intersection, by moving one or

both of its components, Illustrator updates the effect to the altered

area of overlap.

The convenience of Live Paint has always been pretty obvious to

me, but the day I came to appreciate its real power was when I

consulted my good friend and former Illustrator product manager

Mordy Golding. I wanted to create a set of Olympic-style rings,

with all the overlaps and underlaps in the proper places. I was be-

moaning Illustrator’s inability to create such interlocking objects,

when Mordy calmly pointed out that it could in fact be done with

Live Paint. And then Mordy proceeded to expand my mind. The

following exercise reveals what I learned from that conversation.

1. Open a fi le. Go to the Lesson 11 folder inside Lesson

Files-AIcs5 ...