Adobe Illustrator CS5 One-on-One

path. Then, using the arrow keys, nudge the spiral

into alignment.

24.

Zoom out and select all the shapes. Now that every-

thing’s aligned properly and your shapes are overlap-

ping, zoom back out so you can see the full artwork.

Select all the shapes by pressing Ctrl+A (-A).

25.

Join the shapes with the Pathfi nder panel. Bring

up the Pathfi nder panel by pressing Ctrl+Shift+F9

(-Shift-F9) or choosing Window➝Pathfi nder. Click

the icon to join (or unite) the shapes into a single

fi lled path, as shown in Figure 5-20.

After you click , you should see one single outline

with no points left inside the shape. If your shapes look

unchanged, however, not to worry

—

Illustrator joined

them into a compound path, that is, a path made up of

multiple shapes, rather than a new single path. Simply

click the Expand icon in the Pathfi nder panel to complete

the step. I discuss the Pathfi nder panel fully in the next

lesson.

Figure 5-20 .

Figure 5-19 .

The hand is now complete, and you accomplished all those steps

without using a single drawing tool. Save your work because in the

next exercise you’ll be returning to it to put the fi nishing touches

on your stop sign.

Offsetting Paths to Simulate Depth

In the last exercise, you used various transformations to create

the basic shapes of the stop sign. But Illustrator has still more

transformations in store. In this exercise,