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Fills and strokes In Illustrator, an object has two basic attributes: a fi ll and a stroke. Fills and strokes can be customized with solid colors, tints of a color, patterns, or gradients. You can further customize strokes so that their weight is any size you want. In the following steps, youll make some adjustments to the fi ll and stroke of the type at the top of the page. 1 Using the Selection tool ( ), select the ATOMIC REGION text frame. 2 In the Control panel, click and hold on the Stroke Color swatch, choose purple from the Stroke Swatches panel that appears. The purple is applied to the stroke of the selected text. 3 Change the weight of the selected texts stroke to 5 points by choosing 5 pt from the Stroke Weight drop-down menu in the Control panel, or by typing 5 pt into the Stroke Weight text fi eld. 4 Click the Fill color swatch in the Control panel. When the Fill Swatches panel appears, choose the tan color. This changes the selected types fi ll color to tan. To make the heading type really stand out, you will add a few eff ects to it. 5 Choose Eff ect > Brush Strokes > Spatter. In the resulting Eff ects dialog box, set the Spray Radius to 5 and the Smoothness to 3 by typing these values in their respective text fi elds or by dragging the sliders for each setting. Press OK Coloring objects When working in Illustrator, the standard method of applying color to objects has always been to select an object with either the Selection or Direct Selection tool, then click on a color or swatch to change the color of the object. Illustrator also provides some advanced methods that allow you to apply color to objects more effi ciently. In the following steps, youll use the Live Paint feature to apply color to objects in Illustrator that would normally require you to perform various Pathfi nder operations. Youll then make adjustments to the colors of a Live Paint object using a feature called Live Color. Live Paint With Live Paint, you can apply color to an object that has been converted into a Live Paint group. A Live Paint group is broken down into components in which objects overlap each other. Once an object is a Live Paint group, you can easily apply colors to diff erent areas of that group. Lets begin! 1 Using the Selection tool ( ), click on the atom graphic to select it. You can see that this graphic is a group of several separate items. 2 Click on the Live Paint Bucket tool ( ) in the Tools panel, or press K on your keyboard. 3 In the Swatches panel, click on the red swatch that is inside the color group that you added to the Swatches panel from the Color Guide. 4 Your cursor now looks like this ( ), and if you hover your cursor over the selected atom graphic, the atoms paths are highlighted, and text reading, Click to make a Live Paint Group, appears to the right of the cursor. Click on the graphic to do just this. 5 Now when you hover your cursor over the atom graphic that has been converted to a Live Paint group, you see that diff erent regions of the graphic become highlighted. If you click on an area, Illustrator colors it with the currently selected colors. Fill one of the

rings with the red swatch that is currently selected, but only part of the ring. You want to create the illusion of the ring going around the sphere in the middle of the graphic. You may want to zoom in on the atom graphic to make it easier to apply color to the smaller areas of the graphic. Zoom in to the graphic using the Zoom tool ( ) in the Tools panel. 6 Use the right arrow key on your keyboard to toggle over to the fi rst green color in the middle swatch above your cursor and apply that color to a diff erent ring. The three swatches that appear above your Live Paint Bucket cursor represent the previous, current, and next swatches within the current color group in the Swatches panel. It may help to understand this if you have the Swatches panel open as you key through the swatches. With the Swatches panel open, you can see how the active co 5 Switch to the Swatches panel. To make the white-to-orange gradient a swatch, press the New Swatch button ( ) at the bottom of the Swatches panel. In the resulting New Swatch dialog box, name the gradient Orange Gradient and press OK. The gradient has been added to the Swatches panel. Now that youve created a new gradient swatch, you can apply it to the center portion of the atom graphic in your artwork. Remember that this atom graphic is still a Live Paint object. In the next steps, youll use the Live Paint Selection tool to select all the elements that make up the center portion of the atom graphic. 6 Select the Live Paint Selection tool ( ) from the Tools panel. 7 Click on one of the sections that make up the sphere in the center of the atom graphic and choose Select > Same > Fill Color from the menu at the top of the screen. This selects all the sections that make up that area of the graphic. 8 Click on the Orange Gradient swatch in the Swatches panel to apply it to the selected elements. This applies the gradient to each individual element within the selection. After creating a gradient swatch, you may need to alter the gradient or perhaps the colors used within the gradient swatch. This is easily accomplished in Illustrator. 9 Press Shift+Ctrl+A (Windows) or Shift+Command+A (Mac OS) to deselect the sphere, then select the Orange Gradient swatch in the Swatches panel. 10 In the Gradient panel, replace the orange color with a color of your choosing. 8 To fi nish the business card, draw a rectangle the size of the business card using the Rectangle tool ( ). Click and drag from the upper-left corner of the document to the lower-right corner. Fill the rectangle with the Pantone 512 purple color by clicking on the Fill button in the Control panel and choosing the Pantone 512 swatch. If your color is still using the 60 percent tint that was previously set in the Color panel, change it back to 100 percent. 9 Choose Object > Arrange > Send to Back to put the purple rectangle behind the text, creating a purple background for the business card. 10 Choose File > Save to save your work, then File > Close. Congratulations! You have completed Lesson 4, Adding Color. Self study In this lesson, you were introduced to several great new features of Adobe Illustrator CS4, as well as some features that arent so new, but deserve further investigation nonetheless. The Appearance panel is a highly underused feature of Adobe Illustrator; practice on your own by exploring the capabilities harnessed within the Appearance panel. Start by drawing a line with the Line Segment tool then expanding the weight of the stroke. Add another stroke to it from within the Appearance panel, setting it to a diff erent weight and color; youll see that you

can apply more than one stroke to a single object! Explore Live Paint and Live Color in more detail. See Lesson 5, Working with the Drawing Tools, for information about converting a picture into a vector-based piece of art using the Live Trace feature and then coloring it using Live Paint. Furthermore, you can experiment with Color Groups and the Recolor Artwork dialog box to change how your artwork is colorized in Illustrator. Youve worked with the Color Guide and its color harmony rules, which allow you to look at variations of the selected color group. Go to kuler.adobe.com to check out diff erent color themes that people have created to share with other users. You can even post your own themes to this web site. Even better: you can download these themes to your computer and import them into the Creative Suite applications to apply to objects within your documents. Drawing straight lines The fi rst skill you need to master when working with the Pen tool is creating a straight line. To do this, you make corner anchor points with the Pen tool. Straight lines are automatically generated as a result. 1 In Illustrator, choose File > Open. When the Open dialog box appears, navigate to the ai05lessons folder and select the ai0501.ai fi le. Press OK. This is a practice fi le containing several diff erent line templates that you will work through in the following exercises. 2 Choose File > Save As. In the Save As dialog box, navigate to the ai05lessons folder and type ai0501_work.ai into the Name text fi eld; then press Save. In the resulting Illustrator Options dialog box, press OK to accept the default settings. 3 In the Control panel at the top of the workspace, select None ( ) from the Fill color drop-down menu. Select the color black from the Stroke color drop-down menu and select 2 pt from the Stroke Weight drop-down menu. 4 Select the Pen tool ( ) from the Tools panel and locate the template labeled Exercise 1 on the artboard. Click and release your left mouse button while hovering over label 1. This starts the line by creating the fi rst anchor point.