Live Paint

Live Paint allows you fill in areas with color even if those areas are not closed shapes. By creating shapes and converting them to Live Paint Objects, you can use the Live Paint Bucket tool or the Live Paintbrush tool to add colors to areas or strokes. Much like coloring in areas of a coloring book or a sketch with pencils, Live Paint detects any fillable area and applies a color.

Paint with Live Paint

The fillable areas of a Live Paint Object are called edges and faces. An edge is the section of a path where it intersects with other paths. A face is the area enclosed by one or more edges.

1. To turn your creations into a Live Paint Object, select all the objects you want to include and choose Object > Live Paint > Make.

2. Select the Live Paint Bucket tool from the toolbar.

3. Move the Live Paint Bucket tool over an area you want to add a fill color to. Above the Live Paint Bucket tool are three squares that show a preview of the swatch colors. Use the left or right arrow to cycle through the colors to choose one to add to the face. Click on that face to fill it with the chosen color.

4. Move the Live Paint Bucket tool over a line segment you want to add a stoke color to and hold 
the Shift key to activate the Live Paint Brush. Use the left or right arrow to cycle through the 
colors and choose one to add to the edges. Click on that line segment to apply the color to the 
edge. The Live Paint Selection tool allows you to change the color or stroke weight (of an edge).

Live Paint Objects with Open Edges

In some instances the edges of a Live Paint Object will not be closed. The openings are called gaps. Gaps can be closed with an invisible edge or can be drawn in automatically using the Gap Options.

To highlight the gaps in a Live Paint group, choose Object > Live Paint > Gap Options.

Paint stops at specifies the size of the gap that paint can’t flow through. You can choose Small, Medium, Large, or Custom defined gaps.

Close gaps with paths inserts actual paths into your Live Paint group to close gaps. When the gaps are closed with paths, it may appear gaps are still exist. The reason for this is that the newly generated paths have no stroke attributes applied to them so they appear to be nonexistent. Use the Live Paint Selection tool to select the path and change the attributes in the Appearance panel.

Expand a Live Shape

Live Paint Objects can be left as they are, but they are not editable using many of the Illustrator tools. To make the object editable, it needs to be Expanded. Select the Live Paint Object and choose Live Paint > Expand. This will break out the faces into filled shapes and the edges into stroked lines. All the shapes will be grouped together. Chose Object > Ungroup to ungroup the filled shapes and lines.