Illustrator provides two methods of painting: assigning a fill, stroke, or both to an entire object, and converting the object to a Live Paint group and assigning fills or strokes to the separate edges and faces of paths within it.

Paint a Live Paint group

With the Live Paint method, you paint more like you would with a traditional coloring tool, without regard to layers or stacking order, which can make for a more natural workflow. All objects in a Live Paint group are treated as if they are part of the same flat surface. This means you can draw several paths and then color separately each area enclosed by these paths (called a face). You can also assign different stroke colors and weights to portions of a path between intersections (called an edge). The result is that, much like a coloring book, you can fill each face and stroke each edge with a different color. As you move and reshape paths in a Live Paint group, the faces and edges automatically adjust in response.

An object consisting of a single path painted with the existing method has a single fill and a single stroke (left). The same object converted to a Live Paint group can be painted with a different fill for each face and a different stroke for each edge (right).

Painting an object the traditional way leaves some areas that cannot be filled (left). Painting a Live Paint group with gap detection (center) lets you avoid gaps and overprinting (right).

For a video on using Live Paint, see www.adobe.com/go/vid0042. For a video on painting techniques with the Paintbrush tool, see www.adobe.com/go/vid0038.