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It can be easy to conceptualize what Live Paint is doing when using two
overlapping rectangles. But it's yet another level when you think about what
you can do with Open Paths inside of Illustrator with Live Paint as well. So
let's take a look at another example. I'm going to use the Line Segment tool to
draw four paths inside of Illustrator. These are four independent paths but they
all crisscross each other. Now again because the way that I have drawn the paths,
I do see visually an area here in the middle that appears as if it's a closed
area but because I haven't created a filled object I can't apply the fill attribute.
However, with Live Paint I can and that's because you want to think about
a general rule. Live Paint allows you to apply a fill attribute to a
region or an area on your page that looks like it's an actual object. It doesn't
necessarily have to be one. The only thing that I need to do is to turn that
into a Live Paint group. So I'll go over here, take my regular Selection
tool. I'll select all four paths and the keyboard shortcut to create
a Live Paint group is Command+Option+X on the Mac or Ctrl+Alt +X
on Windows. Notice by the way that whenever you select a Live Paint group, the
handles that appear on the corners here have little stars inside of them, Indicating
this is something special. And indeed it is because the way the Live
Paint works. Just to show you where that command lives inside of the menu, you
can go over here to the Object menu, choose Live Paint and then you would choose
the Make option. But now that I have created my Live Paint group, I'm simply
going to go ahead and select the Live Paint Bucket tool again by tapping the
K on my keyboard. I'll select Yellow for my Swatches panel because it's
my favorite color and I'll fill this middle area here with Yellow.
Remember I didn't have to physically create an object here. I have these four
paths that created what looks like a closed area. In fact if I use my direct
Selection tool, I'll be able to see that each of these are individual paths,
nothing has changed there and because this is a Live Paint group, as I move or
change the boundaries of these paths the filled area automatically updates.
In fact, if you look at my Layers panel you will see that if I twirl down the
contents of Layer 1, I see that I now have a Live Paint group and if I twirl
down the contents of that I can see the four paths that appear inside of that
Live Paint group. So now we are really starting to see some
of the benefits of working with Live Paint groups. You don't need to actually connect
paths in order to fill them. Think about what this means when you are creating
quick sketches inside of Illustrator, or when you are working with
artwork that other people may have created, the key concept to always keep in
mind when working with Live Paint is that as long as the area looks like its enclosed
you can apply a fill attribute to it, even if they are made up of separate
paths as long as they are on encompassed within a single Live Paint group.