Adobe Illustrator Tutorial

How to Create and Fill a Shape with Color by Using Line Segments on Adobe Illustrator

1st Image: Line Segment Tool

2nd Image: Select Tool (black arrow)

3rd Image: Color Fill

4th Image: Zoom tool

5th Image: Direct Select Tool (white arrow)

Get onto the computer and open Adobe Illustrator.

Go to File>New Document, and a New Document window will pop up. Click OK in the lower left corner. This will create a blank document to work with.

Click on the Line Segment Tool

Make three line segments in the shape of a triangle. To make line segments, click/hold left button on the mouse and drag until reaching the desired length and then release.

Use the Zoom tool located at the bottom of the screen. Zoom to 1600% on the first corner of the triangle.

Next, Line up the line segments corner-to-corner using the Select Tool (black arrow). To line up the line segments, left click and drag the line segment ends together until they close the triangle corner.

Select the Direct Select Tool (white arrow) and click on one line segment. Once this is done, a thin blue line will appear through the line segment. At the end of the blue line, there is a small white box, called the anchor point.

Left click/hold on the anchor point and drag it to meet the anchor point of the other line segment. The word “anchor” will pop up, indicating the anchor points are aligned correctly.

After the anchor points are aligned, click on one line segment, hold down the shift key, and click on the other line segment. Both of the line segments should now be selected.

Go to the Object Panel>Group and group the selected line segments.

After the two line segments are grouped, select the Object Panel>Path>Join. Note that this will only work if the anchor points are aligned correctly.

To join the other two corners of the triangle, repeat steps 6-11.

*It’s imperative to join the corners of the triangle so it closes the shape; color can only be added into a closed shape.

Upon completion of closing the shape, zoom back out to 300%.

Click on the Selection Tool (black arrow) and select the triangle.

Next, select the fill tool from the toolbox on the left. If the stroke box is in front of the fill box (white box with red slash), left click on the fill box. This should bring the fill box to the front.

Double click the fill box, and the Color Picker window will pop up.

Select desired color. To select color, left click anywhere on the color swatch. This should fill in the triangle with the chosen color.

Go to File>Save As and create a file name. Click on the Save button in the bottom left of the window. Great job!