Expert: Amy - 2/13/2010

Question
QUESTION: I went through the process of making paint splatters and now I can't for the life of me figure out how to make them any thing other than gray!
I have Illustrator CS3

ANSWER: Hi Deborah,

If you used a brush, you will want to select them and choose Object > Expand or Object Expand Appearance from the menu. You may have to do this twice. After that, you will see that they are now individual objects that can be colored as you wish!

-Amy

---------- FOLLOW-UP ----------

QUESTION: Hi Amy,
Thanks so much for your help and prompt response.  I actually used the spray can, is the process the same for coloring then?

Answer
Hi again Deborah,

Yep, it should work the same with the Symbol Spray Can. Just remember, you might have to select "Object > Expand" twice. After that, it's possible that you will have to UNGROUP the resulting product of the Expand. Maybe a few times. It depends on the complexity of your symbol.

Then, when you see they're separated out and are now individual splatters, you can assign different fill colors... it's pretty easy but if you have a lot of splatters that you want all different colors of the rainbow, it might take some time.  =)

If you want to experiment with some fun Illustrator tools, you can choose to have Illustrator recolor your artwork for you, using the Edit > Colors > Recolor artwork tool.  It's kind of fun. The benefit is that you don't have to expand or ungroup your spray... the trade off is that it might not work for your splatter pattern if it's currently all one color. But I recommend you try it sometime as it's kind of an entertaining tool!

Have fun!
Amy