Expert: Amy - 10/22/2003

Question
I am using Adobe Illustrator 9.0 for Windows 2000.  I am a new Adobe Illustrator user.  This is for a design class in my college.  Here is the link the picture that I am working on:  http://attila.stevens-tech.edu/~ymalik/homework1good.ai  I want to give the pattern a black fill between the lines.  However, whenever I try to do so, I get the following result:  http://attila.stevens-tech.edu/~ymalik/homework1bad.ai which is not what I want.  I get that result by highlighting the entire pattern and then clicking on the black color in the Gradient tool box.  Can you tell me how I can fill only between the lines?  Thanks.

Answer
Hi Yasir,

How's school?  

I'm not exactly sure what you want to fill... the large innermost shape, which is a stylized flower shape of sorts, or each little crescent shape, so that your basic pattern appears thicker...

I think it's the second one.  Here's what you do.

Find the Pathfinder Window in Illustrator by selecting Window>Show Pathfinder.

Now select all your art and choose Object>Ungroup from the menu. Ctrl+A  Please do this only once as there are a couple of levels of groupings here and we only want to undo the first one.

Now deselect all your artwork. Ctrl+Shift+A

Now click on one single crescent shape (two arcs) that should still be grouped. There should be 16 of these pairs in your drawing.

Now click on the "Minus Front" button in the Pathfinder window.  It's in the top row, the fourth one. If you let your cursor hover over it, it'll say "Minus Front" in a little popup.

After Minusing the Front, you can now select a fill color from the Color Window (F6 or window>show color).  Don't use the gradient window. Do you know the difference between the fill and the stroke in this window?  There are two overlapping boxes, one is fill and one is stroke.  You'll be able to tell which is which when using them.

Now do this 15 more times!

Good luck!

Amy Pace