Illustrator paint pour question

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How in illustrator would I be able to pour paint into the outer square, but spare the inner square, to make a thick square letter O?

Thank you!!!

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Paint fill won’t get the job done. Instead, add a fill color to the outer shape, then use the pathfinder tool to subtract the inner (front) shape.

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I don’t know about pouring paint. But it you want to color your donut. Select both shapes and make a Compound Path under the Object menu. Or use the boolean functions (Pathfinder).

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Shape builder tool does a lot of Boolean and compound path stuff with more of a click and drag approach, should be able to make it a compound path, and then give it a fill, by just clicking between the paths with shape builder tool.

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That’s the thing about Illustrator - there’s usually any number of ways to accomplish a given task. It’s the excel of vector editors.

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every adobe app is like that. and the longer they’ve been around, the more ways there are to accomplish a task.

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Thank you @bwente @jbmanning5 @dwardio
I really liked the shape builder tool, and then selecting the middle filled shape with the tool and deleting. The compound path for me filled everything in, not sure why.
I can see how the subtract would work, that is a great idea.

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Instead of saying “There is more than one way to skin a cat.”, a friend of mine at work and I decided to say:

“There is more than one way to feed a cat.”
“There is more than one way to pet a cat.”
“There is more than one way to scratch a cat.”

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Yet another way - use the Live Paint tool which looks like a paint bucket pouring: select both shapes, select paint bucket tool, set your foreground color, click in the between space you want to fill.

Note that you’ll need to hit the “expand live paint” button at the top menu bar before you can GF the resulting obect.

More note: this is a great technique to quickly simplify more complex geometry.

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Mahalo!!! Thats what I tried first without success. Didn’t know the steps.

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uh…I don’t think he mentioned “eat a cat.” Alf and his dietary preferences would probably make that a true statement though.

I prefer to “squish that cat” though. It’s a favorite activity in my house :rofl: :rofl:

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Or my favorite, wheeze at the cat and rub my eyes until they look like lychees.

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Noʻu ka hauʻoli !

Intro to Live Paint

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Is that so it’s nice and calm when you’re ready for the skinning?!?

(That really is a weird saying if you stop and think about it.)

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You must watch the Helpful Vancouver Vet on YouTube!

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Is that the squish the cat guy? My husband and kids were watching the vet that says it. The only video I watched on purpose was when he talked about a girl who squished a wildcat in order to save her pet or something. He made a joke about her squishing the cat for like an hour until help arrived.

Yep! He’s got a whole series of very helpful pet videos, mostly cats but some other animals as well. And a line of “squish that cat” merchandise. I wish he had been doing videos when our cats had kidney disease, I think it could have helped.

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Random fact of the day. The phrase “more than one way to skin a cat” is missing a few letters from the original saying of “there’s more than one way to skin a catfish”.

It was about cleaning fish but now everyone thinks we were just really mean to cats back in the day. :stuck_out_tongue_winking_eye:

Edit: after posting this I went to the interwebs to check what I blindly took as fact. It turns out it’s about money. I don’t like that so I’m going to stick with my catfish story.

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I like the catfish story better as well. I think we can get that to catch on. :wink:

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