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Newbie learning illustrator -why can't I paint?

Forum|Forum|14 years ago
June 16, 2011
4 replies
56997 views

Hi!

Im trying to learn Adobe Illustrator, but I'm having trouble right from the start. I made a video to better illustrate my issue, which in short is that I'm not able to use the paint brush tool.

Here's the link:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IJesz-1ZFtU

This topic has been closed for replies.

Correct answer Monika Gause

You didn't select a brush for the paintbrush, but a width profile. You have to select a brush tip in the brushes panel.

Learning_IllustratorAuthor

Participating Frequently

Thanks for helping (except for the RTFM guy).

Monika was right, I needed to select a brush from the brushes panel. That's certainly confusing for a newbie, since looking at the top panel it looked like I already had a brush selected. My previous experience with other Adobe programs certainly didn't help me realize the problem there. Small things like this make the Illustrator learning curve quite steep.

As a side note to the guy who decided to reply with "RTFM": I'm not posting only to gain knowledge, but to also show the areas that produce problems for newbies in Illustrator. This kind of information might be usefull to Adobe if their goal is to make Illustrator more accessible for a wider range of people.

Larry G. Schneider

Community Expert

What's wrong with using the Help file

Learning_IllustratorAuthor

Participating Frequently

Larry, there is nothing wrong with reading the manual. Some of us simply don't like doing that a lot. I'm more of a "hands on" person and many of the Adobe manuals are written in a very alienating way.

This situation is a great example of when the manual would not have helped at all, because I was under the impression I already had a brush stroke selected (as you see I'm selecting something right next to the stroke option that looks very much like a brush).

If the manuals rock your boat, great. For me the measure of a good intuitive program is that you can work with it without reading any manuals simply because it works in a logical straightforward fashion. When I buy a mobile phone its the same thing: I don't want to spend my time reading manuals, I wan't the phone to be logical enough so that I can find things on my own.

As I pointed out earlier, the reason for my post is not only to gain information for myself, but to produce information about the difficulties a newbie faces with Illustrator. I don't believe that second task can be accomplished by reading the manual.

Monika Gause

Correct answer

Community Expert

You didn't select a brush for the paintbrush, but a width profile. You have to select a brush tip in the brushes panel.

Jacob Bugge

Community Expert

Learning,

As you have realized, the Helpfile (the Fine Manual) is written by and for someone with a certain knowledge about Illy; some instructions simply imply something that a new user has no way of knowing. Illy herself is actually very helpful.

If the layer had been locked, that would have been a reason.

In a case like this, you may be stuck with corrupt preferences.

To try out whether that is the case without sacrificing your preference settings unnecessarily, you may close Illy and Move the folder.

If that does not help, you may move the folder back, and try the Other options; Item 7 is a lsit of usual suspects which may disturb Illy and prevent her from helping you.

Edit: Hi PrepressPro.

PrepressPro1

Legend

Did you RTFM?

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