Adobe illustrator divide tool not working

[majord54695553]

I have a shape , i tried pen, line, or shapes , filling them in, or not, just strokes on them, i cant get  divide to work. I am a beginner.

i was making this How to Design a Logo with Shadows in Illustrator - YouTube  tutorial and i got stuck on the first divide with the pen tool

After i use divide it creates this shape? and nothing happens after that, (no matter how many times i click divide) they arent grouped, i cant select individual parts, i cant paint individual parts  , it just exists as 2 separate shapes and thats it, i opened another tab tried it with another shape and it worked, its something about this G that is making things hard.

[jdanek]

Make sure you select both the "G" and the shape, then use Divide.  You could apply a fill color, but shouldn't have to.  Make sure that that shape is a closed Path.

[jdanek]

After you Divide the two, use the Direct selection tool ( white arrow ) to select individual elements.

[Mike_Gondek]

You may have had a fill on your top shape. Make sure you have no fill on that. Stroke & thickness of stroke does not matter for divide.

[Myra Ferguson]

I know you're following a tutorial, but since you said you're a beginner I would encourage you to try out the Shape Builder Tool How to create shapes using the Shape Builder tool in Illustrator . It can be much more intuitive than Pathfinder.

[majord54695553]

Thank you all for the answers, but maybe i did something wrong, but it doesnt work, i got it to work with another method, by grouping the 2 paths together and then object - expand . and it basically did the same thing i think. I usually test it with the live paint bucked and direct selection tool, because as i understand it should split the shape into 2 parts. I removed the fill from the pen path (but still no). Usually Divide just says The filter produced no results , please select one or more filled paths. Thank you for the tutorial recommendation .

[Mike_Gondek · Accepted solution]

You must have none for the fill color of the path on top. You probably had the default of a white fill.