Difference between Photoshop brush and Illustrator brush

[ludo2316813629kv]

This is about a 'paint filling' problem, and about a difference between Photoshop brushes and Illustrator brushes.

Let's draw an "8" shaped figure in Photoshop, with a solid brush. 

Use your Paint Bucket. You can fill the top half of your 8 in, say, red and the bottom half in yellow. Both halves are treated separately. That's intuitively what I would expect.

Now let's draw an "8" shaped figure in Illustrator, also with a solid brush.

When you want to "fill" (I haven't found another parallel with Photoshop's Paint Bucket), your entire 8 is filled. The top half and the bottom half are not (automatically) treated separately.

How can I mimic Photoshop's behaviour in Illustrator? I.e. how can I draw in Illustrator a bunch of enclosed areas and fill them the way I did in Photoshop? Or, differently put, how can I separate (for the purpose of filling / painting) the various parts of a polygon? Probably a stuuuupid question, but I confess that I am a real newbie. So, be gentle with me 🙂

[ludo2316813629kv]

Okay, got it. Apparently, this is a job for "Living Paint". This is more or less how it works:

- Select the shapes you want to take part in the paint session.

- Type "K", to activate Living paint

- You may get a referral to the Object >> Living Paint >> Join (I'm working on a Dutch version, so maybe "Join" is not the proper translation) submenu. Don't know what this does "technically", but it works.

- From now on, Illustrator understands the idea of 'separate space', which you can paint separately, such as the upper and the lower half of an 8.

Problem Solved.