Illustrator Created Line Art, but can't live paint as "Make" is greyed out

[Leximoor]

Good Day,

I'm trying to create fill in colour and gradients for learning the basics in illustrator however with some sketch which i've made into line art with some basic brushes in Illustrator is not letting me make into filling in the areas. I've been following the below guide on this but I get stuck on the step "Live Paint" all the options are greyed out after i do the following

Ultimate Inking and Coloring Tutorial for Adobe Illustrator (short version) - YouTube

"Select All",

"Object - Group"

"Object Expand Apperance"

Then this happens (Despite the fact i made sure to select the line art area). Please can I have help on this and can I have someone make sure if there are steps they are carefully explained on a Windows PC please.

I honestly don't understand how this isn't working.

Leximoor

[Monika Gause]

Please show your artwork.

Make sure to select at least one of the strokes and show us the appearance panel as well.

[Leximoor]

For some reason, I can't insert an .AI file or something similar since it says "Image is forbidden".

However I think your suggestion helped, by checking the appearance panel, I noticed the stroke and for some reason It wasn't being registered properly when during a select. Thanks either way, i'll be sure to experiment more with Illustrator so I can do this better.

[jane-e]

Leximoor  wrote

For some reason, I can't insert an .AI file or something similar since it says "Image is forbidden".

Hi Leximoor,

You can post a screen shot with copy and paste or click the insert image icon at the top of the window.

If you want us to look at your Illustrator document, you can put it in Dropbox or another file sharing service and post a link to it.

~ Jane

[jane-e]

Hi leximoor,

Live Paint creates a Live Paint Group. Don't group first, and I'm not sure what you have that needs to be expanded. Maybe you need to expand some objects, maybe not.

Try:

• Select the objects you want
• Object > Live Paint > Make (the shortcut for the tool is "K")

Since you have a tutorial, you might watch it one more time to see if you misses a step.

[KShinabery212]

I do a lot of Expanding of Lines and then Making Live Paint.

Example:

Kenneth Shinabery - Not Your Average Princess Digital Vol. 1

What I do is expand each type of line that I created.  As you can see in the example I expand a lot of different kinds.  If I try to do them all at once, sometimes not all will expand and/or they suddenly all revert into the default line.  So I do each type (as well as the same size) in groups.

Then I duplicate the main layer with all the lines.  Just in case... better to have a back up of everything I expanded before I go into Live Paint and realize that I did something wrong.

Then on the layer I copied I select all and then Make Live Paint.

If I do not do this then sometimes I run into the same problem.

If you take a peak at my portfolio.... you will see several examples using this method.

Also make sure you back up your steps.

When I create an object I save and rename a few times, so if I need to go back and fix something I can.  Kind of like creating 'checkpoints' in video games.

Example:

Character_1.ai

Character_2.ai

Character_3.ai

and so on....

This is my fail safe so that way I can always go back and fix things if need be.