: Coloring in on Illustrator? I have a drawing that I have traced with the pen tool and also given stokes. I am unable to color the drawing on illustrator. I attempted to merge the image, and

@Samaraweera207

Live Paint is certainly the way to do this, however there might be some steps you are missing.

Here's how I would attempt tracing a sketch, and colouring it with Live Paint.


Use the Pen tool to draw all the lines, making sure there are overlaps at all the intersections. Live Paint needs closed areas to work properly.
Apply your brush strokes to the lines.
Select all the strokes, and click Object > Expand Appearance. This will expand all the strokes into filled shapes.
Open the Pathfinder, and apply the Divide function
Using the Direct Selection tool, select all of the over lapping segments and delete them. Clean up any wonky lines/corners at this point.
Turn the drawing into a live Paint object, and use the Live Paint Bucket to fill all the colours.


Here's a simple example of the technique.



Here's the AI file if you want to examine it:http://www.filedropper.com/kitten

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