Illustrator newbie help? painting lineart

[thetoddgreen]

Hey, I have used PS for a while now to edit photos, but AI is a bit different haha. I use a Huion H610 tablet, and my primary focus right now is scanning in drawings/sketches in order to ink them and color them in AI. I've been slowly getting a hang of it but I have recently ran into a couple issues.

1) my color swatches aren't showing. It is showing the transparent (white with red line), black, and white. That's it. I can select colors with the eyedropper and the gradient color pallet, but i prefer using swatches if I can, not really sure why the actual colors left.

2) I have some lines drawn and what not, and I went to paint. I have watched some basic line-art/inking tutorials on youtube but it doesn't seem to be working as they do on the tutorials. If i try to select an area and use live paint, it take away all of my lineweights which really sucks. If i try a more traditional approach, well, it just is a huge ink block and doesn't take into consideration the lines within the area (lips or eyes etc if im doing a face). Any assistance on how to approach painting areas without using the paintbrush and stroking it in would be great!!!

 

[Hoogle]

I do not have an actual solution to the swatches and have experienced that myself however I do find that if you use the appearance panel you can change it there similar to how you suggest or I have created my own swatch preset thats have a lot of colors in and I load that swatch gallery and it works.

As for the line art I have found that using the blob brush to be quite effective with graphics tablet.

 

[thetoddgreen]

So with it being a brush, it can override other pieces. I would assume you would say create a layer underneath and use the blob brush there so all my lines are unaffected?

Also, ran into something else today. Lets say one of my lines cross another, and its supposed to meet. If I use the eraser (settings set the same as my brush settings other than it being pressure sensitive), it 1) doesn't stop where i stop, I am assuming it finds the next "point", and also 2) what part of the line that is left grows tremendously in size and also loses all properties. for instance, i have my brush at 0.75 with full 1 pt pressure sensitivity (because you cannot set it to 0.75 there. After I erase a tip, it kind of just erases to whatever extent it feels free, and the line grows so much, as in instead of just losing pressure properties, it will grow to something like 20pt. It gets HUGE. I want to be able to intentionally go farther, and just cut off the excess, if there is an easy way to just select whatever is on the other side or something, and leave the rest of the properties

 

[agentmoeller]

So with it being a brush, it can override other pieces. I would assume you would say create a layer underneath and use the blob brush there so all my lines are unaffected?

Also, ran into something else today. Lets say one of my lines cross another, and its supposed to meet. If I use the eraser (settings set the same as my brush settings other than it being pressure sensitive), it 1) doesn't stop where i stop, I am assuming it finds the next "point", and also 2) what part of the line that is left grows tremendously in size and also loses all properties. for instance, i have my brush at 0.75 with full 1 pt pressure sensitivity (because you cannot set it to 0.75 there. After I erase a tip, it kind of just erases to whatever extent it feels free, and the line grows so much, as in instead of just losing pressure properties, it will grow to something like 20pt. It gets HUGE. I want to be able to intentionally go farther, and just cut off the excess, if there is an easy way to just select whatever is on the other side or something, and leave the rest of the properties

Are you using special, or "artistic" brushes? If you erase and shorten your stroke, AI will make the entirety of the brush design fit into the shortened stroke.

Just a thought.



Agent