Editing and Combining Shapes and Paths

By Brian Wood
Mar 6, 2021

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In this sample chapter from Adobe Illustrator Classroom in a Book (2021 release), author Brian Wood teaches you how to edit and combine paths and shapes to create more complex artwork. You will learn to cut shapes and combine them with the Shape Builder tool and Pathfinder effects.

This chapter is from the book 

Adobe Illustrator Classroom in a Book (2021 release)

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LESSON OVERVIEW

In this lesson, you’ll learn how to do the following:

Cut with the Scissors tool.
Join paths.
Work with the Knife tool.
Outline strokes.
Work with the Eraser tool.
Create a compound path.
Work with the Shape Builder tool.
Work with Pathfinder effects to create shapes.
Work with the Reshape tool.
Edit strokes with the Width tool.

This lesson will take about 45 minutes to complete. To get the lesson files used in this chapter, download them from the web page for this book. For more information, see “Accessing the lesson files and Web Edition” in the Getting Started section at the beginning of this book.

Soon after you begin creating simple paths and shapes, you will most likely want to use them to create more complex artwork. In this lesson, you’ll explore how to edit and combine shapes and paths.

Starting the lesson

In Lesson 3, you learned about creating and making edits to basic shapes. In this lesson, you’ll take basic shapes and paths and learn how to edit and combine them to create artwork for a few dinosaur illustrations.

To ensure that the tools function and the defaults are set exactly as described in this lesson, delete or deactivate (by renaming) the Adobe Illustrator preferences file. See “Restoring default preferences” in the “Getting Started” section at the beginning of the book.

NOTE

If you have not already downloaded the project files for this lesson to your computer from your Account page, make sure to do so now. See the “Getting Started” section at the beginning of the book.
Start Adobe Illustrator.
Choose File > Open. Locate the file named L4_end.ai, which is in the Lessons > Lesson04 folder that you copied onto your hard disk, and click Open. This file contains the finished artwork.
Choose View > Fit All In Window; leave the file open for reference, or choose File > Close (I closed it).
Choose File > Open. In the Open dialog box, navigate to the Lessons > Lesson04 folder, and select the L4_start.ai file on your hard disk. Click Open.
Choose File > Save As. If the Cloud Document dialog box opens, click Save On Your Computer to save it locally.
In the Save As dialog box, change the name to Dinosaurs.ai (macOS) or Dinosaurs (Windows), and choose the Lesson04 folder. Leave Adobe Illustrator (ai) chosen from the Format menu (macOS) or Adobe Illustrator (*.AI) chosen from the Save As Type menu (Windows) and then click Save.

TIP

By default, the .ai extension shows on macOS, but you can add the extension on either platform in the Save As dialog box.
In the Illustrator Options dialog box, leave the Illustrator options at their default settings, and click OK.
Choose Window > Workspace > Reset Essentials.

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