Adobe® Illustrator® 10 Classroom in a Book®

Painting with the mesh tool

You can convert any object into a mesh object by using the mesh tool and creating one mesh point at a time. Each time you click an object using the mesh tool, a new color is added to the object.

First you'll paint a color on one of the tail wings on a butterfly, and then you'll paint the other tail wing with the same color.

1.	Select the zoom tool () in the toolbox and click the butterfly at the top of the artwork a few times to zoom in to 300% (as indicated in the lower left corner of the window). Then select the hand tool (), and use it to move the butterfly to the center of the window.
2.	Click a color in the Color ...