Points & Paths

Illustrator Questions Answered on Pointsandpaths.com will be a regular feature that provides answers to common Illustrator questions I’ve seen asked by my students, by people online, by colleagues and by voices unseen which, basically, means me talking to myself.

So here’s the issue. In Illustrator, once you apply just one mesh point to a shape, it automagically becomes a mesh object. It’s doing what one would expect. Now, hours later after working on, say, a mesh apple, you’re sitting there thinking, “I’d sure like to apply a green stroke to this apple to give it a little more style.” But as you assign a color to the stroke, you see nothing changes. Not even increasing the stroke weight makes a difference. What the french, toast?

Things are clearly more restrictive with mesh objects. While you do get freedom in how you color the inside of the object, there’s little you can do with the stroke. But there is hope.

To the rescue comes the Offset Path command (Object > Path > Offset Path). Select your mesh shape and select this command. For the offset value, use 0 and click OK.

An impercertibly thin stroke will appear with your object but not as a part of it. In other words, the stroke is a separate object from the mesh object.

Also, take note that the stroke color is grayscale so you can change it to all sorts of different shades of gray but nothing else. But, again, there is hope. With the stroke selected, open the Color panel’s option menu and select “RGB” from the options that appear.

And, like that, a world of color opens up to you. Don’t forget that you can adjust the thickness of the stroke from the Stroke panel.

Got a question that needs answering? Or have a question you’ve seen asked over and over? Let me know and I’ll find a solution… if there is one!