The outline is made out of curves and lines I made with the pen tool. I’m just not sure how to fill the object!
Hi, Moosh, you’re thinking is “pixel mode” - “I’ve got an outline and I want to colour it in”.
However, to work with a vector app, you have to think in “shape mode” - everything is a separate shape. What Vectornator sees is not an outline, but “separate shapes sitting next to each other”.
Think of each of the pieces you’ve created here as a bowl filled with jelly (jelly that has set hard and is sticking to the bowl). The jelly is the “fill”, the bowl is the stroke.
To get the whole shape filled (in the pixel sense), in vector thought you need to join those shapes together so they are one big oddly-shaped bowl.
Fortunately, Vectornator makes it easier by providing a function to join shapes together (like gluing the edge of one bowl to the the edge of another).
You can only do it with two shapes at a time.
It looks like you are using the Mac version of Vectornator. Select two shapes that touch at the end of the curves (the edge of the bowl). From the Path menu, select Join Paths.
This will join the two closest points.
Warning: it might move the shapes slightly to line them up exactly.
For iPad users
… Join Paths is under the Path section of the Inspector
Then take that newly joined up piece (which is now a single piece made from what used to be two separate pieces), and select it and the next piece beside it, and join them.
Keep on joining touching pieces until everything is joined into one piece, and it will have the one fill you are looking for.
4 Likes
Oops, I forgot one (optional) step.
At the end, when it’ all one shape but the two ends of your (now complicated) curve might be touching (sitting on top of each other) but are not “glued together”.
If it looks and fills OK, you can leave it like that, it’s usually not a problem
If you want a true closed curve (think of a ball, rather than a bowl filled with jelly), you can use the Close option (Inspector, Path section, Close) to join the two end points of your curve.
Unfortunately, Vectornator does this by drawing a short segment between the two end nodes, it doesn’t merge the two end nodes into one, even if they are in the same place.
If you’d like, you can Close the curve then delete one point or again, if it looks OK, you can leave the two points sitting on top of each other, it’s usually not a problem.
3 Likes
THANK YOU. You are a godsend. I GREATLY appreciate your help and your illustrations. AND IT WORKED!!! Thank you so much 