How to Fill in Texture in Illustrator

Adobe Illustrator offers a myriad of design possibilities, including filling in shapes with pre-designed textures. Filling in textures allows you to produce the look you want, while avoiding bland, solid colors. Illustrator's opacity slider offers you further control by changing how bold or subtle the texture appears. An opacity of 100 means the texture is solidly visible, whereas a lower opacity allows it to fade away.

Instructions

1. Open your graphic project in Adobe Illustrator or create a new one.

2. Press the "V" key to select the Selection Tool and click the shape you want to fill with a texture. Alternatively, create a new shape using the shape tools, such as the Rectangle, Ellipse or Polygon tools.

3. Click "Windows" in the top menu and select "Swatches" to open the Swatches toolbox.

4. Click the bottom left "Swatches Library Menu" icon on the Swatches toolbox, point to "Patterns," "Basic Graphics" and click "Basic Graphics_Textures." This opens up a side box with a list of textures.

5. Click any texture to fill the selected shape with that texture. Alternatively, click and drag a texture onto an unselected shape to fill that shape with the texture.

6. Click the arrow to the right of the "Opacity" tool in the top Control toolbox. If you do not see the Control toolbox, click "Windows" and select "Control."

7. Slide the Opacity slider to the left to reduce opacity or to the right to increase it. Alternatively, enter an exact percentage in the Opacity field.