Below is a tutorial I’ve written for creating a fill color for a line drawing in Adobe Illustrator. This is a method to avoid retracing around your line drawing.

I start with my line drawing that I did in Illustrator. Check out the the cartoon tutorial page for different ways to draw in Illustrator.

Next, I make a copy of the outline around the bear. If that outline is made up of several lines or shapes, you’ll want to unite them. You can do that by using the Add to Shape Area button on the Pathfinder palette.

Using the Direct Selection Tool, click on the inner part of the line on your new copy, then hit delete (you may need to hit delete more than once). This deletes the inner part of the line and leaves you with a filled shape.

Your new filled shape will be used as the background color for the bear.

Next, I change the color to the brown color of the bear’s head.

After I’ve change the color, I use the Align Palette to align my new shape underneath my black lines.

That is basically it. You’ve created the fill color shape without having to trace around the object.

If you’d like to see how I finished coloring the bear, you can see those techniques in my snail cartoon tutorial.