Illustrator: how to paint consecutive strokes without deselecting each new path?

With the pen tool you should only be able to place anchors (tapping the stylus on your tablet) and adjust the curve handles of anchors (tap and drag). With the brush or pencil tools, every time you place your stylus down it should be the same as clicking with the mouse and a new path should begin without requiring that you de-select the old one.

I really have no idea how you’re ending up deleting the old stroke – I’ve just tried each tool to be sure and I can’t get it to do that. My only thought is that possibly your tablet’s pressure sensitivity is too high or you’ve got some sort of setting causing this.

Anyhow, if you get it to stop deleting your previous strokes, you can join anchors simply with the pen tool. Click on one anchor, click on the next: they join.

I used the brush tool and it worked fine for that. Would that tool not work for what your trying to do? Also, double click on the tool and make sure “keep the stroke selected” is not checked. Otherwise if your close to the stroke you just drew it will reposition it to the new one and the old one will dissappear.

Aha!

Bri_L completely solved my issue. That was what I meant to say: that the strokes get redrawn/edited if I’m drawing on or too close to another path.

Thanks a lot! (and same to you, paulc!)

There’s also a modifier key you can use to get the same funtionality, so that you don’t have to switch off what can sometimes be a useful tool.

It’s one of Ctrl, Alt, or Apple/win just before you paint the stroke. Can’t remember exactly which though.

No prob Makemo – glad to help.

@ Benseven – Thanks to you to. I had forgotten about that functionality.

Well, that said, I couldn’t work out which modifier it was! Any luck?

i’ll be darned if I can find it

No luck here either, find that modifier key.

Also, in the Brush prefs (double click the tool) you can set a larger gap for “Edit selected paths), or deselect the tool completely.

And I don’t know of a modifier key to temporarily toggle the “keep selected” option, I tried everything here on Mac/CS3 Illustrator and I do no see that functionality.