Today, we'll look at how to quickly turn your sketch into a smooth
vector using the curvature tool.
The curvature tool was added back in 2014.
So while it's not new in Adobe illustrator, I do think it
might be a little underused.
If you're struggling with the pen tool, this is a great alternative.
It's very intuitive and I find it to be one of the fastest ways to
convert my sketches to vectors.
You can find the tool in your toolbar or by using the keyboard shortcut
shift tilde it on your keyboard.
By default the curvature tool will make curves with single clicks.
And it will try to anticipate the smoothest curve that it can give
you based on where you're clicking.
If you double click, you can get straight lines.
You can also double click on a point to toggle it between corners and smooth
curves, and you can move points around simply by dragging them on the path.
You can remove them by selecting them and hitting the delete key.
You can add a point to the path by clicking on it.
So you won't have to switch tools to edit your path like you do with the pen tool.
And there's a lot less keyboard shortcuts to remember.
Let's jump into tracing this leaf sketch, and I'll give you a few tips on the
fastest workflow with the curvature tool.
I've imported my leaf sketch to Adobe illustrator using file place, and I've
locked that layer and changed it to multiply mode so that all I see is the
sketch lines over my background color.
Using my curvature tool, I'll be drawing on the layer just above the
locked sketch layer, and I'll be using a light orange outline color so that
it's easy to see against the background.
I find that using no fill and a contrasting outline color when you're
tracing artwork is the best way to see what you're doing as you go.
Since this leaf sketch is made entirely of curves, I'm just using simple,
single clicks around the edges, and I'll go back and make some adjustments
once I've got the entire shape traced.
I've rotated my canvas for a more comfortable drawing angle as I go.
You can do that using shift space bar to grab the rotate canvas tool.
And just a quick tip, you can toggle the fill and stroke colors back and forth
using the keyboard shortcut shift X so that you can preview what your shape looks
like while it's filled and quickly switch back to outline mode to continue tracing.
So now with just a few clicks on top of my sketch, I've recreated this leaf shape as
a smooth vector and to refine the path I'm going to keep my curvature tool selected.
And go in and just move a few points manually, maybe delete one here or there,
if there's too many or add to the path if I feel that there needs to be another
point to more closely follow the sketch.
I do want to note that the paths and points that you make with the curvature
tool are identical to the paths that you would get using the pen tool or any of the
other drawing tools in Adobe illustrator.
So you absolutely can switch to your direct select tool for example,
and go in and edit these nodes individually, just as you would, if you
had drawn this using any other tool.
So I'll go ahead and finish tracing my sketch using the curvature tool.
And the next thing I'll want to do is add a dividing line across the
leaves so that I can cut them into two shapes and color them separately.
Something that can happen with this tool or with the other drawing tools,
is that when you're trying to draw over a shape, you've already created.
The tool may try to edit the path of the wrong shape.
So one of the tips that I like to do when I'm tracing artwork is to lock
the shapes that I've already completed before drawing over top of them.
You can do this by selecting the shapes you want to lock and going to the
object menu and selecting lock selection or using the keyboard shortcut control
two, or command two if you're on a Mac.
If you're drawing an open path or line, like I am here for the dividing
lines, you can press escape when you reach the end of your line to exit
that line and start on a new one.
To unlock all your shapes when you're ready to use them, you can go to the
object, menu and select unlock all.
I'll be using these dividing lines along with the shape builder tool to
split my leaf shapes into two so that I can have two different fill colors.
You can grab your shape builder tool using the keyboard shortcut
shift M or find it on your toolbar.
I'm going to be clicking right in the middle here.
If you hover over, you can see that the line turns red and that's going
to divide my leaf into two shapes.
I'll be creating a tutorial specifically on the shape builder tool coming up,
but I wanted to show how easy it is to create smooth vector shapes from your
sketches using just two or three tools.
Here I've mainly used the curvature tool to trace all of my artwork, the
shape builder tool to divide my shapes.
And I've used the ellipse tool finally, to add the circular Berry shapes you
see at the top to draw on the stems again, I've used the curvature tool
and for these stems, I've gone into my stroke panel and just changed the width
profile to this nice tapered shape.
I've created a curvature tool, cheat sheet, which you find link below,
along with an exercise to help you get some practice with this tool.
I hope this was helpful if it was don't forget to subscribe, I've
got a lot more tutorials coming.
If you have any questions, please feel free to leave them in the comments
below, I'm always happy to help!
As always, thanks for watching.
Have a great day and happy illustrating!