hey guys it's Alice so today I'm going to walk you through some basic tips for
Adobe Illustrator and the pen tool so let's get straight into it
so first of all I am using my Wacom tablet and the pen that comes with it
I'll leave everything that I use linked in the description below and here I have
Adobe Illustrator I have the Adobe Creative Cloud subscription so I've
opened illustrator and just for this purpose we're just going to use an a4
file so I've just pinched to zoom I use an apple macbook so my trackpad lets me
pinch to zoom so I'm just going to make it the whole screen size let's get rid
of this and here is the pen tool so the shortcut on the keyboard is P or you can
just click it here and this tool here is the pen tool that's what we're talking
about today so the first tip is the rubber band effect on it so I know the
pencil used to really really confuse me and it wasn't until I went to university
that I was properly taught it so if you click once with the pen tool it drags
out a straight line so I'm just current ly hovering my pen over the Wacom tablet
and you get yourself a straight line if I click another point and hold on to it
so I've not yet lifted up my finger from the thing it creates this bendable
stretchy elastic band line and then if I let go I have another guideline ready
and waiting so what this helps me do is kind of guess where this line is going
to be and I can click again and it's going to draw exactly where that thing
originally drew so this is how the rubber band tool can be quite helpful if
you want to do a curve it kind of gives you an idea of what it's going to be
before you've actually clicked it and of course if you do it wrong you can just
press command Z or ctrl Z on a desktop and it'll get rid of it
another thing that I love using is the shift keys so I will click down as usual
and again it just creates a straight line if I hold the shift key you'll
see it will snap to either a 90-degree angle or a
45-degree angle so I'm gonna do a straight line and then I've still got
hold of the shift key again it'll just keep snapping so you could do like a
square or whatever this is not gonna be straight or let's just undo that so
command z again the same applies with the elastic band tool so if I click
and hold shift and then click and drag it will keep the little anchor points on
a right angle as well so as you can see it's clicking into place when I've got
the shift tool held so here is a logo that I have created using the pen tool I
can go into detail on how to do this if you like me to so just let me know but I
wanted to show you some keyboard shortcuts so this tool up here is like
an arrow without a fill and then this tool up here is an arrow with the fill
so as you can see the direct selection tool has a shortcut a that's what you
can see in those little brackets so if I press a on my keyboard it means I can
pick specific points within this drawing and adjust them so if I click this point
it brings up the what are these called I really should know this I'm gonna put
it on screen it brings up these little handles so if I have a selected and the
direct selection tool on I can adjust these anchor points by dragging them
along again that kind of man said to undo if you've got a fine detail you
want to adjust so maybe this I double click and drag and it will let me drag
it it'll let me move these and you can adjust it as you see fit if you want to
move the whole shape itself without affecting each point you press V so the
selection tool shortcut is V and this is selected the whole thing as you can see
that little blue square if you like has outlined it and this has selected the
entire thing this also it lets me resize it so I can drag and change the size and
if you want to resize it and keep the same aspect ratio you hold shift like
you do in Photoshop and every similar kind of software so going back
to just a blank document I want to show you how to do curved corners this can be
done on many different shapes but for the purpose of this demonstration I'm
just going to use a square so here I've just drawn a square using the shape tool
up here and I'm just going to press a as the keyboard shortcut or you can click
up this arrow here the direct selection tool and what I'm gonna do is click
these little circles here so there's some blue circles in every corner so if
I want this to affect the whole square I just click once and drag and as you can
see the corners are changing they have rounded edges and if I click twice so
now as you can see this little blue circle has an outline whereas this one
on this side isn't filled in and if I click that and drag it it's only going
to adjust that one corner like I said this applies on many different shapes so
let's do a star so again if I press a on my keyboard to get the direct selection
tool up and go in you can see every corner has one of these little circle
adjustments on it and if I want one in particular just press the 1 it gets
darker and then drag it and it will curve that one corner and if you want to
drag them all you do just that so let's trace something I'm gonna get an image
up from Google a very simple one and trace it what I'm going to do is press
the P tool and I'm actually going to change the outline of the P tool to
something quite colorful so now I've changed the outline to red I'm going to
outline this illustrator actually creates its own layers so it's not like
Photoshop you don't have to keep going into the layers panel to create a new
one it does it automatically so I'm just going to click in this bottom corner and
click on the corner and then if I click and drag I can pull this band around
this elastic band and match it to this so again if I click and drag it leaves
me with this rubber band and if I click this square where it originates
it gets rid of that a kind of anchor point and lets me do my own adjustments
to it like so and then you would just click so again this is pointing me in
the wrong direction so I'm gonna click it and just go straight back down here
so if I wanted to adjust this to make it a little bit neater you can go in you
can press the a button on your keyboard or click the direct selection tool and
this brings up the different anchor points and the different adjustments so
it does look a bit rubbish not the best work I've ever done so let's give it a
little bit fine-tuning so I want to adjust the angle of this so it matches
this corner so as you can see you can either curve it because you've got the
little circle notion there and it'll kind of smooth off at that point or I
can click this handle here and drag the shape of it and adjust it how I like
another tip when you're adjusting these points like this you'll see that when
I'm dragging one the other one moves as well kind of in unison with it so if
you're just wanting to adjust the one if you hold the Alt key and click it it
will only allow you to adjust that one that is under your mouse so those are my
tips for illustrator and the pen tool just to get you started
I do recommend downloading a very simple image of some sort and tracing it
practicing the lines and how you use the pen tool it does take practice it is
frustrating but I promise you will get there and watch out for more tutorials
on this channel I'm also currently in the process of updating my website it's
going to have free tutorials freebies templates loads of fun different
exciting things so if you would like to join the mailing list to be the first to
know when that goes live that will be linked in the top line of my description
so yeah I hope you enjoyed this video hopefully it helped let me know your
tips down below and I'll see you soon for another one bye