(upbeat music)
- [Tony] In the document I have here
I have a two inch grid
with four divisions.
It should open up like this,
but if not pop into the preferences guide and grid
and it's easy to set up from there.
And also hopefully your selection tool is active
and you can make sure
that the grid is turned on
using this icon in the properties panel.
Okay, so it's actually time to get drawing
but to be more accurate, I should say plotting
because that is actually what we are going to be doing.
But the end result will be a drawing
so I'll let you choose how we describe
what we are doing next.
But essentially we are learning a bit
about Illustrator's Pen Tool.
So to work with the pen tool
what we should first do
is tap A on our keyboard to get the direct selection tool
and then tap P
and that's because it builds an association
so that when you hold down the Command key
or the Control key
then it will switch
to the last use selection tool
which we need to be the direct selection tool.
Okay, so let's just come out onto our art board here
and click at four locations,
they don't even have to be,
okay, in the same axis or anything like that,
just four straight lines.
And you can see you've built a shape,
when you got to the very end
you probably noticed a small O appear next to the cursor
which at the moment has a small asterisk next to it
and that means we are closing the path.
I'm going to delete that by pressing delete twice.
One, to delete the active point
and its associated segments
and again to delete whatever was left.
Now visualize
a four square area,
so four big squares, like one, two, three, four.
Go to the top middle of those squares,
press and drag out to the right
two and a little bit small squares like so.
Then come diagonally down
to the next major intersection,
press and drag the same distance downwards
diagonally down to the bottom
press and drag there also.
Diagonally upwards press and drag the same distance
and then back to the first point
and press and drag to trace out the first handle there.
There we go.
Drawing a circle slightly more complicated
and with the grid very easy.
Now to be honest
whenever I'm using the grid
it's normally for something technical
or showing people how to use this tool.
Once you get used to it
I'm sure you'll become very proficient
at putting things where you need them to be.
Now just to access the direct selection tool for a moment
I'm going to hold down the Command key on my Mac,
Control on Windows
and you can see that I can work
with these handles to manipulate them.
So if I need to make any changes
such as the length of the handle or the angle
then I can do that from here.
Again, I'm going to hit delete once
and twice to remove that shape.
Let's do something a little bit more complex,
so what we're going to do
is go to any intersection on the left-hand side here,
click and drag upwards.
Okay, move over to the next major intersection here
press and drag downwards
and when you go to the bottom there
hold on the Option key
and swing the handle upwards
that's Alt of course on Windows.
And then over to the next major intersection
press and drag downwards.
Now, before your release
hold down the Option key
and swing that handle up like so,
then across, press and drag downwards,
this time just release at that particular point.
What we can then do is go up to the point
not the handles and click on it
and it's now expecting to draw straight points
because we've converted that anchor point into a hybrid.
If I know we'll come up to this point here and click
you can see I've got a straight line.
Okay, back to creating curves
so if we go back here
notice that the cursor changes,
you need to watch for that.
Press and drag upwards
like so.
That starts off the control handle
go over to the next intersection
press and drag downwards
and the rest
you know.
And it's a good thing to practice these things
and eventually you'll get to the point
where you can especially for tracing
draw very accurately.
Let's take a look at the Curvature Pen Tool
which is a relatively new addition to Illustrator.
It's only been around for a few years
and to be perfectly honest
I was not a fan when it first arrived,
I didn't know why it had been introduced
but now I absolutely love it.
Let's select that,
you can use the shortcut if you like
Shift + back take, to get that.
Although it does neighbor the ordinary pen tool,
ordinary as if there's such a thing,
pen tool just here in the toolbox.
Now circles are the hardest thing people find
to draw with the pen tool
because it's all that pressing
and dragging and all that stuff.
Well, the experience here with the Curvature Pen Tool
is very different.
I'm going to go ahead
and find a major intersection here
at which I wish to click and click.
I'm going to move down diagonally
to the next major intersection
and click there.
And it looks like I've drawn a straight line,
you could be forgiven for thinking that.
And then diagonally down to the next major intersection
and you can already see
what's going to happen when you click,
its drawn a half circle.
And make your way diagonally round
and eventually you'll see
that you've drawn a complete circle with four clicks.
Drawing curves is really easy with the Curvature pen tool
and there's more besides
because you don't need to worry
about the direct selection tool.
If you want to make any adjustments or manipulations
even with the same tool
you just go to the point
and move it to where you want it to be.
If you are not getting the curve you want
and you think an additional point would help
you simply go to that point on the path
and click to add one.
And then you can carry on
bending out your shape until it meets your needs.
If you think you've got too many points
and you want to remove one
choose the point you want to remove
and hit delete and it's gone.
It's super intuitive
as is converting between corner points
and curve points.
I'm going to delete what I've got here
and you'll notice it's a single operation
to just hit delete.
This time I'm going to double click, okay?
As I make my way around
to draw a diamond, like so.
And I'll double click again there
and then I can make my way around double-clicking
to turn all of these back into curves,
it makes it really simple to draw.
Let's try our bumpy diagram here
so I'm going to go ahead and click here,
I'm going to go up to minor intersections there
and come down and click.
Once I've drawn the point I'll double click on it
and then make my way around like so.
Double-click, here's my straight line
double click and then I can go ahead
and go up to this point here
and click and down to this point here
and click then double-click.
You can see how simple
this is to work with.
I think that users
who've been using the pen tool for quite some time
and new users will love it.
I do, it's a very good way
to work,
super intuitive, lots of flexibility
and you don't need to use additional tools to work with it.
Although there's stopping you
from doing that after you've drawn it.
Unlike the pen tool and the Curvature Pen Tool
which are used for plotting points,
the pencil tool does actually draw them.
So I have that tool active here
in this empty Illustrator documents
and I'm going to simply draw like so,
a curve
like this.
Now, if I come back to this draw
and start to draw a gain, I can reroute it.
So if I was tracing over something
or aiming for perfect
representation of what I was after
then this overdrawing ability is very useful.
However, if I draw too close to the path
in the first instance
I'll just undo that
and make sure that I'm a bit closer.
It can actually misunderstand you
as it did there and start redrawing.
So it does involve you deselecting,
the quickest way to do that
is to hold down the Command key
or Control on Windows and click.
Although alternately, you could use the de-select command
which is Shift + Command + A
or Shift + Control + A.
Now there are some options for the pencil tool,
so double-click on it in the toolbox.
The first of which is fidelity
and this is how much smoothing
you would like applied to your line.
So here you can see mine is midway
between accurate and smooth.
I'll just hit okay for a moment
and I'm going to try
and draw a wobbly line, not too difficult there.
And you can see
it has been smoothed out somewhat.
I'll take this back to accurate
and I'll try and emulate the line I had before.
Of course, it's next to impossible to do that
but you can see it is a much more faithful rendering there
a lot more points as a result.
I'll double click again
and turn smooth up to the maximum there
and I'll try my wobbly line trick
just one more time,
there like so
and it is almost straight.
Your own drawing style
would determine how you have this set,
for me the middle is about as far as I'd like to go
between what I'm actually drawing
and how much I would like it to be smoothed.
Now you do have some options here
whether or not your new strokes are filled,
whether they stay selected.
And of course, if you want that overdrawing behavior
then the chances are that would be a good idea.
This option I do have unusually
the Option key or Alt key toggles to the smooth tool
and we'll look at that in just a second.
And also these options for closing a path
when the ends are within so many pixels
and how close you have to be
to edit path.
I'm going to hit okay here
and what I'm going to do
is hold down the Command key
and select the middle
of the three wobbly lines I drew there.
Now in the toolbox with the pen tool
if you long press
you'll find the smooth tool.
And as you brush over paths
you can see that they become smoothed out.
But if you've enabled the option
to be able to modify the pencil tool to the smooth tool
by holding down Alt or Option,
then you won't need to pick up that tool.
There is however, one other tool
in this set that it's worth mentioning
because it's a great companion to the pencil tool,
and that is the join tool.
Now to use that what I'm going to do
is clear all of the contents of this art board
and I'm going to draw something like a cloud, like so.
And I'm going to overdraw some of the joins
and others are not quite going to join together.
Like so, there we are
and I'll draw a straight line along the bottom.
Now, I want to de-select all of those things
so I'll hold down the Command key and click away.
And that's part of the beauty of the join tool
because you can just swipe across things like this
and it will join together lines that are overlapping
and lines that are barely joined, it will connect them
and all of the trajectories are maintained.
Now there's nothing to stop me
re-selecting that going back to my pencil tool,
by the way the shortcut for that is N.
Holding down the Option key
and then coming along
and doing a bit of smoothing there as well.
So it's a very useful tool to know
and practice with,
made all the better
if you can use something like a work on tablet or similar
but it will give great results
just tune it to your own personal requirements.
(upbeat music)