Hi, this is Anne for Graphic Design How To, and today we're going to go over the Pen Tool.
I'll also go over the Curvature Tool, which is similar to the Pen Tool, and it's not on
this version because I use CS6.
I don't really like paying for Creative Cloud, so I am stuck with an old version.
So sorry guys about that, but it's pretty simple, so we'll just go over that.
And let's get started.
To show you how the Pen Tool works, I'm going to use this light bulb and kind of redraw
it.
As you can see, it's really pixely.
I just took a screenshot of a Vecteezy image, and that link to download that image...if
you wanted to get the vector... you can get that link in my description.
So go ahead and create a new layer.
I'm going to lock this layer.
The best way I think to use the Pen Tool you'll use north, south, east and west.
I'm going to start right up here with the northernmost point and click once and then
I'm going to the westernmost.
And I'll click and drag.
And this will give us the best curve.
I'll probably well, if you hold SHIFT, it's not going to be quite accurate, so I'm not
going to do that.
And then I'll click this, and we'll continue down here.
And sometimes it doesn't work to do the most northern points, so you just have to do the
best you can.
But if you can, try to do it that way.
And there are definitely better ways to do this kind of thing.
But since I'm teaching you Pen Tool, I'm going to draw them with the pen.
A lot of times to get a straight line I just hold SHIFT so I can get a straight line over
from my last point.
And sometimes I hold it when I'm dragging the next point.
We will continue it right here.
I'll hit it with a V Tool first, hit V, return, 10 inches and zero Vertical.
And now if we zoom out and look over here, you can see that shape.
So that's most of the shape here.
Now I'm going to do this little bit.
So I'm going to start at the southernmost point of that, click once and then go to where
it starts curving, and I'm going to hold SHIFT.
And now I'll do this.
I hold SHIFT when I do that so that I can get it exactly.
And then come over here, hold SHIFT, and down here, and I'm just clicking and dragging to
do this.
OK, it looks pretty good, and you can also use the Smooth Tool.
I know that's not what this is about, but we can hit SHIFT S. That's underneath the
Pencil Tool.
And you may have to set this up in Edit>Keyboard Shortcuts and then create a SHIFT S for this
one.
So, let's smooth this out a little bit.
All right, that looks pretty good.
Now I'm going to make this quite a bit bigger.
OK.
And now we'll send this over to the right.
Hit V, return, 10 inches.
And now you can see it's over here.
Let's zoom in on that.
I'm going to click on this and then use the I Tool.
Well, it's sort of OK.
Let's go to Stroke and put it on the interior of that line.
Yeah, it's so so.
We'll leave it like that.
And we'll come back over here.
And finally I want to draw this interior shape.
So hopefully this will work.
I'll start with the southernmost point, hold SHIFT and click the next, and then we will
get that little curve and go to the far west, get that curve, and then the far north.
OK, now I'm gonna click here and close the shape.
All right, so now I will hit SHIFT CMD A to deselect, hit V to select, and then V, return,
and 10 inches.
OK, now let's look at what we have here.
We have all the pieces that we need.
So let's grab the first one.
You can do CMD Y to get back and forth.
It's a little easier to see what you're doing in the CMD Y.
So I'll just leave it in this for a moment.
So I'm going to copy, paste in front, and then hit O and OPT click right on this line.
By the way, copy is CTRL C, or CMD C, paste in front is CMD F or CTRL F. So now we have
the Reflect coming up... that's the O, and I'll hit it Vertical.
And you can see, I just made a copy.
So now I'll select those two and Pathfinder > Join them, which almost worked.
Let's go ahead and pull this over so it overlaps.
And then do another Unite in Pathfinder.
CMD - to zoom out.
And now, let's take this shape.
I'm going to CMD C, CMD F, and then hit O, and then click OPT and click right on that
line to do a vertical reflect.
Now we've got those two.
Let's select both of those, and then do a unite with Pathfinder.
And we have the same problem here.
I'll do Z to zoom in, and then I'm going to just overlap these and do the unite again.
All right, let's see what we've got left.
This... hmm...very interesting.
This part needs to just be flipped also.
So we will do CMD C, CMD F, O, and then hold OPT and click right here.
And then say 'Vertical'.
And we'll just move this a little closer like this.
All right.
And now...
I'm going to change these two to a fill.
So I have these two outer ones selected.
I'm going to hit SHIFT X to have them be a fill.
Now this inner shape, we'll make it white so you can see what's going on.
And it's not... this, as I mentioned, this probably isn't the best way to do this.
The best way would just be to make one shape and then make it a stroke, so that it would
be an even stroke all the way around.
But you know, Pen Tool... that's what you get when you use it sometimes.
OK, let's go down here Shape Modes and do minus front, that white piece has to be on
the front.
So if it's not, hit SHIFT CMD and right bracket, and it will bring it to the front.
So let's hit this second one in the Shape Modes.
And we've just cut it out.
So we are pretty much...
I'm going to select this whole thing and then hit V, return, minus 10 inches, and then vertically
zero, and we'll send it back over here.
So I know I used a bunch of extra tools, but I hope this helps you understand the Pen Tool
a little more.
If you want to get these curves really nice, it's...best case scenario is to use the north,
south, east and west to put your points on.
But that just isn't always going to be the case.
Sometimes you just can't do that and have it end up looking right.
So that is my short tutorial for today.
But I also want to talk about the Curvature Tool, which I don't actually have on this
version of Illustrator.
I have CS6, and that is on Adobe CC.
That tool will show you where your next point is going to be.
So you can move your mouse around.
It'll show you what your curve is going to look like, if you put your point where the
mouse is.
So that's really the main difference.
It's a little easier for people to use the Curvature Tool than the Pen Tool if you're
not used to it.
But personally, I find it harder actually, because I'm so used to the Pen Tool.
So I wanted to mention the Curvature Tool, but I'm sorry, I don't have it on my version
of Illustrator.
But hopefully this was helpful for you today.
Let me know if you have any comments or questions.
You can leave those in the comment section below.
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Thanks, guys!!!