From the course: Illustrator 2021 Essential Training

The Pen tool - Illustrator Tutorial

From the course: Illustrator 2021 Essential Training

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The Pen tool

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- [Instructor] In the document I have here I have a two inch grid with four divisions. If you're using the same folder I'm using then it should open up like this. But if not hop 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're doing next, but essentially we are learning a bit about Illustrator's pencil. So to work with the pencil, 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 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 access or anything like that, just for 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're 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 as 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 that 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 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've got to the bottom there, hold down 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 you 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 points, 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 you're coming 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 very accurately, but it is a little bit fiddly. If you're really struggling with it, then you'll probably really like the next tool. And in fact, even if you're not you probably will too, because I do, we're going to look at the curvature pencil in the next movie.

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