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It's now time to look at one of my favorite tools
the pen tool, this tool
is so powerful
there's so much you can do with this tool I have posted examples
of good vector artists that use the Pen Tool
so please feel free to find some and add some to the discussions
so let's look at this tool I'm going to
undock the panel
for the pen tool. This tool
allows us to draw continuous curves
this tool was created by
a man named Frederick Bezier so
we draw our what are called
Bezier curves the pen tool
allows us to plot down what are called
anchor points these are exactly that
these are points on the campus
that we could make shapes with but
with the pen tool we have the ability
to make a lot of different lines so let's go through them all
and please everyone practice each one of these lines
so we can do a straight line this
line we can had a stroke and make it
a thicker line under the stroke panel
we can also add different ways of ending
my strokes, so rounded and
so on and so forth so there's more options under the stroke
submenu anything anytime you see something
that is orange that means it's like uh
it's selectable it is highlighted for a reason so
that's one line I can do which is
a straight-line I can also do a curved line so
I initially drop an anchor point you can see the little blue dot
and then further on down the line I'm gonna click again
but hold my mouse button down this time
and what this does is puts down
anchor point with handles so
this line going across my anchor point is called the handle
this line I'm going to remove the fill
it kinda guesses and then
Im gonna bring down the stroke a little bit so I can do a curved line
another type of line I can do
is I would call it I guess like a
S so I click once
I'm going to draw a curve
line just like above and then
I'm going to click and then draw
put down another anchor have my Bezier
and create handles
so this line is like a
S with my
black arrow tool I can move it around with my white
arrow tool I have the ability
to further move my anchors
so this is a really important to grasp and to play around with and get familiar
with
the last type of line that I can do
is I'm gonna click once
drop an anchor
click again and
I'm going to create handles
I'm gonna hold SHIFT on the anchor point
and you can see something happen it gets rid
of one of the handles so
now I'm going to click and draw another curve
and you're gonna see this time it didn't follow
it kinda reset
and this is because our handles
tell us a lot about what is happening to this
anchor point so I'm gonna zoom in
so this handle
this handle can control
the amount a bend between my two points
as well as
I can them independent
like this case and not affect
the other line
per-say so you see how in this example
this handle affects the top handle
basically this handle effects this line
the handle on the left side affects the left curve of the
line so in this case
this affects that one
this affects this one if I wanted to affect that one
I would take my convert anchor point
and convert my anchor point
into first two
handles that are working together just like
s-curve but now
I can also altar one with
out it altering the other
without altering the other
using the convert
anchor point tool. This tool is a little tricky sometimes
please play around with the
and make sure that your able to create
all four of these lines.