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Hello people! Welcome to this tutorial! I will show you here how to draw professionally
with the Pen Tool.
This tool can be found in many and many Adobe softwares, such as
Photoshop CC, Illustrator CC, InDesign CC and Flash CC. I will use here
Illustrator CC, but mind that all explained here values in any other software that
has the Pen Tool, for both Creative Cloud and Creative Suite versions.
The Pen Tool is a powerful way to draw professionally freehand in Illustrator
and InDesign. This is not like the Pencil Tool, where the trace of the mouse is
the trace of the line. The Pen Tool is guided, and makes you draw easily
and with the highest precision any kind of polygonal or curved shape.
In Photoshop CC it is a vector path used to select areas with a personalized shape.
First of all, it's quite useful to enable guides. These will help you even more at
drawing with the right size. Go to View and then check Smart Guides, if you see
the option unchecked. If enabled, these guides will show up indicating critical
points and directions.
Enable now the Pen Tool. We can see this tool through three different phases.
The first phase is used to create a general polygon with straight lines. Each click
on your workspace sets a fixed point, that will be connected with its previous one
automatically through a straight line. To stop drawing, just hold CTRL down,
and click elsewhere. To come back drawing, hold CTRL down, and click on the path
drawn. In this case you will have a small black square beside your pointer. Then
you can go on editing. Click on the first or the last anchor fixed, to go on
adding new points to the path. If you get closer to an intermediate anchor, a
minus will appear besides your pointer, which means that you are going to delete
such anchor. The path will be adapted in order to have straight lines between
the anchors, respecting their order of creation. Then, you can close the trace
connecting your latest anchor with the first anchor created. In this case you will see
a small circle appearing.
If you stop here, you will obtain a polygon. You can edit the position of such
anchors holding CTRL down and dragging such points anytime.
So we can go with the second phase, to add curved lines.
If you get closer to the path, a plus will appear. This means adding new anchor
points. These don't set any straight line, but are important to add curved lines
controlled better. Now hold ALT down, and get close to an anchor. If you click on
it and drag, you will transform into curved lines the two segments that are
connetted through such anchor. Each curved line will start from such anchor and
will stop at the closest anchors connected. All the rest will remain straight, and the
anchors do stay fixed. Notice the V shape of the pointer during this phase.
Then there is the third phase. If you are not satisfied with the two curved lines drawn,
you can adjust one of them through the two handles, the two blue circled points that
will appear straight after the creation of the curved lines. Always hold ALT down,
and click on one of these to adjust one of the curved lines drawn. You can use
just one handle per time. If you want to come back to the straight lines, just
hold ALT down, and click directly on the anchor edited. Keep this in mind, if you
want to reset the curved lines in the future.
The curved lines are paths just like the straight ones. So you can click on them
to add new anchors, and new curved lines holding ALT down after. This is really all
you need to draw any shape with the Adobe softwares.
The Pen Tool can be used to draw paths not closed. In this case, just the
intermediate anchors can generate curved lines. When finishing, just hold CTRL
down, and click elsewhere.
The best way to learn this tool, is to use it to reproduce shapes already existing.
Let's suppose to draw this heart using the Pen Tool. Phase one: create the anchors.
These will stay fixed during the creation of the curves, so you must place them
on points where the heart's edge is. The best is to use just as many anchors
as you need, but not too many of them. Then second and third phase: at each
anchor set the curved lines, adjusting one of them with one handle per time. If you
have to follow a curve, use phase two to follow a part of the curve, then phase three
to totally follow such curve.
If you want to try this, download the project in the video description.
Download the file related to the software you are interested.
In Illustrator and InDesign the object just drawn is treated exactly like a normal path.
It can have filling and stroke as well, that you can add and change with the two
rectangles on the left. Mind that, if the path is not closed, the filling is added
considering it closed straight.
This is all! If you want to go pro, check our channel to start creating your first 3D
logo! Thanks for watching.