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About this lesson
An introduction to the Pen Tool and how to use it. Will discuss Anchor Points / Handles and how to add or remove points from shapes.
Exercise files
Download this lesson’s related exercise files.
Getting Familiar with the Pen Tool - Instructions.docx59 KB Getting Familiar with the Pen Tool - Exercise.ai
1.1 MB Getting Familiar with the Pen Tool - Exercise Solution.ai
1.5 MB
Quick reference
Getting Familiar with the Pen Tool
An introduction to the Pen Tool and how to use it. Will discuss Anchor Points / Handles and how to add or remove points from shapes.
When to use
The Pen Tool can be used to draw shapes from scratch, but can also be used to trace images such as drawings and photos.
Instructions
- Begin by opening the 'Getting Familiar with the Pen Tool - Exercise.ai' file.
- Select the Pen Tool (P) and click on your artboard to create a point.
- Move the Pen Tool around and notice the blue line indicating the direction of the path that you will create the next time you click.
- Try to create some geometric shapes like boxes or triangles as well as creating some random shapes.
- Remember that in order to fill a shape with color you will need to close the shape by making sure the last point you create comes back to the one that you started with.
- Use the Direct Selection Tool (A) to select points and use the handles to change the appearance of your shape.
- Next, click to make a single point, and when you make your next point click and hold the mouse.
- Before releasing the mouse, move your hand around to create a curved line instead of a straight line.
- Practice creating some organic shapes using this approach and manipulating the handles to tweak the shapes further.
Hints & tips
- Anytime you create a point you can either continue on to your next point or click on the previous point first in order to have more control over the direction of the line.
- If you make a mistake you can always use the handles to modify a path.
- You can easily add or subtract points using the other options for the Pen Tool by clicking and holding on the Pen Tool icon in the toolbar and selecting either the Add Anchor Point or Delete Anchor Point tools.
- 00:05 Now I'd like to jump into showing you guys how to use the pen tool, which is
- 00:09 probably one of the most, if not the most important tools in Adobe Illustrator.
- 00:13 Now the reason I say that is because it's used for so many different things but
- 00:17 it something that you guys should become familiar with and
- 00:20 you can become familiar with after a little bit of practice.
- 00:24 So start things off, just go ahead and press P on the keyboard or
- 00:27 come over here to your toolbar and grab the pen tool.
- 00:30 Now the first thing we're going to do is click, and
- 00:32 as soon as you click, that's just going to create a point.
- 00:35 And you can see as soon as I move my cursor around,
- 00:38 that I have this blue line here and that's just indicating a path.
- 00:42 So if I were to click again over here, I would now have a line.
- 00:48 So again, click to make a point then come over here and click again.
- 00:54 And if I were to just continue to move my mouse around,
- 00:57 you would see that I would still have this blue line kind of
- 01:00 following me wherever I bring the pen tool.
- 01:03 And that is going to be the case until I click to
- 01:07 come back to the original point where I started,
- 01:10 at which point you'll be able to see that there's a small black circle, or
- 01:13 a black outline, indicating that once I click here I will have closed my path.
- 01:19 Okay, but if I wanted to let's say, create a line here, and then that's it.
- 01:27 Well how would I get rid of this line to make sure that I don't have to close
- 01:30 the path because, you know, I could come back here and just click to do that.
- 01:35 But at any point if you want to deselect this path so
- 01:40 that you no longer see this blue line, you can do that by pressing either Cmd or
- 01:44 Ctrl plus Shift and A on the keyboard.
- 01:47 Or you could come up here to the Select menu and choose Deselect.
- 01:54 Like this.
- 01:57 Okay, so that's the basic idea, but If I click again to make a point,
- 02:02 instead of coming out in a straight line, you can come in an angle like this,
- 02:06 but you can also click, and before you let go of the mouse,
- 02:10 just actually hold, click and hold, and you can drag.
- 02:14 And notice that I'm now creating a bezier curve.
- 02:18 Okay so all this is doing is allowing me to Create a curved path.
- 02:23 And you'll see these two long lines coming out from the sides.
- 02:27 Those are where my handles are going to be.
- 02:29 So if I release right now, I'll still have this blue line here.
- 02:33 So let me go ahead and deselect by pressing Cmd+Shift+A.
- 02:37 And now you'll kind of see the shape that we've started to create here.
- 02:42 So, I'm going to press A on the keyboard to get my direct selection tool,
- 02:45 which remember, is the tool that we want in order to select and
- 02:48 manipulate certain points.
- 02:50 And if I click on this last point here,
- 02:52 you'll see this line coming out and the end of the line going this way.
- 02:57 And if I click on one of these end points, which are called handles
- 03:02 I can bring the shape in, and I can still modify the curve, okay?
- 03:08 I can shorten the handle, I can lengthen it, and I can change it.
- 03:14 Alright? So if I'm not happy with the curve I made
- 03:16 originally, well I have a lot of options for what I can do, just using the handles.
- 03:22 But let's say I wanted to continue this shape.
- 03:25 I can just click outside of it, press P again to my pen tool, click
- 03:30 on the last point that I made and then I can come over here to close the shape.
- 03:35 So now I've created a shape with a nice looking curve, okay?
- 03:40 But at any point if I'm unhappy with any of these points,
- 03:43 all I have to do is press A to get my direct selection tool,
- 03:46 click on one of these points, and move it or modify it however I want.
- 03:52 But let's say I wanted to curve this similarly to how we curved our rounded
- 03:57 rectangle tool.
- 03:59 You can click on one of the circles inside when there is one,
- 04:03 to change the curve or to make it sharp.
- 04:07 Okay, so now I have kind of a curved edge instead.
- 04:11 And here are my two handles that will allow me to select a point,
- 04:17 select any of these points, and play with the curve even more.
- 04:23 You have a lot of control over this, just using curves and points.
- 04:27 But the important thing is that you just understand the basic idea of the pen tool,
- 04:31 that when I click, and I click around, I am just making a straight lines until
- 04:36 I click and I hold, and then I'm making curved lines, okay?
- 04:40 And you can deselect, you can add points, take away points and so forth.
- 04:45 So let me show you how we could go about adding a point
- 04:49 to this shape that we just created over here.
- 04:52 If I come back to my pen tool over in the Toolbar, I can actually click and
- 04:55 hold, and when I do that, I'm just gonna go ahead and pop this out so
- 04:59 that we can float it around freely like we had done earlier with our shape tool.
- 05:04 Now what I can do is I can select this pen tool here that says add anchor point or
- 05:09 the add anchor point tool.
- 05:11 Switch the pen tool with the little plus sign next to it and now I can click
- 05:15 anywhere along my path and that's going to allow me to add another point.
- 05:19 So now I can select this point and I can move it in,
- 05:24 I can round it, and I can manipulate that part of the path.
- 05:30 Okay and again I'll have handles here usually attached to my anchor points and
- 05:34 that will allow me to add more detail or
- 05:37 add more of a curve to anywhere along this path.
- 05:42 Now if I wanted to delete one of these points,
- 05:44 I would grab the pen tool with the small minus sign next to it, and
- 05:48 then I can just click on one of these points to remove it.
- 05:51 All right lets see what happens if I remove this point.
- 05:54 Please use the delete anchor point tool on an anchor point of a pass.
- 05:59 Okay, so I have to remove it from one of those main anchor points.
- 06:06 And then of course we have our anchor point tool.
- 06:11 Now what this tool allows you to do is to, again,
- 06:13 kind of manipulate these anchor points.
- 06:16 So with this tool, I can grab any of these points that we've made on our path,
- 06:22 and I can change them drastically, just using the handles.
- 06:25 So you can see how much we've changed our shape, just by adding a point,
- 06:30 using the anchor point tool to manipulate it.
- 06:34 So, the pen tool is really great, because you can add as few or
- 06:37 as many points as you like.
- 06:39 You can create virtually any shape and the pen tool is also used very commonly to
- 06:44 trace, an illustration, to trace a photo, to basically draw and
- 06:49 illustrate and create anything that you want.
- 06:52 So as I do this here, I've just created this kind of random shape,
- 06:56 a combination of hard angles and curved angles.
- 07:00 And lets just go ahead and fill it with black, so I'm going to press Shift + X,
- 07:04 X to get my stroke, and then I'm going to choose none for the stroke, okay?
- 07:09 And from here, just like with our other shapes I can rotate it,
- 07:14 and I can also do some other things by coming up to Object, Transform.
- 07:18 Let's say we wanted to reflect this vertically.
- 07:21 I can do that too.
- 07:24 Okay, but now I can add points.
- 07:27 I can add a point somewhere along the path here, grab my direct selection tool and
- 07:31 just manipulate that one point.
- 07:34 Or, if I wanted to remove some points, I could either select a point and
- 07:37 just delete it, or I could use my delete anchor point tool.
- 07:44 So these are the basics of how to use the pen tool in Adobe Illustrator.
- 07:48 And there's a lot that you can do with it and a lot more that I will be
- 07:51 showing you guys, but I just wanted to cover some of the basics for that tool.
- 07:55 But I would definitely recommend, just practicing a drawing,
- 07:59 creating curves, closing shapes, and experiment with
- 08:03 the handles to see what kind of cool things you guys can draw on your own.
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