Drawing with the Pencil Tool

Quick reference

• 00:05 So at this point I'd like to introduce you guys to another one of our art tools
• 00:08 that's commonly used in Adobe Illustrator and that is the pencil tool.
• 00:12 So we've taken a look at the pen tool as well as the brush so far and
• 00:15 how to use presets as well as custom brushes.
• 00:18 But now we're going to check out this other tool over here in the toolbar,
• 00:22 which you can get just by pressing N on the keyboard.
• 00:26 So I'm going to select the Pencil Tool.
• 00:28 And the first thing to note is that whether you're using a mouse or
• 00:31 a stylus you can just come in here and kinda scribble some shapes.
• 00:34 And it's a really kinda free form natural feeling tool that you can
• 00:38 use to just scribbles some things out.
• 00:42 But one option that I always like to use is this.
• 00:45 If you double click on the tool, notice the fidelity option up here.
• 00:49 You have basically a spectrum that goes from accurate to smooth.
• 00:54 Now, for this, I would like to crank this up all the way to the top for smooth.
• 00:58 And I'm also gonna check off this one other option here that says option
• 01:02 key toggles to smooth tool.
• 01:03 And I'll show you guys what that does in a sec.
• 01:06 Go ahead and hit OK.
• 01:08 Now, if I take my pencil tool again, and I try and
• 01:10 draw some shapes here, even if it's not perfect, by having that option
• 01:16 cranked up to smooth it's actually going to smooth out a lot of that stuff for me.
• 01:21 So it's nice because it kind of corrects some of your shapes as you draw them.
• 01:25 Now if you do mess up a certain part you can actually just go over it and
• 01:29 kind of redraw it like this.
• 01:31 Right, so if you wanted to redo this end here, you could just come back in and
• 01:35 draw on top of it.
• 01:37 So that's a pretty nice feature as well.
• 01:38 It allows you to kind of go over any mistakes that may have made and
• 01:43 redraw them.
• 01:44 So the other option that I had checked off there is to toggle the smooth key by
• 01:48 holding down option.
• 01:48 And that's kind of a similar thing where it's basically going to smooth out
• 01:53 any of these extra points that I have in here, right?
• 01:56 So if I hold down the Option key and I draw over some of these paths,
• 02:01 you'll see that it's kinda smoothing it out a little bit, right?
• 02:05 And it's not perfect, but it does a pretty good job.
• 02:08 So again if I press N to get my pencil and then hold down the Option key,
• 02:13 I can go over this to smooth it out, or I can redraw over any shapes with
• 02:17 the regular pencil tool if I want to redo a piece of this.
• 02:25 So it's kind of a cool way to just get in there and start drawing some shapes.
• 02:28 It's a little bit different from the brush.
• 02:30 Because, you do have those options, and the brush doesn't have the ability to kind
• 02:34 of smooth things out, like the pencil tool does, all right.
• 02:40 But if I turn that off, and we head all the way down here to accurate, and
• 02:45 now smooth it out, you can kind of see what happens if I try,
• 02:49 and draw the same shapes.
• 02:50 Looks a little bit wonky in here, a little bit weird with some of these points and
• 02:55 edges and it just doesn't produce a result that looks quite as nice as when you have
• 02:59 it cranked all the way up to smooth.
• 03:02 And I find that this tool tends to work better if you are using a stylus or if you
• 03:06 have a tablet, but it can be great for doing things like flourishes and swirls
• 03:10 and creating decorative elements for any kind of illustration or typographic piece.
• 03:15 So I just wanted to introduce you guys to that as, it is another important tool in
• 03:20 Adobe Illustrator, and I think one that is a little bit underutilized.
• 03:23 I mean you can use any of these, and there's several ways to achieve the same
• 03:27 result, if you're working on a piece in Illustrator.
• 03:30 But the pencil tool, I think, is something that not a lot of people use or
• 03:34 feel as comfortable with, but I think it's just kind of a matter of, experimenting,
• 03:39 playing around and finding the tools that work fast for you and
• 03:43 for the type of piece that you would like to create.

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