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About this lesson
How to draw with the Pencil Tool and use the Smooth Tool to smooth out jagged lines.
Exercise files
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Drawing with the Pencil Tool - Instructions.docx58.9 KB
Quick reference
Drawing with the Pencil Tool
How to draw with the Pencil Tool and use the Smooth Tool to smooth out jagged lines.
When to use
The Pencil Tool can be very handy especially when using a graphics tablet as it allows you to create and draw freely.
Instructions
- Create a new, blank document in Illustrator.
- Press 'N' on the keyboard or grab the Pencil Tool from the toolbar to the left.
- Begin to use your mouse to scribble and create some lines with the Pencil Tool.
- If your lines are appearing jagged, double click on the Pencil Tool and crank up the Fidelity option so that it's all the way to the right and set to the 'Smooth' option.
- If you are drawing with the pencil and need to fix a section, you can simply draw over it again to correct it.
- If you click and hold on the Pencil Tool you can also select the Smooth Tool which can be used to smooth out corners and edges.
Hints
- Once you create a line or lines with the Pencil Tool, any preset or custom brushes can be applied to it.
- Experiment with the Stroke Panel once you've created some lines to see how different line weights look.
- 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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