Locked lesson.

Upgrade

About this lesson

How to use the Pen Tool to create basic paths or trace an image.

Quick reference

Following the Path

How to use the Pen Tool to create basic paths or trace an image.

When to use

Creating a path with the Pen Tool is very useful for tasks such as tracing a drawing or a photograph as well as creating shapes from scratch.

Instructions

  • Download the image of the peppers for free from Pexels (https://static.pexels.com/photos/57426/paprika-vegetables-colorful-food-57426.jpeg)
  • Open the Following the Path - Exercise.ai file and then open the image of the peppers.
  • Press Command/Ctrl + X to cut the image, and then in your Illustrator file press Command/Ctrl + V to paste it.
  • Hold down the Shift Key and drag inwards from any of the four corners to scale the image down proportionaly so that it fits within the artboard.
  • If your image still isn't an exact fit, select the artboard and then go to the Object Menu and choose Artboards > Fit to Artwork Bounds.
  • Once your image is fitting nicely in the artboard you can open your Layers Panel and rename the layer to 'Peppers'.
  • Double click to the right of the layer name and from the dialog box that appears, choose the option that says 'Dim Images to 50%' and press OK to apply the changes.
  • Click on the small lock icon next to the eyeball of the pepper layer to make sure that it's locked.
  • Create a new layer above this layer and name it 'Contour' before switching over to the Pen Tool (P).
  • Click to create your first point with the pen and make sure that you have a black stroke with no fill selected for your colors.
  • Click and hold to create the next point and try to follow the curve of the peppers in the image.
  • Repeat this until you have traced all the way around the first pepper and close the shape.
  • Do this again for the remaining two peppers.

Hints

  • If you are having trouble following a shape while tracing, make sure that Snap To Grid and Snap To Pixels are both unchecked under the View Menu.
  • The Pen Tool is one of the most useful and powerful tools in Adobe Illustrator. You can create very detailed illustrations or logos with a seemingly unlimited number of layers that will be placed on top of one another.
  • If you are feeling adventurous go ahead and try tracing over some of the more detailed shapes and areas inside of the peppers on a new layer above the 'Contour' layer containing your outlines.
Login to download
  • 00:04 So now that we've used the Pen tool a little bit and
  • 00:07 have become a little more familiar with paths,
  • 00:09 I'd like to show you guys one of the more creative and fun ways to use the pen tool.
  • 00:13 And we're gonna do that by creating paths from a photograph.
  • 00:16 So over here, I've got this free Stock photo that I downloaded from pixels.com.
  • 00:21 And I'm just going to press Cmd + X to cut it, and
  • 00:24 then Cmd + W, or I can click this X to close this tab.
  • 00:29 Now over here in our main GoSkills_Illustrator_Doc, I'm gonna open
  • 00:33 up the Layers panel, and I'm just going to paste this image in on to our first layer.
  • 00:38 And to do that, I can either press Cmd + V, or come up to Edit > Paste.
  • 00:43 All right, now you'll see that the image is quite large and
  • 00:46 we may wanna shrink it down a little bit so that it fits nicely in our Artboard.
  • 00:50 So to do that, I could just hold down the Shift key and scale it down like this, or
  • 00:55 I could press S, and that will grab my Scale Tool.
  • 00:59 Now if I double-click on the Scale Tool, this dialog box will pop up and
  • 01:03 I can type in a percentage that I actually want to reduce this by.
  • 01:06 As long as I have the Preview option checked off down here I'll be able to see
  • 01:11 what that looks like.
  • 01:12 So, let's go with about 75% and hit OK,
  • 01:15 then I'm going to press V to get my Selection Tool.
  • 01:19 And now from here I can hold down the Shift key and
  • 01:22 just drag in from the bottom right corner until it fits nicely into our Artboard.
  • 01:28 It's not a perfect fit just yet, it's almost there, but in order to get
  • 01:32 this to fit nicely, there's another thing that we could do here.
  • 01:35 And this is kind of a nice little workaround.
  • 01:39 If you grab your Artboard tool here, you'll see that we have the ability to
  • 01:43 kinda drag this around wherever we want, but in order to actually make it fit
  • 01:47 perfectly, I'm gonna show you guys a cool little tip.
  • 01:50 You can come up here to the Object menu, come down to ArtBoards and
  • 01:54 then choose Fit to Artwork Bounds.
  • 01:58 Now our artwork will be a perfect fit in this Artboard.
  • 02:02 So I'm going to double click on this layer and just call it pepper.
  • 02:06 And then if I double click on this layer, I will now have a layer option that allows
  • 02:10 me to do things like lock, but also to preview and
  • 02:16 show this layer, but one of the things that I'm interested in is Dim Images.
  • 02:20 Now, by checking this off and
  • 02:21 dimming the image to about 50%, it's just going to reduce the opacity.
  • 02:26 So that way, if I create a new layer on top, it'll be easier for me to see.
  • 02:32 So now on my layers palette I can go ahead and add a new layer.
  • 02:35 And then I'm just going to grab my pen tool and zoom in a bit here.
  • 02:39 But before I do that, let's go back to our pepper layer and
  • 02:42 just lock the layer by clicking this empty box right here next to the eyeball.
  • 02:46 And you can see the pop-up that says Toggles Lock, editable when blank, okay?
  • 02:51 So now on layer two, I'm going to press D on the keyboard to get my default colors,
  • 02:56 and make sure that I have none for a fill.
  • 02:58 So that all I have is a black stroke.
  • 03:01 Now this is where we begin creating our paths.
  • 03:03 All I'm going to do is click to follow the shape.
  • 03:06 Now you'll notice at first some of our points seem to be jumping
  • 03:10 where we don't exactly want them.
  • 03:12 And I think what's happening there is our guides might be set to snap.
  • 03:17 Right, if I come down here, you'll see that I have Snap to Pixel and
  • 03:20 Snap to Grid both checked off, so I'm going to uncheck those, okay?
  • 03:24 And this way, if I come back and click on my last point, this last anchor point, now
  • 03:30 when I click, I'll have much more freedom and control over my curves and my paths.
  • 03:37 Okay, so all I'm doing is just using the image below as a guide, so
  • 03:40 that I can trace it.
  • 03:42 And this is where Illustrator gets to be more fun,
  • 03:44 because once you guys kinda practice tracing some of these basic shapes
  • 03:48 with the Pen Tool, you'll be able to do more complex stuff as you go.
  • 03:54 Okay, and this is one of the ways that you
  • 03:57 can build up a more detailed vector illustration.
  • 04:01 It's one of the things that I love doing most in Illustrator.
  • 04:05 Now the idea being here that once you trace the outer bounds of a shape, you
  • 04:09 could then make your way to the inside of the shape, and create a bunch of shapes.
  • 04:13 That way you'll have more control over the colors and everything like that.
  • 04:18 But for this, I just wanted you guys to be able to take an image or a drawing,
  • 04:22 or something, so that you can practice tracing over a photo.
  • 04:26 And it'll get you really good with the Pen Tool.
  • 04:29 By doing this and practicing, using the handle and
  • 04:34 the anchor points, it'll just help you guys get more comfortable with this tool.
  • 04:38 Because, again, as I said earlier in one of our previous videos,
  • 04:42 it's a very important tool, especially if you wanna be able
  • 04:46 to use Illustrator in a meaningful and purposeful way.
  • 04:53 The fewer points you can have, the better, but don't worry, there's no real
  • 04:58 limit to the number of points that you can have in an image or anything like that.
  • 05:03 But the idea here is just that we're tracing, right?
  • 05:06 We're just tracing over some photos, we're just tracing to capture this shape.
  • 05:11 So that way, as soon as I finish tracing over this,
  • 05:14 I can show you guys the contour, or the outline, from these shapes.
  • 05:21 I do this a lot for work and day-to-day stuff, or if I wanted to
  • 05:25 create an illustration on my own, so I feel pretty comfortable with the Pen Tool,
  • 05:29 but it did take me a little while to get it down.
  • 05:31 So just try and
  • 05:32 be patient with yourselves and give it some time to get comfortable with it.
  • 05:38 It will get easier and you will get better at it, right?
  • 05:42 And that's not to say that I don't still make mistakes sometimes, but
  • 05:46 I just feel a lot more comfortable with it now than I did a few years ago.
  • 05:50 All right, so now if I just turn off that layer,
  • 05:52 you can see that we now have a nice contour outline of our peppers.
  • 05:56 So I encourage you guys to practice this, give it a try, and
  • 06:01 see if you can even go ahead and trace some of these inner shapes as well, or
  • 06:05 the stems on the peppers, if you wanted to take it further.
  • 06:08 The idea here is just to get you guys more comfortable using the Pen Tool to create
  • 06:12 and manipulate paths.

Lesson notes are only available for subscribers.

Gift this course