Locked lesson.
About this lesson
How to use the Pen Tool to create basic paths or trace an image.
Exercise files
Download this lesson’s related exercise files.
Following the Path - Instructions.docx59.1 KB Following the Path - Exercise.ai
1.1 MB Following the Path - Exercise Solution.ai
6.6 MB
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.
- 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.
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