Adjusting Strokes

Quick reference

• 00:04 So back here in our illustration or our tracing of these peppers,
• 00:08 now that we have our contour lines, there's a few things that we can do.
• 00:12 So the first thing I'm gonna do is just use my regular selection tool
• 00:15 to select one of these peppers.
• 00:18 And now I'm gonna come over here all the way to the right side over to my
• 00:21 stroke panel and you'll see that I have the ability to change the weight, the cap,
• 00:26 the corner and so forth.
• 00:29 So the first thing I'm gonna do is click on the weight and
• 00:31 maybe make it somewhere around eight and
• 00:33 you'll see right away that that just makes my lines nice and bold.
• 00:37 If I select my second pepper, I can change it to four and my third one,
• 00:42 maybe let's make it two, so you can kinda see the range and what that looks like.
• 00:47 Now of course, you can go really heavy, you know,
• 00:49 until the point where you can't even really tell what it is anymore.
• 00:53 But this is just to demonstrate for
• 00:54 you guys kind of how to control these lines a little bit more.
• 00:59 Now in addition to that, there's some other cool things that I can do here.
• 01:02 I could make this a dash line if I wanted to and
• 01:06 you have control over things like the dash and then the gap in between.
• 01:10 So the dash is going to determine more how long that line is, whereas,
• 01:14 the gap is how much space is in between each of these lines as I work.
• 01:19 So by changing that up a little bit, you guys will see that there's a little bit
• 01:23 more of a variety now in that line, okay?
• 01:27 And there's some other things that I can do here.
• 01:29 We can change the profile or the type of line.
• 01:33 And these are a bunch of the preset lines that are available in Illustrator.
• 01:38 So, you can kinda see how they taper off a little bit and
• 01:41 some of the lines become a little bit thinner towards the edges.
• 01:47 Now I wanted to also show you guys what the CAPS do but
• 01:51 it's a little bit hard to tell because we're working with a closed shape.
• 01:54 But, if I were to just draw a regular line above these shapes and
• 02:00 I zoom in, you can see that the edges of them are flat, right.
• 02:05 So, if I change the cap to a rounded cap instead, you can now tell
• 02:10 that it comes to more of a rounded kinda smooth cap at the end, there we go,
• 02:15 you can see it it a little bit better when I increase the weight.
• 02:18 Okay and if I were to now add a corner to this,
• 02:22 click on my last point and do something like that,
• 02:26 you can see that although I have a rounded cap this corner is now pretty sharp.
• 02:30 So if I select that and choose the corner to be rounded,
• 02:33 a round joint, you'll see that it kinda rounds that off.
• 02:38 So I also have the option to do that here and
• 02:40 to kinda see how it changes our shape a little bit.
• 02:42 All right and just experimenting with some of these options.
• 02:47 All right, so right there you can tell that some of the points now are rounded
• 02:51 off as opposed to our second pepper here where it comes to more of a point.
• 02:55 So these are just some of the options that you have available to you
• 02:59 when in playing around with your lines and your paths, okay.
• 03:03 And if I wanted to I could select all three of these and
• 03:07 just make them all the same weight of two.
• 03:09 Now there's a very another useful tool that you can guys can use when you're
• 03:13 working with strokes, and that is the width tool.
• 03:16 Now if I select the width tool, it'll allow me to come in here and
• 03:19 I'm just gonna zoom in for a second to show you guys how this works.
• 03:22 It'll let me come in and actually modify the width of a path, all right?
• 03:27 So if I zoom out, you can kinda see now,
• 03:29 this side of the shape is much thicker than our other side.
• 03:35 All right, so if I, again, if I select my stroke or my path and
• 03:38 grab the width tool or press shift and W on the keyboard, that'll
• 03:42 allow me to select some of these points and change the width of them manually.
• 03:47 And this is a great way to add even more variety to your shapes because there's
• 03:51 a lot of times where you don't want everything to be equal line width.
• 03:55 For example, just by having a little bit of thickness here,
• 03:58 it almost looks like it could create a little bit of a shadow effect.
• 04:02 All right, so again, if I grab that, all I have to do is click on the anchor point
• 04:07 and I can drag this as far in or as far out as I want.
• 04:11 So using the width tool along with your paths,
• 04:13 it's a great way to add a lot more variety to your shapes.
• 04:16 In addition to just having things like control over the weight and
• 04:20 the roundness of the caps and the corners and the line profile.
• 04:24 All right, so I just wanted to demonstrate some of that for you guys so
• 04:27 you could check it out.
• 04:29 But continue to experiment with these things on your own.

Lesson notes are only available for subscribers.