Transcript:
In today’s Adobe Illustrator Tutorial, you will learn how to use pen tool. You will see tips that will make using of pen tool easy and fast for you. After this tutorial, you will understand how to work with direct selection tool to edit anchor points and how to create any kinds of shapes with pen tool. You’re watching TNG tutorials. Let’s move on and create a new document select Prince a for horizontal orientation in advanced options select RGB and click on create. You can download this reference and sketchpad link in the video description. You can also download color swatches. I recommend you to do that. Go to swatches, Click here on Swatch libraries, menu, select other library and find path to downloaded swatches. Then you will see this window. Just click on this folder and you will have it here to have all these color icons as large as I do. Just click on this little menu and select medium or large thumbnail view. Let’s close this window and let’s select all the scholars and do it them. We can delete these two, so we have them and we have only needed colors, so let’s begin create new layer sketch layer should be on top. Let’s rename this layer to number one now. Select sketch layer, just click here properties and decrease the opacity to something like this. I will decrease it to 45% Now let’s lock this layer. Select layer number one select fill color icon. Click here on none now. Select stroke swatches and pick this color before pencil now. What options do you have to build such shape? Of course you can drag handles like this build curved line like so then continue, but you have a better option for this case. Let’s delete this line. You can simply create line like this. Just click on each curve that you see like, so lets. Connect this one’s now. Withhold it out. You can drag these handles like, so if you will drag them around like this, that’s not a big deal. Just change direction, like so and continue. Let’s create line like this, then the same here after you applied this curve nice, you can pick a for direct selection tool. Pick any point, you want, move it like so and change handles direction for this object. We are building curved lines, But if you would like to make sharp corner here, for example, just called out and move this handle like so also, when you have corners like this, you always have such dots. You can drag it like this and get this curve. I will press Ctrl Z to undo P for point to hold out and just continue to make grooved lines like. So, if they are not ideal, you will be able to fix them with direct selection tool A little bit later as you can see. I’m not wasting too much time for setting up these points. What I want to do right now is to make curved lags. That’s all now a for direct selection tool and play with handles just to match reference. When you see that you obviously have unnecessary points. You should delete them because when you’re deleting them. You have better control on each line you create. P for pen tool and simply click on this point, then a for direct selection tool drag handle like so. Don’t be afraid to move handles. Even like this, you can change. Kendall’s proportions and move other points like so so basically, what you need is more practicing very soon. You will see that you really don’t need many points to build any shape. You want if you want to match reference 100% and you’re not happy with this smooth line. Here’s how you can fix it. Just try to fix it with as less points as you have. And then if you see that, you really need to add points select line. P for pen tool and simply click on line. Maybe you would like to change shape like this. Then you will need some additional point. I’ll press ctrl Z. And it will simply fix these points. I’m just using direct selection tool here. Direct selection tool is all that you need to work with handles and anchor points. Let’s continue before pen tool. Let’s just start to draw this soft line. Just drag this point a little bit like so, then let’s create another point here, drag it like this, and then basically, we will need only one point here, and in such cases, you might think that you will drag this point and you will have something like this, but basically, this happens only when you are using pen tool in correct, so what you want to do in this case, hold space for hand, too. Just move like this and release it. Then you don’t need to drag the scandals like so. Just drag them a little bit like this, then. Hold out and drag this handle as you want then. If you are not happy with positioning of this point pay for direct selection tool, pick this point and move it anywhere. You want to then play with handles now to build these lines. Let’s pick pen tool and just simply create lines like this. Click here and then here then to stop drawing line press control and click somewhere with this tip, you will be able to quickly create different lines without any other manipulation like this. You might want to pick B for selection tool, then deselect this line, then P for pen tool and continue as you can see. You can do it much faster. Just create lines, then ctrl. Click somewhere and continue. Now, let’s create some background create new layer, rename it to background swatches with stroke selected. Click here on line. Switch the fill, pick this color and for rectangle tool. Draw a rectangle like this and like this layer. I will make sketch layer invisible for now. Select our number one layer. Let’s select all these objects, deselect this one swatches select stroke here and apply this color. Now what you might want to change properties stroke and you can change it to round cap to make this line. Look more interesting. Just select it and press. Shift + W for width tool is over here now. Just move to this point and drag it like so as you can see, you can play with width of this line in any point that you will choose, We’re playing with this point for now. I will leave this width. I think then you can click on any part. You want and change width like this. I will press ctrl-z. Let’s move to this point. Shift + W for width rule. And let’s make line here even thinner like this now. We have some really interesting look. And what else I wanted to show you about with tool is that you can select line. Let’s change it like this and lets. Change it here now! You have very many lines and you want to apply this effect to all of them. You don’t need to pick with – and apply it to each one of these lines. All you need to do is to open this layer group, and as you can see, we’ve applied with tool to this layer also. And what’s the difference between these two layers and all others is that this dot is filled. You can see that all other dots are empty, so if we need to copy effect from this layer, for example, all we need to do is to hold out and drag this point to other layer like so as you can see. This effect applied here. Let me show you better now. Let’s hold out and drag from this point to this now. We changed here, so lets. Just change width for all lines, and as you can see, we applied very interesting effect in just few clicks. What we want to do now is to select this layer and click here to swap view on stroke now. I will make the ground layer invisible. This object also and I will make scheduler visible. Let’s create a new layer and rename it to number two. Let’s swap feeling stroke before pencil, and now let’s create this object. My personal advice for any object that you will create is just don’t start to create objects like this by clicking here, and then you start to draw a line. I will delete this line. Try always to drag point like a vase so handles would already have some direction and then create line. You can sometimes start to create lines with simple clicking, but you should definitely work more gain experience and see in which cases you can do that or in which cases you can do that, so my personal advice is to start to draw lines like this now. Let’s just click here, drag the scandals just a bit, and if you want to make sure that the scandals are straight, just hold shift and drag them like so now they are straight then. Hold out and move! This handle like this as we want. Sharp corner here and obviously pencil is creating soft line. We should simply hold out and drag handle like this from this point. Then obviously it’s not handy for us to create line with this zoomin. So we are zooming out before pencil. We want to continue this line, but we can do that, so let’s do at this point. You will need to hold out drag handle from this point again, and then you will be able to continue now when you’re closing paths. If you want to make sharp corner here, you don’t want to connect it like, so if you connected points like so, and you want sharp corner, you need to hold out and click on this point. After this, you won’t have candles here to manipulate. So what you would like to do is to hold out, simply drag these handles from this point, then a for direct selection tool. I will show you a correct way to close path. If you want to have sharp corner, let’s press ctrl-z. Just hold out and connect these points like so then, if a direct selection tool and manipulate handles if you have some sharp corner here, for example, but you want to make it smooth. You don’t need to try to match these candles to make soft line. All you need to do is to pick this point properties and select convert selected anchor points to smooth. And that’s it now you can manipulate these candles and we have smooth line now to cut these parts from this object. All you need to do is to pick pen tool create such lines, ctrl. Click somewhere, then leave a selection tool, select these objects shift +. M for shape builder, hold out and just click here to delete unnecessary part. Now with holded out, you can also delete these lines. What you should know about this method Is that when your deselecting this object, you should also delete this part because shipbuilder created object here so just deleted. Let’s do the same here. Let’s select all objects, shift plus alpha shape builder. You can also drag shape builder like so delete everything that is unnecessary. Deselect this object, select these two objects and delete them. Now, let’s create lines here. You can create it like this. Let’s press ctrl. Click summer now with this line deselected and with active pen tool you can hold out and just drag this line like this as you can see, you can drag it any way you want to, and you can drag it like this, then to make smooth line here, hold out and just drag the scandals, then a for direct selection tool. If you want at this point to mesh this line, just pick this point with direct selection tool and move it here now with pen tool. Let’s simply create straight lines here. Press ctrl to deselect line. Create another one as you can see Pen tool is really fast in using. Now with this tip, it will be even faster for you. Without selecting anything, you just need to hold out and change crudeness of each of these lines like this. Now, let’s make the ground visible sketch layer invisible. Let’s select all layers, deselect this one swatches. Let’s select stroke and let’s pick this color. Now let’s select all this line’s properties stroke. Let’s select round, join and round cap as you can see. We have all rounded. Now, let’s pick with two and play with this line. Let’s make it thinner here, and now you already know that you are changing with for this line Only like so layers, open layers group. You see, this field dot here just called out and duplicate this effect to all other lines all right now! Let’s make these layers invisible. The ground layer invisible also and let’s make sketch layer visible again, create new layer number three swatches, lets. Pick this color. And now as you already know, you have three options to build this line first option. You can create lines like this. Hold out and just move handles like so then just pick a for direct selection tool and make everything work for you. Then second way, let’s delete this line second way. Is you creating the same lines? You hold out and you’re picking lines. But not points like so. I think in this case, this method just doesn’t work very well because we will need to move handles and then as usual play with direct selection tool and with handles. But as you can see, we almost get what we wanted, so you just need more experience with using these methods and you will see where and when to use each one of them better. Let’s delete this one and I will show a third way. Third way is old-school method. You are simply creating lines like this water should tell about this method is that you definitely should practice it very often because this is how you will, master pencil. Now, let me show you case when you want to create object here and you need to start to draw from this line, but if you will start to draw from this line, you will connect new line to this point, and you don’t want this, so just start to create new object from somewhere here or from somewhere here just to avoid clicking on this point later, you will be able to move it with direct selection tool now to make sharp corner hold out and just connect this point now a for direct selection tool. Pick this point and move it right here now. These points are in the same place, but they are not connected. Now play with proportions of this shape. For this case, you definitely don’t need more points than two if you have. Andrew, here and you just can’t make sharp corner from it. You can hold out. Move, handles like sole or select this point and click here convert selected anchor points to corner. First method was much better because with this method you should pick p4 pen to hold out. Then drag handles like so a for direct selection tool. Hold out and do the same as in first method. So let’s continue with this one’s. Just start to build line from here. Then click here. You can drag the scandals just a bit. This way is even better. Then hold out the drag handles as you want. Don’t forget to hold space to navigate then your release in space and you’re ready to work again. They hold out, connect these points. Don’t drag the scandal too much a for direct selection tool and move it as you need to. Now here. You want to have smooth line, but you have sharp corner here. So what you want is to click here to convert this point to smooth, who is just create all these objects as previous one. You might want to copy all these objects, but you definitely should create them all because first of all they will look like live, draw something like handmade, and when you will copy these objects, they will just lose this live effect, so in this case, each shape should be some kind of unique, it should not be too different than all others, but everyone will see that these objects are not copied who has create these two. Now let’s make background visible these two layers. Also, let’s make sketch layer invisible. Select this line swatches. Apply this color now. Select all objects, deselect this one apply this color for strokes, then select fill color icon and apply this color. All right, in conclusion. I would say that you use pen tool quickly and correctly. You only need to practice and follow tips from this video. Don’t create too many points and keep lines that you create with pen too simple. If you learned something new from this tutorial, drop a comment below, Let me know if everything was clear enough for you and what you liked about this video. If you enjoyed this tutorial, support this channel by clicking on subscribe and what’s most important by clicking on the bell icon to get notifications about newest tutorials from TMT, I would also appreciate if you click thumbs up and we’ll share this video. This was TNT tutorials. See you next videos.