Beast to BFF: The Pen Tool Made Easy in Adobe Illustrator

1. Introduction: Welcome to base to BFF, the mental made easing adobe illustrator. Hi, I'm Barbara Abba Tello, designer and illustrator. I've been a designer for premier greeting card company and a freelancer for years. I designed everything from greeting cards, gift bags, journals and gift wrap as well. A surface pattern designs at the beginning of my creative career, learning the mental was based. I didn't know the difference between an open path or closed path or when to use them. And don't get me started on busy eight curves. I took class after class trying to learn the mental, and either they went too fast for beginners or they didn't explain things fully and left important information out or they just didn't put it all together. This resulted in me abandoning the Pento again and again. After countless hours of frustration, I finally learned the mental because I had to for a job, and I remember thinking to myself, Why does this have to be so difficult? I don't want that for you. This class is for beginners or anyone who's frustrated with the mental and wants to learn once and for all. This class will go over pencil basics tics and tricks, and I'll emphasize key points in making this tool easier to understand. In this class will start with mental exercises that will move on to our class. Project this whimsical Fox illustration and I'll show you step by step, where to put the anchor points and why. You can customize his illustration with room details or color palette. Or you can create your own illustration either way, posted to the Project Gallery section of this class. After this class, you'll have a great understanding of the pen tool, and you'll know how to apply it to your own artwork and illustrations. With a little practice, the mental become your new BFF. Let's get started. 2. Class Project: your class project is to work through a few practice worksheets and then move on to create this cute Fox illustration. The reason I picked this image is because it puts together everything that we've learned so far into one illustration. It combines open paths, close paths, straight lines, zigzags, curves and more. I find it extremely helpful as a beginner toe. Follow along with the same artwork so you can learn step by step, focusing completely on learning, and then you can apply it to your own work. The first thing you're gonna need to Dio is open Adobe Illustrator CC. I'll be working in Adobe Illustrator CC 2020 but any version of Sisi will do. If you don't own your own copy, you can download a free we try at the Adobe website on The link is provided in the project in Resource Section Next, Dellal all the practice worksheets and the sketch of the fox that we're gonna trace, and you'll find that in the project and resource is section of this class. Please know you'll need the Web browser and not in see in the next lesson 3. Getting Started: let's get started by setting up preferences, creating new documents, setting up our workspace and going over tools will be using in this course. Okay, so we're gonna begin by opening Adobe Illustrator. If yours is an open please double click the application, we're going to start by opening the preference file and adjusting our preferences. So our application behaves the same. Go up to the top. What says illustrator preferences and click General Under General, you want to make sure that the show tool tips is checked and also over here on the right hand side words, his scale, strokes and effects. Next, we go back to the column on the left and go to selection and anchor display. Make sure your tolerance is set at six. If you would like to see your anchor points and handles a bit larger, you are welcome to move this to a bigger size. I'm gonna leave mine here, and it's also very important to have enable rubber band for pencil checked. Now, this is a feature of the Adobe Illustrator CC version. I do not believe this is on Adobe Illustrator CS six and then we're gonna go down to user interface. I just want to point out that I have increased my user interface. It normally is down here. It's small, but because I'm doing this recording, I increase this, that these tools will be a little larger and easier for you to see. Another of the menus that we're gonna look at here is the file handling and clipboard. This is something that comes with the dough BCC, and I want you to make sure that the data recovery is clicked so it says, automatically save recovery data Every and we're gonna select two minutes. This is important because people who have older machines, sometimes older versions of Sisi you will have occasional crashes. And by doing this it will recover and you will only lose two minutes of work. And I'm going to go to the bottom of the screen and hit the button on the right hand side that says, OK, now that we've set up our preferences, let's talk about the first interface. We seem illustrator for just a minute, we're going to create a new document that's a letter size, and there's a couple different ways to do that. One is to create a new document, and another way is to use thes presets over here. And if you click on this button, there are more presets, so you can choose one of these sizes, or you can set your own dimensions here. The other thing I want to show you is that any recent documents you DeMann adobe illustrator, you can scroll down and you can see them under recent right here. And you can look at this as a grid view. Or you can look at this more as a list for you with the small icon. So we'll start here by getting create new. And then we will look right here. So we want a horizontal, and we want our with to be 11 inches. Aiken. Just type in there and we want our height to be 8.5 inches. Notice that it is inches right now. But if you're shows something different, just click on the carrot icon here and you can see there's points pike as millimeters centimeters, etcetera. So we're gonna choose inches as long as there's a check mark. That's the one that you're on. I'm gonna go ahead and hit the word create, and I will create my first document. We also need to set up our workspace. In order to do this, we're gonna go up to a window workspace, and I am using the workspace called Essentials Classic. When you highlight something, it becomes check. So I'm gonna change it to essentials for a minute. You'll see my workspace changes. I'm going to go back to a window, and I'm gonna choose essentials Classic. By selecting it and letting go, it will change my workspace around. You'll also notice the tools over here to the left. You have an option of having it in two columns or if you click these tiny little arrows, you can have your tools in a long single column. I prefer to, but that's how you can change that back and forth. So now that we have our workspace set up under essential classic, let's look over here at thes panels for a few minutes in Adobe Illustrator, you can often do the same thing different ways or find the same thing in different places. So when you first look at all this, it looks very overwhelming. But let's just focus on a couple of things. First looking at these panels. We've turned on our tool tips so you can see when you hover over, you can see color. When you have her, you can see color guide. So if you're not sure what something is, if you just hover over it, you will see the tool tip or the preference of the tip come up. You will also see a shortcut when you look at the tool. So when I hold over this one, you can see that it's a direct selection tool. But the shortcut is a so that makes things a little simpler. Also, whenever we're going to something on this right side, whether it's the layers stroke swatches, you can always find these things up here under window. You just click window and hold and scroll down, and you confined your swatches or your layers. So, for if for some reason something is not open, go up to the window panel, scroll down and click it, and it will open it up. If it's already open, it will close, so you'll have to go up and do it again. The tools were going to use in this course is the selection tool, which is the black arrow. The shortcut there is V. The direct selection tool shortcut is a We're gonna be using the pen tool. And if you see there's a small arrow here and if you click and hold, you will get a fly out menu that will show you all the choices available under that tools. We have a pen tool. The short cut has P at an anchor point. Delete an anchor point, and this is called the Anchor Point tool, and I usually call it Convert Anchor Point Tool. Um, I don't know if it's changed its name, or I've always called it. That will be using Just click Again that will go away. We won't be using the curvature tool Come down here. We will be zooming in and out, So if you click on this tool, you'll see a plus. You get bigger and zoom in, and you could hold down the auction on a Mac or a Ault on the PC and click to zoom out. There are also shortcuts. Another shortcut I'm using right now is I'm holding down my space bar, and when you hold on your space part, it gives you a hand and that allows you to move your document around. Another thing this is referred to is the pace board. Okay? And then we're also gonna be using the stroke and the fill tool. So when you create a open path or closed path or a shape, you will get to color it or at a stroke to it. So stroke is the outline. It is this one right here. And this is your feel. And by using the X as you saw that tool tip come up, you can switch the filled to the front or the stroke to the front. I'm hitting X. You can see this stroke is on the front, the Phyllis on the front. If you want a fill or stroke of none, that's what this is. Indicating means transparent. So if I want an outline, But no, Phil, I make sure the one that I want to activate is on the top. And then I can click none. And now it would have a black stroke and no Phil to revert or default to the standard black and white, a black stroke and white. You use this tiny little icon right here. So that's it for this lesson we covered setting up our preferences, creating a new document, setting up our workspaces and going over the tools that will use in this course seeing the next lesson. 4. Anchor Points & Paths: Let's talk anchor points. So an anchor point is simply a point on a path. So here we have a line segment. If you remember back to your geometry days, a line segment is a line, and it has an end point on each end, when you have a line or a path and you have points on the end, those air called endpoints. Next we have this rectangle, and you'll notice that the rectangle has two lines that meet at a corner that's called a corner point. And lastly, we have a smooth point, and you'll find those on curves not always a circle, but occur. So a smooth point creates a curve, and these things right here are cold handles, and the handles allow you to move and adjust the curve, and we'll go into that in more detail later. You notice when I'm clicking on these shapes that you sometimes see the anchor points hollow or white in this case, and sometimes you see them solid when they're hollow. That means they're inactive. This box is selected, but this is the active anchor point. That means this anchor point is waiting for me to do something to it. I can stretch it. Move it in. Move it out. Okay, Same with this. So this is inactive. If I click emits blue, I can move it in now. Next, we're gonna talk about our selection tools. You do not need to write any of this down. I will provide this for you in the projects and resource section. So if you notice the selection tool, which is a black arrow, is short cut is V allows you to choose an entire shape and move it around. Make it smaller, make it bigger. So when I click with the black tool, I can move this whole shape around. Not just a point or a piece of it. Same with the rectangle. I could move the whole rectangle around. I can also move a whole side. And I can also hold the shift key and constrain it. Meaning I can enlarge and reduce this rectangle. And it maintains its shape and proportion. If I let go of the shift key, I can change the shape of the rectangle. The same goes with a circle. If I select the circle, I can make this circle larger or smaller and you'll notice on the circle has this outline. This is called a bounding box. It just simply means that the shape is inside that box. So the white arrow allows you to edit a piece or move part of it as we showed you before. So it allows you Teoh at it individual parts rather than the whole thing. Okay, bear with me. As we go through some of these basic definitions and meanings, we will get to the pencil soon. This is very important in understanding the pent we're gonna be talking about open paths versus closed paths. Remember, we talked about a path is simply a line in between two points. So I've illustrated that with a picture here. These were all open paths. An open path means your starting point on your path and your ending point. Do not meet. So this is an open path. Have a starting point here in an ending point here. This is an open path these two do not touch. This is an open path, and this is an open path and this is an open path. A closed path means your starting point, which is right here, touches the end points, whereas you make this box and you go around and you close your shape, your it becomes a closed path or a shape, those could be used interchangeably. So I'm going to show you what happens when you close a shape. So if you have your pen tool, just follow along with me just for a second. You don't have to do anything. Just watch. So when you're making a box, we also have a shape tool for this. But just for the sake of illustration, when you go to close right now, open path and when I go to close it, you will see this little circle under the pen tool, and that means we are closing a path that is a closed path. Now the last thing I want to talk about here is the difference between a stroke and a feel . A stroke is simply the outline around the shape, or it's the color of the line itself. So if you look at this path, it has no Phyllis. Just the blue line is the shape. Same with this. This has a fill. It has a stroke of black and fill a blue, but you notice there's no black line here because the shape is not closed. Okay, so here we have a blue stroke. And if we want to fill this box, that's a yellow. I can click on my fill, and I can use my eyedropper here. If you don't have this menu, go up to window color and it will pop out. You can also use this watch box right here. Okay, So I'm gonna make the fill selective yellow. So if you're doing something and it doesn't work, one of the beginner mistakes is you don't have the object selected. So if you click and it's not feeling, you probably don't have the box selected. So I have a stroke of blue and a fill of yellow. If I wanted this out line to be thicker, I can come up here to the top, works his stroke, and I can make that outline a lot sicker. On this triangle, we have a stroke of blue and a fill of none. Yes, it looks white right now, but if I move this off the screen, you would see that there's nothing inside that it's a stroke of none. We'll do this one more time. You can select your item. I'm going to make sure it has a big fat outline. I'm gonna choose seven. So it's really easy to see and I'm gonna fill it. Let's say red this time. So that is stroke and fill. You can switch these back and forth by clicking on the one you want. It will pop to the top. You can use this to swap it back and forth, and that also swaps the colors. So right now I have a red solid inside. Now I have a blue solid inside. And then if you want to get to the default colors of black and white there is a small little icon here you can click it and this has become black and white. I'm just gonna make this out settled darker. And this has a white inside. And yes, it looks just like this triangle. But notice if I bring it over here onto the pace board This great was called the Paste board. You can see that it is indeed white or if I bring this one you can see through has a fill of none. You can also have no stroke. It also we have a blue circle and we have no stroke on that blue circle. Okay, that's it for this lesson. We're gonna move on to straight lines in this lesson. We went over anchor points. We talked about endpoints being the end of a line segment corner points, which are a point where two lines meet and a smooth point, which is an anchor points on a curve way. Also talked about what an open path waas where the beginning point and the endpoints do not touch and a closed path meaning the beginning and the end points touch and become the same point. 5. Straight Lines: There are four steps to learning the pen tool number one straight lines number two curves, both simple and complex. Number three combining straight lines and curves. And number four learning where to put the anchor points. Once you learn these four steps, the Penta will become your friend. Let's start learning about straight lines. Okay, so we're gonna begin by opening the file that you downloaded from the Project and Resource section. It is called 01 underscore straight lines. We're gonna open that up, you appear in your screen and what we're gonna do is we're gonna take our black arrow, the selection tool, and we're gonna drag all the way over to the right, holding our mouths let go, and we're gonna go to object Lock selection and what we're gonna do. There it is just locking. This becomes a template so we can trace over it. We're gonna go down to our stroke and fill area. We're gonna click on the default here in the corner. So we want our stroke to be black and are filled to be none. So just click once and then click on the none button and I'm clicking back on my stroke. Next, we can go with a shortcut, which is P for the pen tool. We can select the mental and we're gonna come over to the top of our star. You're going to notice that the pen cursor now has an ass trick underneath. And that's just a tool tip or akin to let you know that the pen tool is ready. Now, When I first started learning the pen tool, I kind of ignored all of these little icons. But it really does help. So when you see the star, you know that you are ready to use the pen tool. I created this free tool tip guide as a quick reference cheat sheet so you can refer to the tool tips as you learn them. This preview allows you to see how long your path would be your line segment or how short would be and weary would place it. And you could move this all around. But we're gonna just go to the edge of the star and we're going to click and release Note. I am not dragging while I'm holding down the mouse button. I am simply moving my mouse where I want it to be Click and release, moving my mouse where I wanted to be Click and really so once I click, I do not drag, click and release, and then I move my mouse. Click and release, click and release. Now let's say you make a mistake. If you would like to go back a step, you could go up to the top here to edit on Dupin, and it'll take you back to the last anchor point. You may also use a key command on a Mac command Z or on a PC Control Z. So I'm gonna go back and continue to click and releases. I move around this star. Don't worry if it's not perfect, we're just getting used to the pen tool, Click and notice. When you get to the end of your open path here, you're going to go up here and your pen cursor tool is gonna change to a little circle. And that just means you are closing the path and it will become a closed path or a shape. Okay, we did it. Okay. Next, we're gonna do the same thing to the rectangle. We're going to start by clicking and releasing were not dragging. I'm not holding anything. Down on my mouse. Go straight across. Hold down the shift key. And while you hold down the shift key that will allow you to constrain your line and keep it perfectly horizontal. Click and release the mouse button. Still holding down the shift button again, click and release the mouse. Still holding down the shift click and release the mouse. Still holding down the shift and I'm gonna close this path. The next thing we're gonna do is we're and do this zigzag line. So we're gonna do the same exact thing. Click and release. And this time I'm gonna hold down the shift key and it is constrained my line to a 45 degree angle. So click and release. Hold down the shift and you can hold the shift the whole time. If you like. It's okay, then I'm a little bit off. There were just practicing. Click and release. Click and release. Come down to the end, click and release. Now you notice your at the end of your path. But I still have this line. I want to exit out of this open path. So there's several ways I can do this. And I wrote them down for you right here. So let's go over the 1st 1 The first thing you want to do is make sure that you move your cursor, your pento off your path and you can hit escape When you hit it escape it takes you off your path. I'm gonna undo that and I'm gonna go I'm on a max. I'm gonna go command Z and I'm gonna show you another way Having my last point here. You see, I'm moving off the path. I'm gonna hit command. If you're on a PC, you'd hit control and you click And you have now exited your path. I'm gonna do again. Replace my last point. I moved off my path. Another option is to hold down the option, Kate. And if you're on a PC, you can hold down the altar key and you see your cursor changes. Once I hold down the option key, I click off the path and I exited the past. Another way I can do it is to take my pen tool off the path and the white arrow or used the short cut a and we've clicked off the mental path. My suggestion is you pick the one you like the best and stick with that. I use the command key as the auction, and I'm gonna show you why in the next example, I think it speeds up your work flow when you're doing multiple lines. So we're gonna grab your pen tool, and I'm gonna select P for Penn. And I'm going to click right on the top of this line here. Click and I'm gonna hold shift so I can make my line straight. Then I'm gonna let go of the shift, can hit command and click off. And you see, I revert back to the pen tool. So this conspiracy up, things holding shift up my path, Same thing. Click holding, shift, click off my path And the last one, Okay. And the next thing we're gonna do is we're going to trace this arrow, and then we're going to fill it. So we're gonna begin right here. You can choose any point you want, but this is where I'm gonna choose. I've got my pen tool. I'm gonna click once and release my pen and hold the shift key to create a straight horizontal line, then I'm just going to move my tool up. This isn't exactly a 45 degree angle, so I'm just gonna click without holding shift. Now, I want a straight line. I'm going to shift and click, click and release, click and release Well, down the shift key to make a straight mine click well down the ship key to make a straight line. And then we're gonna follow this all the way around and you could just hold down shift because this is straight. This is a 45 degree angle. Click clips and we're gonna close our path. And you see that little oh shaped. Okay, so now we're ready to is we are going to color this and change the stroke in the field. So I'm going to click on my stroke. I'm going to go over to the swatches panel right here. It's a swatch is if you don't see that, go up to the window, click and hold and you will see your swatches down here and you click it and your swatches will pop up. I'm gonna change my arrow stroke to let's say a dark green And I want my fill to be yellow and let's go back to the stroke. If you go here to the right hand side, you'll see this comment says stroke again. If you don't see that, you could look to a window right here to stroke. So I'm gonna click on this, and I'm just gonna make this a bit darker so you can see it. Okay, so you are welcome to save this document on your computer, and we will be moving on to the next lesson. In this lesson. We learned how to make a straight line by clicking and releasing to drop an anchor point at the beginning and end of each line we learned used to shift key to constrain our lines toe perfectly horizontal, vertical or a varying degrees of 45 such as 45 91 35 180 degrees on. We also learned several methods for exiting a path 6. Curves: in this lesson, We're gonna go over offset curves, see curves, a clock method curve and an Esseker. Once again, we're gonna create a new document. It create new again. It's gonna be an 8.5 by 11. Horizontal and hit create. So what we're gonna do is we're going to place a document in here for a template, just like we did the last time. So we're gonna go to file place, navigate to where you downloaded your worksheets, and we're gonna hit 03 underscore curves J pick and hit place again. We'll put our icon right in the corner, and then we will lock our objects Remembered to object Lock selection. Okay, now we can work right on top of this, and it will not give us any problems, so I'm going to zoom in a bit. So, curbs are these air called busy A curves. And what? They are curves based on mathematics. On when your nudie illustrated, you think you're gonna do something like the pencil tool we're just gonna draw and you're gonna get a curve. But that's not how these work. The reason you'd want to use one of these curves is, they result in very smooth, controllable curves. It makes beautiful artwork. So we're gonna go to the pen, It'll p and I'm gonna show you four different types of curves. The 1st 1 is you're just going to click and release and then you're gonna click again, Hold and drag. And when you pull out, you get a handle. And by moving the handle I'm still holding by moving the handle, pulling in, not the handle. You can get different shapes of curves. So what I want you to do, it's follow along with me and see if you can pull out your handle and match. And when you get that release and then this time I'm just going to escape, we're gonna do the next one we're going to click and release. Go to our second anchor point the end we are going to click and again we're gonna drag our direction, handle the direction we pool is the direction it makes the curve and then we line it up and you can pull longer or shorter to make it line up. And then once I get where I like, I'm gonna let go again. We're gonna escape Well, let's do that one more time. Click and release. I'm gonna click and I'm gonna pull down the direction of that arrow and that gives me a beautiful curve. The next one is very popular. I use almost all the time whenever I'm gonna make a curve. And I wanted to look like a sea or 1/2 circle. I use this method just a ziff you were drawing with the pen or pencil. You would take your pencil and you would draw up and you go around the curve and you would draw down. That's the same way we're gonna pull our handle up to start the curve and we're gonna pull the handle down to end the curve. I'm gonna click hold and I'm gonna hold shift and I'm gonna pull up because if I was gonna draw Curb, I'd go up. So I'm gonna click and hold and drag. I'm still holding. I've got my shift and my mouth stamp. Okay, Now I'm gonna let go of my mouse, then let go of my shifts. Wouldn't keep that handle straight. Now you see, we're getting a hint here with our rubber band preview. It's telling us I want to draw Curve and I want to go this way. I want a nice curve this way or this way, but it wants to curb on us. So now we're gonna find our second point injustice. We were drawing. We would put our point here and pull down, and I'm gonna hold the shift again. Okay, so I drew mine a little long, and that's OK. We still have a beautiful curve there. Okay, so we're gonna do this again. We're gonna take our pen tool, so I'm gonna click, hold and drag pull up, and I'm gonna try to line up exactly on the one above its OK, If it's not perfect, click off my mouse. Click off the shift key. Go to your other point. Click hold and drag. Okay. Click. Holden, drag. The holding and dragging is what gives you the handles. Okay? And release. And then we want to get out of that. We're gonna escape or command to get out. So when you're drawing a C curve, just think of they were actually drawn with your pencil. You would start by going up when you came down here, you would drag your handle down. So I use this all the time and I use this when I'm trying to make a beautiful half curve the next curve I'm gonna talk about. I referred to the clock method curve, and this curve has a point at the beginning, middle and end of the curve. I refer to the clock method curve because a gentleman named Von English ca is the one who thought of this method. What you do is you start at the beginning of their curves. Since my curve is going up in this way very soon into this, I'm gonna start my first point click hold and drag my handle up and I'm holding the shift key to make sure that my handle stays straight. Gonna release my mouse and my shift key that I'm gonna go the middle of the curve and I'm gonna click Hold on, drag again, holding my shift key, making sure my handles or straight release my mouse and my shift key. And I do that at the end, shift old and drag and pulling down because the curve comes down and then I'm going to escape. I use this curve often when I just want to create 1/4 of a curve or want to go more than 1/2 like 3/4 of a curve. I use this so I can have handles on both sides to control it. And also, you can control top to bottom. The biggest challenge with this curve is often you will get a flatness like I'm showing here that that could be a challenge. Let's do this curve again. Couldn't take my pencil again. I'm gonna click, hold and drag and pulling up because the curve is going up. I go to the middle of the curve and I'm gonna click cold and drag to get a nice horizontal handle release. I'm gonna pull down this time. Click hold and dry release and exit. We're going to talk a little bit more about this clock method in just a few minutes called an s curve. And again, think about if you were drawing this s curve. Let's look at this. If you had a pencil and you were drawing this, you would start by going up. So you're gonna drag your lineup when we click, you're gonna come down and to finish the curve, you would also go up. So on this curve, both of the direction handles go the same way. Watch this. So I'm gonna click, drag and hold holding the shift, get it nice and straight, and then I'm gonna come over. And if I go to my end point when I click shift and drag again and try to get my handles the same length, you will see that we created that curve. I'm gonna hit escape to get off. Okay, so let's try this again And let's trade together. Click hold and drag and juices. If you were drawing it, you would end by going up. So click, hold and drag. Let go escape. Let me summarize this for you. Basically, we have a curve with one handle. We have a curve with two handles that you drag in opposite directions and it makes for a smooth curve. You have a curve with three handles. The drawback is the top point often flattens out the curve. But this is great for making smaller increments 1/4 of a curve or doing 3/4 of the curve and the S curve. I almost never use hope that helps. This is all gonna make more sense when we put this all together, I want to go over the clock method. If you look at this first circle, I have selected this top point as the active point. But you can see in a circle that there was a point for every curve. So every quarter of the circle you have an anchor point and has two handles. There was a gentleman named Von English ska who had this idea of oclock method saying that you put a point at the three o'clock six oclock, nine o'clock and 12 oclock position when you see a curve. So I will show you that in just a minute. Another way to think of this is to put a point at all the extreme edges of the curve. So if I turn on my guides, you can see here that the up top most point of this circle is right here, and the outermost point of the circle is here and same with here and here. So if I use my direct selection tool, you can see that there would be a point at the three o'clock six oclock, nine o'clock and 12 o'clock positions. If you look at a curve. You could squish the clock and open up the clock to make it fit inside these convex and con cave curves. To imagine oclock in these curves in here, here and here. And I've positioned some clocks inside. Now you can rotate the clock and squish the clock. But that idea is to envision a clock inside of every curve and then put those points at 12 o'clock and three o'clock. So here we have a very complicated curve. And again you can You can rotate your clock anyway you want. But you would put those anchor points on those positions for me. I did found that a bit difficult to envision. So if I just look at the curves and I put it on the outermost point of the curve, it would give me those same position. So if I look at this curve right here, the outermost point on that curve at the top is here and the outermost point of the curve, that same curve just looking at this cur first is here. And the outermost point is here, so you can see it hits the same positions at the most extreme points. So this is just a visual to give you a better idea. Another idea of looking at this is like every quarter of that circle is a curve, and you could put a point at the beginning and the end of that quarter curve. In this lesson, we talked all about curves. We talked about an offset curve with one handle, a C curve, which is a smooth curve with two handles. We talked about the clock method curve, where there's three handles and three anchor points, and we talked about the Esseker. 7. Combining Lines & Curves: in this lesson, we're gonna learn about combining lines and curves. We're gonna go from a curve to a straight line, a straight line to occur, and then we're gonna do curves joined together by corner points. This is where we start putting all the pieces together that we've learned. Usually this is the area where I in the past have gotten lost like I know how to make a curb. I know how to make a line and then I go to create work and I'm completely lost. So this is where a lot of people leave off. And this is where the fun part begins. We're going to create a new document. Once again, we're gonna do a and half by 11. Once again, horizontal and hit create. You're gonna go to the file and you are going to place. We're gonna get a template out, we're gonna hit place, and we're going to number five combining lines and curves, and we're gonna once again place in the top left corner of our document. And again, we're gonna lock it in place. I'm gonna hit command to or even goto object lock selection in this lesson work. I'm gonna show you how to do curves. Two straight lines, a straight line to a curve and then how to do curves if they fall back on each other. What happens if you want to do, like scallop type curve or Laura Cloud shape where the curve is separated by a corner point . So once we have this, we have everything we need to know. In order to use the pencil to create artwork. Let's zoom into the very first example where we are starting with a curve point and we're going to a straight line. Now you know how to do this. You've done this before. We're gonna start with our pen tool. This starts out with the seekers, remember, we click, hold and drag and go upwards, too. Follow along the shape of the curve. We're gonna go to the end of the curve, click and drag to go to the bottom shape of the curve. It's OK. My handles a little bit big. Remember, we can always adjust it by holding down command. And I could move that point just a little bit. Okay, so here we are, on this point and we want to make a straight line and it wants to make the curve. So what we have to do is we have to break this handle and change directions. It's very simple. All we have to do is click on the last point. We are now like starting fresh again. And remember, when you start fresh a brand new point, you click, you get a straight line So we're gonna click and release. We're gonna click and release, click and release, click and release And then you can escape out of this. Okay, We're going to a different shape. It's a different type of curve and a straight line. Same thing. Click and release. This was that curved that had one handle. I'm gonna click and drag. Okay, Now I finished with my curve and I want to go to a straight line. What dough? I dio go to the last point you made Click one time and click again. So you simply make the first shape click on the last point as X starting fresh again. Okay. The next example is your starting from a straight line and you're going toe occurs. We can make a straight line. That's easy peasy. We've done that hit your pen It'll click and make your straight line Click and release click and release Now my next shape on going into is occur How do I make a curve? I click Hold and drags Let's go back to the last point we made click old and drag Since this is a C curve I'm gonna hold shift just to make my line straight Let go And I'm going to complete my shape Click, Hold and drag I'm just holding shift to make it straight Let go of my mouth Let go of my ship Point now it wants to make a curve I want to make a straight line Just do that up here So we go to the last point we may cause we want to break Unlock these handles Click And now we can make a straight line click and release I finished that shape Now I'm making a new shape by new shape is a circle So I'm gonna go back to the point I just made I'm gonna click hold and drag and I'm gonna go around and click Hold and drag Kate My next shape is a straight line to go back to my previous point, click at one time and release click and make my new shape. Now I want to make a curve, but this wants me to make a straight line. I go back to my last point click hold and drag, click, hold and drag And it wants to make a curve But I want to change directions I'm gonna click on my last point and click and release Do that again with the ship That's all there is to it. Okay. And again, if you want to make any adjustments, you can come back here in line. Is that perfectly? My focus on this lesson is to show you how to go from straight to curved or curved two straight. All right. So practice at a couple times if you need to. We have one last piece to this puzzle. I'm gonna show you two ways to do this. Curves joined by a corner point. So the first ways make your standard C curve. So click shift, hold, drag release. I'm gonna click Hold, drag, holding shift. And this way you release at this point, then you hold the option key and you see that your cursor turns into the character shape and you click on your handle and you bring it to the top and you're bringing to the top. But you're telling Illustrator I'm gonna make a curve that's gonna go up now and then you're gonna come back and make a seeker of the way you normally dio shift, hold, drag And I'm holding down the shift and I'm gonna let go My point, I'm letting go Now I'm gonna hold the option and then move the handle telling illustrator again I'm gonna make a curve at the top one more time we're gonna click, Hold, drag Let go! And then I'm gonna go to the handle here and I'm gonna hit option. Okay, so that is one way. Just like the top. I'm releasing the point, then holding option, then moving the handle up. Okay, I'm gonna take this. I'm gonna lock this so I don't accidentally click on it and just select it with the black selection tool and then hit command to or object block selection. I'm gonna show you a second way. Okay, so I'm gonna click close to it, but not the same exact point. Click drag up like a But they make a C curve click hold drag like I normally would. But this time I'm not gonna let go. This time I'm a hold option of bring my handle up, make another C curve click, hold drag And then I'm gonna hold down option. I can let go of my shift key and bring it up. Okay, I'm gonna click. Hold drag, Will my option key and then bring it up? I'm just not releasing and then holding option key. So that's the other way to do it. Do which ever? Ways easiest for you. Okay, you can save this and move on to the next lesson in this lesson. We went from curves two straight lines. Then we moved on from straight lines to curves and finally we did curves, joined by corner points but breaking the handle 8. Practice & Pitfalls: in this lesson. We're gonna use the cloud for practice, and we're also gonna look at a potential pitfall. So we're gonna open a new document and hit create just as we've done before. We're gonna go file place, just as we've done before. This time we're going to grab a new sheet and it's called number six. Combine line curves cloud gonna hit place and put it in the corner like we have in the past . Click the pen tool. Make sure your fill is none. Make sure that your stroke is black and we're going to begin. I'm gonna zoom in just a bit for you and we can start anywhere we can start right here. We like we're gonna make a seeker again. Don't worry. If it's perfect, we can come back and fix it. We're driving down and we want that scallop type shape. So I'm gonna hold down my option and I am going to move my handle back up. So I'm just showing you how this works. If it wasn't in a straight line and again, I'm gonna kind of position this, I'm gonna hold down the option and move my handled up at least click hold, drag. Pull down option. Move my handle up and again. Don't worry about it being perfect. We can go back and refine it. This is just getting the general shapes in there. So click, Hold, drag. I'm holding my option. Moving my handle up. Doing the same here. Okay, We're off quite a bit there. Not a problem. Okay, I'm gonna go here, and then I'm going to make a straight line, so I'm gonna go back. I'm not gonna make any more curves. It wants to make a person to go back to my last point, converted to a straight line hit straight. I'm gonna hold down shift to make it really straight. Maybe not. Okay. And then my next point is going to be a curve, and I'm making a line. So go to your last point, click hold in drag, and then come to the end. Do not panic when it does something crazy like that. Okay, Next, we're gonna go to the direct selection tool, and what we can do is weak. We can first hold down option and then click and drag to move that handle back in place. So I'm gonna go back. And then this is where you can just, you know, perfect the handles. The first goal, at least for me, is I don't try to perfect things. I try to get the general shape in, and then I go around and fix in line everything up in here. I could move this handle, but and you see it It just takes a minute to go back in, line everything up and re adjust things if you need to. And this one, I'm gonna pull down a little bit and then try to get that curve. Okay, so there's a potential pitfall and I wanted to show you what that is. So let's say we've made Thies to see curves I'm gonna make I'm going to go up and come down . Hold option, Go up, come down. So let's admit take my direct selection tool and I want to adjust this path. If I hold down option first, then I can adjust this and you'll notice that I only have one. So I held option first and then adjusted my curve. Now, here's the pitfall. I'm gonna make a normal seeker, okay? Gonna break my handle. I'm gonna make a new direction. Okay, so that's it. Oh, no. I have this thing. I have to adjust it. So I go to my direct selection tool, and let's say I start to move my handle on. Go. Oh, now I'm gonna hit option. Okay. I wanted you to see what happens. You actually made a copy is actually a copy of part of that arch. So the pitfall is when you're in the direct selection tool and you have your broken handles there already broken and they're facing a V. And you want adjust them. Make sure you hold auction first and then pull on the handle option first, then pull on the handle. If you don't and you first pull on the handle, then you hit option. It will make a copy. So auction first pull on the handle. In this lesson, we practice working on the cloud by breaking the handles and changing directions. We also looked at a potential pitfall using the option key 9. Putting It All Together: in this lesson, we're gonna put it all together. We're gonna combine lines and curves and we're gonna make a shape And I'm gonna give you the key we're gonna do. We've been doing We're gonna create any document. It's gonna be a and 1/2 by 11 horizontal as it has been and we're gonna hit, create. We're gonna go to go file and place, and we're going to find the document that says 07 combining lines curves and I'm gonna get place in the bottom right hand corner and we're gonna put it in the left top corner as we've been doing and I'm gonna go ahead and lock that. So I'm gonna hit command to you can hit control to for lock. This is the moment of not knowing to knowing. So I made the visual at key. So you always remember this particular exercise. The key to putting it all together. Are you ready? Okay, so we're gonna make sure our stroke is black and our Phyllis none. And go to pee for the pencil and we're gonna zoom in. So the key here is to start and look at one shape at a time. complete your shape and then look at the next shape. I may use the word line as a shave. In line is really amount of shape, but I may accidentally interchange those and call like Look at your next shape. It's a line. So let's start here the very first point. And when I start a piece of artwork, I look for a straight line or something very simple to begin with, So this is a great place to start. So I'm gonna click and release. I'm just making my first line or my first object, which is a straight line. So I'm just gonna click and release easy peasy. We've done this a 1,000,000 times. Okay, The next part when we're putting this all together, is just look at the neck shape in front of us. So all we're looking at is this curve. Now, my rubber band preview is showing me a straight line and we know we don't want a straight line. We want a curve. So I'm gonna click on the last point and drag and remember, when we're going to make a curve, we drag in the direction that we want the curve to start so I'm gonna click, drag and hold. I want my curve to go up and to determine how long the handle is. It's usually about 1/3 of the distance of the curve, Kate. So I'm gonna release and I'm going to go over to where the curve is gonna end and you can click and drag There is well, and just try to get as close as you can. Don't worry about it being perfect at this point. Okay, so we've completed this shape. Now we're gonna look at our next peace or shape. It's a line, but really got our next piece here and we can see that that is a straight line. But my rubber band tip is or preview is showing me a curve. Go back on your last point. And if it's a straight line, you just click and release and make your straight line. So if you want to make sure except perfect 45 you can hold down shift. I'm gonna click and relays. Now I'm looking at my next shape or my next. It'll peace and all I have is a line here, so I'm just gonna go click and release. It's a straight line. Same with this. A straight line. Easy peasy, Kate. Now I'm gonna look at this next shape. It's a curve. Okay? My rubber band preview is showing me a straight line. I don't want a straight line. I want a curve. So I'm gonna click holding release, and I'm gonna drag in the direction that I would draw that curve. So if I had a pencil, I would be drawing up and down. So I'm gonna drag straight to start it. And then we can get to here and we can drag down slightly again. Don't worry about it. Being perfect and lining up perfectly. That's not the object right now. Look ahead at the next shape. It's a straight line for the next piece is a straight line. I'm getting a preview of a curve, So click back on our last point release and click. Now, if you have any trouble in this tight little corner trying to put your spot, you can't quite get what you need. Just zoom in So you compress the magnifying glass or again the space bar in command or this space bar and control. If you're on a PC, NCM ways short here. I'm just gonna hold my command to readjust that point. Okay? Looking at the next little piece here, the next little piece is the straight line click and release. Now, the next shape is almost a full circle. So we know this is more than a semicircle, more than a C curve. So we're gonna look at this circle as using our clock method. So we're gonna put a point at 12 o'clock nine o'clock, six oclock, but we'll pretend this is 12 right here. Okay, so we're looking for the point that sticks out the furthest on this side, which would be are three o'clock. So I'm gonna click Hold on, drag and get that point. Okay, That were Look at the next quarter of the clock, which would be six o'clock. Right down here. Click. Hold on, Drag. We're doing this because it's more than 1/2 of a circle. So now we're at nine o'clock. Click hold in drag. And they were gonna go back to the inner months point of this circle. So the innermost point before it goes back out again is right here, and we can just click and release now. the next shape we're gonna go to is a line and our previous showing us a line so we can just click and release, click and release. And this is all rectangles here. So this is very simple. Click and relates. All we do is click a really straight lines, okay? And we're gonna go up. I'm going to zoom out here a bit for you, so we're gonna go to this shape right here. Okay, So we've ended our straight line, and our next shape looks like a seeker. We've done a lot of seekers, so we're gonna go back to our last point because my rubber band is showing me a straight line, and I know I want a curve. So I'm gonna click, hold and drag, and I'm gonna drag candle the direction I would draw that curve. So if I was drawing, I would draw up, been around. So I'm gonna pull out this way, and then I'm gonna go around this way and cool down again. Don't worry if it's not perfect. Look at my neck. Civil peace here. That's a straight line. So click on the last point because I'm getting a curve. I don't want a curve. Click on my last point. Click and release Click on click and Release. Okay, now I'm gonna look at my neck shape, which is just this circle, but I can see that this is like the cloud shape that we worked on. This is like the semi circles that were joined together. The Kurds joined together by a corner point. So we're gonna use that tactic here. Okay, So we're gonna go on our last point. We know we don't want to make a straight line. We want to make a curve, and we want to go the direction of the curse. I'm gonna click. Hold on, drag. And I'm gonna drag my handle out, okay? And then I'm going to go to this side, click cold and drag and drag my handle out again. Don't worry if it's not perfect, Okay, Release. Now I want to bend that handle like I did in the past because I want a curve here. So hold down your option or your ault. Click. Hold and move that anchor. Point the direction of your next curve. Your next curve is gonna go like this. So move your handle. That direction. Tell Adobe I want to go this way. Okay, So if I was drawing it, I would be pulling up. I go around at come to this point, click hold and drag again. Don't worry about it being perfect. Okay, We're gonna hold down option and bend the handle back again and tell it, Adobe Illustrator, I want to draw curve this way so I'll pull my handle that direction Click hold in drag release. And the next thing I want to do is this little line segment here and it's giving me a pretty big curve. I don't want that. Click on my last point. Click and release. The next point is a straight line click and release. And lastly, we're gonna do another C curve. We're gonna pull up this way, Gonna come down this way and notice we're gonna close the past. So click cold and drag. Click, hold and drag. Make sure getting that circle and your path is now closed. That is it. Look at the next shape in front of you. Complete a shape the way you would and the very first lessons of this course. And then when you're putting it together just complete a shape. Look at the next shape in front of you. OK, so we're gonna get the direct selection tool. And this is where you can go ahead and modify by using your direct selection where you can tweak those shapes ever so slightly and get the exact shape you're looking for. And if you ever do have a problem, you can always add another point. But your goal is the least amount of points to make your shape. And the reason for that is it gives you smoother, more beautiful curves. So just pull that one handle out time and and this is how I was work. I always do the general first and then I go win and I do the detail because sometimes I'll look a general shape and I'll want to tweak different things now. This area here isn't perfect because it's hand drawn, but I like the charm of that. You see, it's giving me the life corners, and I don't want that. Just zoom in again. It's sometimes you just need to zoom in to be able to grab those points. You want my circles a little lopsided here, My curve and if you notice my two handles air, not parallel. This handle is going into this handle. And that's why my curb looks a little wonky. So if you make your lines parallel, they should look and make your handles even strata crossed your curves should look much better if you get into that problem. See, this one is this handles going inward and they would eventually cross. So make sure that the same length and make them parallel, and you'll get a really pretty curve there. Okay, I'm gonna go down here and same thing. This is kind of too extreme, so I could just click and then, you know, grab that handle and tweak it. Okay. Same with this. We need to bring this down just a bit. It's looking fantastic. You could tweak those handles. OK, so I'm going to zoom back out. Congratulations. You've got this now in this list, some We put it all together. I gave you the key. I want to remember to complete one small section of art at a time, Then look to the next shape in front of you. If you need to go back to the shape before and click the last anchor point there 10. Anchor Point Placement: this doesn't is all about anchor point placement for straight lines and curves. Both see curves and curves that use the cloth method. In this lesson, we're gonna talk about anchor point placement. This is the part that will make the pen tool your BFF. How do you know where to put the anchor points? Believe it or not, you already know we're gonna go through, and I'm gonna show you exactly where to put your anchor points pay. So we're gonna do We've done in the past were to create a new document. It's gonna be 8.5 by 11 horizontal, and we're gonna go and we're going to save file place. Go to where you downloaded your worksheets. We're gonna choose the number eight anchor point placement, and then you're gonna go to the bottom of the screen and hit the button for a place. Okay. In your new screen, you're back at your document. You're gonna click in the top left corner like you have in the past. USA object lock selection. So the main thing about anchor point placement is to place their points at all the extreme or the most extreme places on your illustration. Let's start with straight lines. Straight lines are easy beginning in the end of each line segment. Okay, when it comes to curves, you've learned all about the curves already. So you want to put a point at the beginning and the end of any seeker. And if you have something bigger than a C curve or it goes more around like almost a full circle, or you have quarter increments of circle where it's not quite 1/2 circle, that's when you would implement the clock method, which you would put a point at. For example, in this bird's head at nine o'clock 12 o'clock and three, this is 1/4 of one size of a circle, and then this circle is slightly different. Here's another example right here where you can see the anchor points. Let's look at the anchor points on the key. I'm gonna open a new document. Just read a fall of along the same document. However, I went in and added yellow to highlight where all the lines are on this key. If you look at this, you can see that we would just put an anchor point at the beginning or end off each line. You'll also notice that it's the highest point and you put one of the lowest point of each segment, for example, left to right and be the innermost and outermost. Okay, let's look at this bird. I've highlighted where we would have straight lines here so you would put a point at the beginning in the end of each of these segments. And if you look down at these feet, you would put a segment at the beginning of the end and then you're moving on to a new segment, beginning and end. And then here we could follow these with seekers. I've indicated for the bird also just where the anchor points would go, and you'll notice again that if you have curves that are connected with the corner point, we just have a point at the beginning and the end of those curves beginning and end. If you have curves at different sizes, we're dealing with quarter of a curve because this curve is much bigger than this curve. Then you would do at the different quarter, so this would be like nine o'clock and 12 o'clock. You put an anchor point there, pretend there was a clock face here. You put it the nine o'clock and the 12 o'clock again. You can also notice I am going to show you the curves now Que the green indicates the curse . So I have put where the anchor points are on the Kurt. So let's zoom in here. Remember, if you have something like the cloud shape a scallop or a curve where they're connected by an corner point that you have a point of beginning and the end of the anchor point, this is the sea curves. You'd have a point at the beginning in the end, if you were ever not sure or confused. You can always put 1/3 point up here and smooth it out. Just makes smoother. You know you're doing a C curve again. Here's a very flat C curve so we can do one of the beginning in the end. Here's where we're doing almost a complete circle. So we start our curve down here because this is coming from the straight line and you notice we have. If this was 12 o'clock appear, we'd have a point at three o'clock six oclock and nine oclock Museum back out, okay. And you'd have, um, a point beginning and the end here So you can see this point. So beginning and end here, beginning and end of the curve there, beginning in the end of the curves there. So really, you already know this. So one of the little acronyms I've come up with is high low. So the highest point on a shape the innermost, the lowest and the outermost So see, curves are a little bit different. But if you look at other shapes, if I just look at this bird, the head right now I have just went, command or control are to bring up the rulers, and I'm pulling down a guide. But you can see the highest point on this bird head. I can draw a line there and the outermost point on this bird head Maybe here and the innermost here. And that's a good guide of where to put things. If you look at this wing here, the outermost part part of that wing would be this point right here. If you were doing the highest point of the bird's tail top to bottom, this would be the highest point, and the innermost point on that would be for this Scallop shaped would be right here. So you can also do like the highest point the innermost point, the outermost point looking at each shape. That's another way to think of it. In this lesson, we went over anchor point placement. We looked at straight lines and see curves where they had their anchor points at the beginning and the end. We looked at curves that were using the clock method, so they had the points at 369 and 12 o'clock. We also looked at a high, low method where curves were placed at the highest inner lowest an outer point for any shape, yeah. 11. Anchor Point Tool: this lesson is all about using the anchor point tool how to convert anchor points. And I'm gonna show you an anchor point tool trick You'll won't want to miss. This lesson is all about using the anchor point tool. We're gonna use the same document that we used in the last lesson. So if you still have that open great. If you don't not a problem. Which is gonna go to create new and we're gonna go with an 8.5 by 11 horizontal, and we're gonna hit, create, and we're gonna go to file place, just as we've done many times. And we're gonna place zero a underscore anchor point placement. Go ahead and hit your place button and pop that in the left corner and then lock it. I'm just gonna hit command to you can hit control too. And we're gonna work on this bird. We're gonna zoom into this bird. If you wanted to, you could make any smooth point a corner point or you could make any corner point a smooth point. So we're gonna go into our pen tool area. We're going to scroll all the way down to an anchor point and I'm going to first click and activate, and then I can click this. If I click my anchor point to a one time, it will turn. I'm clicking and holding. It will turn this corner point into a smooth point. And now I can make a smooth beak here. And if I wanted to get rid of that, the same tools active, I can go up and delete it, So click and hold converts it to a smooth. If you have a smooth point, you can convert it to a corner. Also with E convert Anchor point tool. You can also adjust lines so you can make a beak thicker, or you can make the beak thinner or smaller. Okay. And next, I'm going to show you a fancy little trick. Now that I've showed you how to build a piece of artwork looking at each piece of art, each curve each line as they come and we've talked about anchor point placement, I'm going to show you a little trek that can really save time. And now that you know the basics and can show you this, I'm gonna do a pink stroke. And no Phil and I'm gonna use my pen tools to go to pee. Now, sometimes you need to do something really fast and rough, and then you can refine it says a little trick to speed up the process. Once you use the pencil, you'll get really quick at it. But here is another alternative. If you still are just struggling ready, we're gonna put a point on the most extreme inner and outer points top and bottom around this bird. We're only gonna be making straight lines. So I'm doing no dragging. I'm clicking and releasing, click and release. And I'm just gonna go around the Burgess right now. Just watch. And then you can try this in just a minute. I'm gonna look at the most extreme point the furthest point out on this bird, and I'll click it right here and then click here. Can one have to zoom in for this? And I'm just going to go around and all I'm doing is making the lines towards the most extreme points. So here on a circle would be this edge again. When you have trouble, just zoom in. Okay? The outermost point here. So if you have a curve just kind of turned it into a V clicking up the outermost point of this curve. I'll do right here. I'm going to speed it up right here. Okay, so the most outermost point of this shape right here would be there. Here, it looks like we have, like, a little curve here, straight line and all. I'm just click on the outermost, innermost, outermost, innermost, outermost. You got the idea? I'm going to speed this up, okay? And the highest point of the bird would probably Yep, here. And I'm gonna close my object. Okay, So all I did was go around and just kind of get the most extreme points. Okay, Now, I'm gonna go to my anchor point tool that we just looked at and check this out. You can just drag out. I know, right? Thes lines. And if you're going really fast, kind of a way, you can kind of sheet and just get the curves, just come and get going, and then you can go on and refine it further. We can click and drag here, or we can just click this segment up like this to make the curve. You can see how quickly. We can get this whole bird looking really good. So this point, you can just pull this out here and pull out this segment here, so I'm just pulling out on the segments, and then the other option is used to put your point here and make this sale What's twisted here? This is really good to show you. If it's twisted, just turn it the other way. Just put your your handle on the other side so you can just pull its twisted, so just pull the other way. So that's another way you can just pull your handle out or you can pull on that segment, okay? And then you could go through and refined, but you can see how quickly we got that shape. So this one looks like it curves in a bit, and then this looks like it kind of curves back a bit, and then you can go win and refine this. Okay, I got that little twist going, okay? And then if you want to go and refine, as always, go to your direct selection tool and then you can get in there and adjust those handles, you know, get them right where you want them to be. I find it a little bit sloppier when I'm doing these curves. You know, because you could make it smoother if you didn't have an anchor point there. And we just had the point here in here. You can always convert that afterwards. Okay, I'm gonna show you another way to do this. The's scallops if we don't wanna have that third point on the top. And this is something we haven't done yet. So if you go over to your eraser tool and you click and hold and go down to the scissor tool, this will allow you to cut out part of the path. But it will create an open path. But we're going to close it back up in just a second. So I'm clicking right on the two points. This is the area I want to cut out right here. So let me show you. So this is the area that I want to cut out. I use my sisters to click here, and I use my scissors to click here, and then I can delete that point. So now I'm gonna click back on that path, and we're gonna go back to our pen tool P, and we're gonna pick up where we left off. Remember? We're looking at the icons. We have the diagnosed, which means pick up from the path. The reason we want to do this so we can close the shape when we're done. Okay. If we didn't wanna have that extreme point, we were talking about having a point here and a point here in a point there, and I was saying, it kind of makes thes curves rough. We're gonna pick up our path, and we're just gonna go straight across and click on each one of these points here until we get to the end. And we definitely want to close Pat so we could fill our bird later. Next, we're gonna go to the anchor point tool, and we're gonna do the same thing we did before, and we're just gonna pull out on the path. So this way you have a nice clean path without having that third point there when we don't need it, you know, having that kind of point on top of this curve if we don't need it, okay. And again at from this point, we can use our direct selection tool. We could tweak these curves ever so slightly and get those tow line up. If I had done something like this and I didn't like having this extra point appear, I would just hit minus and I would take that point out. And then you can always use your convert anchor point and have that smoother. So if you do have a problem, you're not sure where to put a point. Um, let's say you put I'm gonna hit plus toe at a point. Let's say, put a point here and I realized it kind of made a bump in the bird's head If I looked at it and I kind of had, like, a little, like, weird thing there and I want to take it out, you could always just go back and minus and take that anchor point out and then hit your anchor point tool, which is shift. See, I'm trying really hard not to use a lot of key commands and shortcuts so that I don't confuse it so you could always take away the point like that. Okay, and then I am going to go back with my direct selection tool, and I'm gonna tweak that. I use this kind of as a rough draft is get those curves in there, get the whole thing plotted really quickly. And then I spend my time refining. I hope that helps in this lesson. We learned how to use the anchor point tool. We converted anchor points from smooth to corner and corner to smooth. And I showed you an anchor point tool trick. That was totally cool. I know, right? 12. Project Set Up: we're going to start our Fox projects now, And in order to do that, we need to set it up. The first thing we're gonna do is we're gonna learn how to important image and turn that sketch to image into a template. Then we're gonna learn all about layers and we're gonna create our own custom color palette . Let's get started. Let's start setting up our template first. Now we're gonna get started on our project, But this time our documents gonna be a little bit different. So let's go over to create new and we want an eight by tens of the wits. It's going to be eight inches and your hype is going to be 10 inches and then go ahead and hit the create. But we're gonna drop in the image of the fox that we're going to trace. So you're gonna go toe file place we're gonna navigate to where you downloaded all your worksheet from the Project and Resource section. We're gonna click Project Fox tracing and we're gonna hit place Now, this is different than what we've done in the past. I'm gonna show you what happens when you just click like we did in the past. Our fox is way too big. That drawing is way too big. Oh, no. So what we're gonna do is we're gonna hit, delete, and I'm gonna show you what to dio. You're gonna go back to file place, select your fox tracing hit place, and this time you're gonna go to the top corner, click hold and drag all the way down to the bottom corner and release and your box will be in place. Now that we have our fox image placed, you'll notice there's a diagonal line which indicates that this image is selected and it also indicates it's a place to image or it's an image. So what we're gonna dio is we want to turn this into a template and we want to be able to trace over the top of it. So the first thing I'm gonna do is I'm gonna go to my opacity here at the top. If you don't have it at the top, you can go to window transparency and release, and you will see it come up and we're gonna change the opacity to 50% and hit OK, collapse your window and you'll see that it is lighter. We want it lighter so we can trace over and see through it. The next thing we're gonna dio make sure it's selected user selection to will make sure it selected and go to your layers palette. Your layers palette is here. On the right hand side, it looks like two stacked pieces of paper. If you don't haven't go up to a window and go down toe layers, select your layers icon and this window will pop up. What we're gonna do is we're gonna click on these three lines at the top and go all the way down to where it says template and release what that is going to do. It is going toe lock our layers so we can't draw on it, and it gives you kind of this different icon over here. Notice if I take my brush tool and I try to draw on this, nothing happens. And that's exactly what we want. Let's learn about layer. Think of a layer as clear piece of ass Aetate Artwork can go on each layer together. It's an easier way to group artwork or work on separate pieces out of time as we're working through this fox illustration. We will have different layers for our document. We will have a top layer, which is a layer for our template. We will have a layer for our head and the details for the head. We will have a Lear for the body and then we'll have a layer for the background and the background details. So our fox has been place and it's been placed in a template layer. If you double click this layer weaken, rename this s template. This will help us organize our layers. As we go, I'm going to click, create a new layer and I'm going to rename it Fox Body. This is where we're gonna organize and put anything related to our fox body. The layer above that in the crate New layer is going to be called the Fox head. I'm going to rename it by double clicking it. It's important to note when you're working on layers, these colors And at first when I was a beginner, I didn't notice them. I'm gonna go on my fox body layer. Let's go ahead and create a box. This box has a stroke of black and a fill of white, but you'll notice it's on the fox body layer, which is indicated here with bread notice. When I use the selection tool and I select that artwork, it is outlined in red, this selected in red, and we will know what's on that layer. If I like to move this box to the fox head layer, I can take this red box and pull it up. Now the box is located on the fox hit lair and indicated by selection that it is green notice. It is still has a stroke of black and a fill of whites. Just when you select it, the green indicates which Leyritz on. By selecting the layer or selecting the circle, it indicates green and anything that's on that layer will be selected and you can drag between layers. I'm gonna go ahead and delete that box. The other thing that's important to note about layers is you can reorder them. Whatever's on the bottom layer is on the bottom of the stack. I want my template to be on the very top so that we can trace and draw and see what's underneath it. I'm gonna click and hold and drag this layer to the top. Now my temple is on the top and the Fox head is next. And the fox body. I'm gonna delete the fox head layer. For now. I can just click the garbage can and that layer will go away. Let's create our own custom palette. Let's bring in our palate for this drawing. We're gonna go to file open and we're going to navigate to the project in resource Section that you downloaded from this class. Find the document that's called Woodland Palette. Got a I I've got a bullet point in front of mind to it would show up on this screen, but yours will just say woodland palette. We're gonna go ahead and we're learning the bottom right of the screen and click the open. But we're gonna get this crazy thing about symbols and slices. Don't worry about that. Just hit. Yes, we're gonna use our selection tools and we're gonna click, hold and drag all the way from left to right and select these colors. We're gonna go up to the top and hit edit copy, and then we're going to click the tab to the left, which is our untitled document that we started working. And this is the tablet in. Now. Currently, we're gonna click this other town, and we're gonna go at it paste. That is gonna go ahead and copy our palates into the new document. You'll notice it is currently selected. We're gonna go over to our swatches section and click, and it will open up by clicking this folder down here at the bottom that says new color group. It will bring in all these colors force. So let's go ahead and click the folder. And at the top where it says color Group one, let's call it Woodland Fox and hit. OK, you'll now see that this palette was added to our swatches. We no longer need all these watches here and let's not look at them because it's just gonna make things more confusing and hectic. Don't worry, I'm not gonna break your adobe illustrator. This whole swatches palette will open back up in your next document that you open. I'm gonna go ahead and start by clicking this first read Swatch and coming all the way down holding shift Gonna hold Chip now and I'm gonna select this purple box all of these watches are selected, and I'm gonna hit Deletes Watch the garbage can and I'm gonna hit. Yes. Again. Do not be alarmed when you open a new document. All those swatches will return. These watches are for this particular document. Now that all of these swatches have been added to our panel, we can come over here and hit delete and all those others watches will disappear. I'm gonna hit my double arrow tool here to collapse my window and hit my pen tool. I'm ready to begin drawing my fox. In this lesson, we learned how to import a sketch and turn it into a template so we could trace it. We learned all about layers what the color indicators mean and how to rearrange layers. And we also learn how to create a custom color. 13. Project Part 1: The Body: in this lesson. We're gonna talk about how to create artwork in a stacking order, and then we're gonna move on to create the fox body. When you're creating artwork, it's best to think in terms of shape. And I usually work from the back forward. I start from a back piece of artwork, and each time I create a new piece of artwork, I stack that on top. Think of it as stickers on your acid. Tate. I created this document to show you how we're gonna work and how we're going to move forward. I'm gonna open up my layers panel for a minute. We're gonna look at the fox body. The very first shape we're gonna create is this shape right here it is the fox body, and it is on the bottom. Next, we're gonna create this chest shape right here. We're not worried about what's happening down here because the legs and tail are gonna go right on top after that will create the left leg and the right leg. So those go on top of that. I also created the strokes for the front legs and then I moved them behind these legs right here last will create the tail. The tail is a little bit more difficult because it built in back of the fox and in front of the fox, I'm gonna show you how to do this. And this was a challenge that I had as a beginner. But here is the back part of the tail. And here is the front part of the tail and the white part of the tale right there. So that is how we're gonna go about and work on this. This is all one layer with all these pieces stacked on top of each other, like stickers in that layer making sure my fox body is selected. I'm gonna begin drawing my fox. I'm gonna go to my swatches palette now that we have our swatches incorporated and I'm gonna select my stroke being this rust color and I'm gonna double click and collapse this, I'm gonna take my zoom tool and zoom on into this fox body and begin. We're gonna just do this outermost part of the body that I showed you earlier Hit p for your pen tool and we're gonna draw this kind of oval shape of the fox body were not gonna worry about what happens behind the face or what happens behind the lakes in the tail. So I'm going to start. This is the area that I really care about. So I'm gonna start up here. I'm going to click holding drag and kind of make this oval shape again. We're not worried about the shape behind the fox body here, and we're going to make sure that we close our path using the direct selection tool. As we've learned in the past lessons, we're gonna go in and we're gonna make any adjustments. We need to get this body the way we want. Okay, with that still selected, I am going to use this arrow and swap the stroke in the Phil and make sure that I have this the rust color. I'm gonna go ahead and hit the stroke, and I want to make the stroke. This at charcoal black. It's next to to the left of the black. Here. I'm gonna click that and we'll get a stroke there of one. Okay, so that shape is now finished, and I'm gonna work my weight forward. Next. I'm going to go ahead and take this cream color stroke. And I'm going to say no, Phil, and I'm going to trace around this inner part of the body. So I'm gonna use my pen tool, and I'm going to start here not worrying about what happens here or here, but mainly caring about this inside space. I'm going to click, hold and drag, click, hold a drag and create this curve shape, as we've learned in the past. Almost an oval, Really focusing on getting this area here, the body, the way I want notice. I'm making sure I have a closed path. Any adjustments you want to make make with a direct selection. And we've done this many times in this lesson. I'm gonna click and make the adjustment that I want again. I'm really concentrating on this area right here. I'm gonna go ahead and swap, and then I'm going to choose my stroke to be the same color of black. We've now got the back part of the body and we have the chest. Next, we're gonna do the two legs again. I'm gonna choose my stroke to be rest and my fil to be none. I'm gonna choose my pen tool again. I'm going to zoom in and I'm gonna create this shape. It is also an oval, and I'm gonna make a kind of a curve here a C curve and come back down. I always like to start off the piece of artwork. If this is the air, um, concentrated, start down here. If it any point you have trouble when you go to start your path, your accidentally selecting thes previous paths going head and hold down shift, and that will allow you to create a path on top of the previous paths we've created. I'm going to start further down here so I don't have that trouble. I'm gonna click, drag and hold, and I'm gonna make this rounded shape follow it around. You can put a point up here or try to make a nice seeker. I'm around and close your path again using the direct selection tool. That's where we're gonna go win and tweak that. Make any adjustments. You need to get the curves just right. This point needs to be moved out of it like we've done in the past. We're going to swap our stroke and Phil and we're gonna go here and we're gonna make our stroke again. The same color black click in the selection tool. We can click off that and we're gonna go to the other leg, so notice this is in the back. This is in the middle, and this is the top of our sandwich. We're now going to do this leg. Our stroke as its rust color. Click the film None. Cliff P for pen tool. I'm going to begin this leg again. The same thing. We've kind of got a curve going here. This is a very interesting curve. It's kind of flat, so just take one piece at a time. So I'm gonna start off my path here, and I'm just gonna do kind of a nice flat C curve here and try to get this curve correct. Then I can work my way around about here and click golden drag. Continue click cold and drag and close my path again. Used the direct selection tool to tweak your path. Get it the way you want it. Adjust those handles if you need Teoh. And again, it doesn't matter what it looks like down here. This is the critical part right there. And I'm gonna go ahead and swap the stroke. And Phil and I were going to get my stroke here, and I'm gonna make it this charcoal grades, we've got that part of the body. So those air now on top of the chest and the back next, I'm going to do these two kind of front legs and those are just strokes. There's no Phil here. They're just lines. So I'm going to use this for my stroke. I'm gonna have no Phil, and I'm gonna slip my pen tool and these legs have a little bit of a curve toe. So I'm just gonna make a very flat and Lucy curve starting at the top I'm gonna click hold in drag And I'm gonna come on down I'm gonna overlap this path And click, hold and drag Remember, we're gonna exit out So go off your path and exit I'm gonna do that again. I'm gonna click pulled and dragged I'm gonna come down here, click cold and drag and I'm gonna exit out of my path Get my direct selection tool and go ahead and position this way that you I want your leg to be It's too high you can make those adjustment. Okay, I'm gonna close this swatches palette, and we're gonna notice now that we have these two legs air in front of the bath legs. Let's go to our layers for a minute. I'm gonna go ahead and turn off the layers. Normally, you have an eye that shows you how to turn off and on to see what you're doing on the templates indicated by this box. But let's go ahead and turn it off so we can more clearly see what's happening are two front legs we did last. So they are on top of thes thes legs right here of our fox. And we want thes strokes to be in back of these legs. So what we're gonna do is beginnings our selection tools. And we're gonna select these to rust colored legs. My holdings ship and we're gonna go upto object a range bring to front now. Thes legs are in front of these two legs. Okay? It's looking great. Just completed the body. Don't forget to save your document group to file and save in this lesson. We learned how to create artwork from the bottom to the top in stacking order. And we also created our fox body 14. Project Part 2: The Tail: in this lesson. We're gonna work on the fox tail. We're gonna work on artwork that's both in front of and behind the fox body. I'm gonna show you a tip for using the shape builder tool for trimming off excess lines. And we're gonna use a decorative brush. Let's get started. Next, We're gonna do the back part of our tail. Make sure we're on the fox body, which we are. We're gonna use our pen tool goto our swatches. I'm gonna again make my color rust and the back I'm gonna make. No, Phil, I'm gonna make the big circle of this tale If you notice this part of the tale, We're just doing this back part here. It's almost a complete circle. So I'm going to start the very top, which would be 12 o'clock. I'm going to click holding drag and I'm gonna begin my back part of my tail, which is gonna be the round circle. I'm gonna go the next point. That's the furthest out the outermost point of extreme most point on the outside of this shape, which is right here. And I'm gonna click, hold and drag and we can make those adjustments later, I'm gonna go down to six o'clock. If I imagined Oclock there and I'm gonna click Hold on, drag again. Well, perfect this later. And I'm just going to go around and again. It doesn't matter what it looks like, because it's gonna be all the way to the back. We can use our direct selection tool. We're going to click and make this adjustment. This is the critical part. So let's go ahead and make sure that this is the way we want. Okay? Now, we're gonna go ahead and swap the this stroke and the Phil and we have our image. I'm gonna tweak this just a little bit more. Okay? So we now have this image. You'll notice. Let's go back to our layers panel that this is on the top because we made it last. Okay, so we want this to be in the very back of the body, so I'm gonna keep this selected. I'm gonna go up to the top. It says object, arrange and send to back. Now, this is the very back of the fox body. Let's go ahead and make that stroke that dark charcoal gray again. Okay, we're gonna go back to our layers and we're gonna turn back on the template so we can see what we're doing. The next part. Go and select off the next part. We're gonna do the front part of this Fox tail. So let's start that now with our pen Tal's selected and are Swatch. I want my stroke to be the brown. I want my field to be none. And I'm gonna go ahead and make this fox shape. You can start wherever you like. I'm gonna go ahead and start from this tip so I could make this beautiful curve. This is the outermost point of this tale. So I'm going to start here. I'm gonna click hold and dragged the direction that I want this curve to be and I'm gonna go to the lowest point Click, hold and drag. I'm gonna go to the highest point, click hold in drag and then I'm gonna go to the outermost point here on this circle Click Hold on, drag. And we're just gonna go all the way around because we're gonna be closing this up The lowest point here, click cold and drag. You can put a point here but I don't think it needs that. I think if we close our point, click Holden, drag, weaken. Get this bottom curve the way we want. Do not worry about the top. The way it's going, we can let go. It's closed. Hold down your option or your alter key and drag that handle back around. Okay, Now we're gonna do as always, get are direct selection tool and go in there and change these curves any way you want. This is kind of funky Here. We can pull this out of it and see if we can get that on the Kerr. We can adjust this if we need to and pull this handle out. Okay? This is the really critical part right Here is where these two overlap. So let's zoom in and take a look at that. We want this to definitely go over that tail that outline and cover up this section underneath. Okay, so I zoom back out. I got my tail the way we want. If we want to bring this in a little bit more, don't worry about this place right here. We're gonna deal with this later, so I'm gonna go ahead and swap my stroke. And, Phil, I'm gonna go over here and make my stroke on the outside that dark charcoal grade. Let's take a look at how we're doing. Let's look at our progress. Turn off the template and see how we're doing. Go and select off that and you can see the only thing I don't like is this kind of bump right here. And we can fix that by dragging the handle here and rounding that out a bit again. No one's going to see that tracing so you can tweak it any way you want. This is the perfect time to go up and hit file and save your documents. So let's go back to our layer panel and we're gonna turn on our template layer so we can see this zigzag go ahead and hit the double arrows to collapse it. And then we're gonna hit P for a pen tool. I'm just gonna make sure that I am on the fox body. I was on the template layer, so I'm on the fox body layer and then go ahead and collapse the arrow. I'm going to zoom in here what I'm gonna do with the pen tools. I'm gonna do this exact. So we're gonna begin by starting off this zigzag off the tail and I'm gonna show you why in just a minute. So I'm going to click, Hold on drag and kind of start my first very flat seeker from to click at the end point, click, Hold and drag. And that starts my very first drug. I want my field to be none, so we can just go over here and click none. And as you see, my preview tip is showing me that it wants to make a curve. So what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna go back the last point I made and click and release, and then I can start again. So I'm gonna click, hold on, drag and create that angle. Okay, then I'm gonna go back down here and you see, there's kind of a funky angle I'm gonna go back to my last point click and I'm gonna click . Hold on Dry. Gonna zoom in just a bit more for you. Okay. So again we have this weird. It's trying to make a curb for us is trying to help us, but we don't want that. So I'm gonna click on the last point I made I'm to go the next point I want I'm gonna click , hold in, drag, click on the last point, click cold and drag. And I'm going to continue this all the way to the end. Here, click cold in drag Click Holden Dry and again, we're gonna make sure that we go off the fox tail. Okay? Off the fox town, I'm gonna show you why in just a minute, go ahead and hit escape to get off that path. Great. Okay, you've just completed yours. Exact. What we're gonna do next is working a trim off this piece right here in this piece right here, and we're gonna make sure me trim it. It's exactly on the center of this line. So we're gonna be using the shape builder tool for this. So the first thing we're gonna do is use our black selection tool. And while this is still selected, we will hold down, shift and select the tail. Next. What we're gonna do is we're gonna go to this shape builder tool. It's two circles with the little arrow. If I click and hold you can see that the live paint bucket and the like paint buckets, selection tool or underneath, but it's two circles and a triangle. Next, you're gonna hold down the option if you're on the Mac or an altar. If you're on the PC and we're gonna hover right over just this line segment and you'll see it turned to a minus my click and that will trip exactly where I needed to be. And then I'm gonna trim this side. Okay? One other thing. I want you to notice I'm going to go back to my direct selection tool, but I'm going to zoom in for a minute. I'm gonna hide by hitting command age or control H They're still selected, but I'm hiding it. And you can look at these and they're kind of square and kind of ugly. These points here. Okay, so I'm gonna unhygienic again by hitting command age or control age. I'm gonna go to this stroke panel on the right hand side and click it. And what you can do is you can change the caps and the corners to round it. So I'm gonna click that middle section on both. I'm gonna hide this again by hitting command H. And you can see now these are rounded, insists square. So sometimes I use that. Just soften up my designs just a bit again. I'm gonna hit command h toe unhygienic. Um, okay. Next one would do is go back to the shape builder tool, and I'm gonna click in this area. This is gonna turn this into its own shape. So it's going to turn into that point and tell this exact So I'm gonna go to my swatches, I'm gonna select it, and I'm gonna color it white. Okay, again, the templates underneath. So it may be hard to kind of see what's going on that zoom out for a minute. I'm gonna collapse my window and opening layers. I'm turning off my layers for minutes. You can see what's going on. Okay, so we just made this tale. Doesn't that look great? You did it. Okay, we're gonna change this stroke outline right now. It's a very basic stroke. Gonna do is I'm gonna use my selection tool, and I'm gonna click. Hold on, Dragon, select this fox. I can go to my window and hit brushes that's gonna populate my brush area and we're gonna be using this brush right here called charcoal feather. Click one time and you can see it's converted this into this kind of brush stroke. Now, right now, it looks a bit too much, but we can bring that down a bit. We go up to this stroke, many of the top, and if you don't have it here, it's on the right hand side and we're just going to click the air on Were to come down to 1/2 a point, and that's just gonna make it look so much better. Excellent. Now, normally I would be I would wait till the end before I did anything else, but we're gonna finish the fox body. The important thing to note here is that you can change this back if you want, so I'm gonna change it to stroke and change it toe. Once you can see, we change that back. That can change this to six points, and I could make it really fit the same thing with the brush. We can change the thickness of that one point on the change it back 2.5. Once you hit, expand appearance. It changes it from a shape with an outline stroke to an actual shape. I need to do that for the tail reason for that as I need to erase part of this section. So I'm only gonna select detail right now, almost like the whole tale by holding down shift and I'm gonna go toe object, expand appearance, and I'm gonna show you what happens. I'm gonna do that for a minute. I'm gonna try to show you what I'm talking about. Zoom in. Okay, so we've got all these little black extra little shapes and we want to make it once, all of black outline. So I'm going to select it all the black, and I'm gonna hit in your pathfinder. This right here It says, merge. If you don't have Pathfinder, it's under one of these tax you goto window. I want to show you it's important we expanded appearance. I'm gonna hit object on group. You do not need to end group, but I want to show you something. So when Ewan group it, it changes these into separate pieces. I'll show it. I mean, if I click this I now have this rust color. I now have this white color, and I now have this black as one shape. So the shape builder tool turned this into a shape I'm gonna undo several times. Stoop with the tail back together. This black right here is scratchy, so it's not connected. I'll show what I'm talking about. So this black is scratching its broken. So this piece is now not connected all the way around, which is fine, because we're gonna erase it. But if I click on this piece, you can see this piece right here is a shape with a stroke and a fill. So that's the difference. This is a shape with a stroke on. Once I hit expand appearance, it breaks each piece up into separate items. Now, I'm gonna zoom in here, and I don't want my tail connected like this. Okay, Next I'm gonna hit the eraser, and I'm just gonna go and I'm going to erase the part of the tale. If it is too big or too small, erase or you can soon enough by using the right bracket or zoom it down and use the left bracket. Then when I click office, I could see I erase that part of the tail that was right here. That black outline. Okay, so this section is now completed. In this lesson, we arranged the fox tell both in front and behind the fox's body. We got a first glance at the shape builder tool, using it as a training tool. And we also use the charcoal feather brush to give our fox and personality. 15. Project Part 3: The Head: in this lesson. We're gonna create the fox head starting from the back and working our way to the front. We're gonna use the shape builder tool for trimming again. And we're also going to use the same decorative brush so the head matches the body. So we've just worked on the body here, and we are going to work on the head now. So we're gonna lock this layer down by clicking once, and it will lock it, and we're going to create a new layer right above it and give your layers and name. So I'm gonna put this as body. The top one is template, and this is going to be okay, So I've turned the head on and we're gonna do this same thing. We're gonna work from the back, then come forward. So we'll start with the ears, and then we'll come here to this part of the face right here and then come to where the eyes and the lighter part of the faces. Okay, so I'm gonna start with my swatches. I can start with black, and then I want to make sure that my Phyllis none so that I can see what I'm doing, I'm going to zoom in here. I'm gonna click and hold and drag forward here, Okay? Peeper. Penta, We're gonna start just with the ears. I want to zoom in there a bit. Okay, so we have a nice curve here so I can start there, remember to start off the ear itself underneath into the body shape. So I'm going to start down here and I'm gonna work on that curve. It looks like there's, like, a little curve going this way. So I'm gonna go back on this point, click and then drag so I could get it better. Okay. And I'm gonna be going this way and I don't want to Straight lines. I'm gonna click on the last point. And this is a nice, beautiful s curve. So if I click and hold, I can start my new curve Click hold in drag. And then it doesn't matter what it looks like behind this feather, cause that's gonna be covered up and make sure we're closing the point. And I'm going to do the same thing. I'm gonna create a curve here for this year, so I'm gonna start outside the ear. Click cold and drag because it's a curve. I'm going to go to the lowest point here. Click, hold and drag and then go to the highest point here. Click Hold on, drag. And then again, you want to make sure you come outside the ear, move off the path and hit escape, and we're gonna do the other air the same way. So starting off the year itself, kind of behind the head I'm gonna click, hold and drag, click on the high point here and then click on the lowest point and then click on the top. I now want to go this direction. It's a straight line. So click once hold and drag so I can start getting a curve click holding and dragging and closing this one up. And then we're gonna do the same thing. We're gonna create this line so I'm a start up here. Click Hold on, drag. Go to the lowest point, click hold and dragged the highest point the cold and drag and then come out and then we're gonna go off the path and escape. Okay, let's make any adjustments to this line that we may want. So I'm just going back here in fixing any of these things that I don't like. I am going to hold down, option and pull this handle back. Make sure that I have this the way I like it. Before I turned into a shape, I'm gonna hold down the shift and expect the here and the line, and I'm going to the shape builder tool and clicking. And then I can go up to this part that hangs over and hold down my option and subtract that little piece on the top and the bottom. That's a little trick and then so I have a shape. So it's not just one color shape with a line down the middle. If it we can use the shape builder tool to click these two pieces so they can be separate colors. So let's go ahead and colorize this. Let's make the inside of the ear. It's cream, and let's make the outside of the ear this rust color. Okay, And remember, everything's lighter because we're using a template. Okay, same thing here. Make sure that you first get your your drawing perfected and get your drawing the way you want before. Use the shape builder tool you can still do it afterwards, but I'd like to have everything cleaned up. So once again, I'm going to select both pieces. I have the lines selected and that I'm a select the ear itself, and I'm gonna go to the shape builder tool, and I'm gonna hit the minus and select just the point that hangs over. And then I'm gonna select these two pieces so I can color it. This piece is going to be this rest Iccho. Okay, so my ears are ready to go working my way from the thing that is the furthest back to the front. So I'm gonna work on this face part next. So I want no Phil right now so I can see what I'm doing. It doesn't matter. We're gonna be doing this part of the face. It doesn't matter what's happening back here, because this piece will cover it. So I'm just going to start start here, click cold and drag so I can get my first curve. Okay, I'm gonna zoom in. Okay, so we've done this before. We know if we want to go back this way, we have a curve. And that's not what we want, So click once and we can start fresh click Hold in drag And here we have kind of a funky curve going around So click once click Hold in drag Come up here Click waas Click Hold in drag again. We see our preview and we don't like what's happening there. So click it cold in drag and you're gonna do the same thing all the way around. So I'm going to go to the middle of his face because I want a nice, smooth curve here. Let's see how that looks. And we remember we can come back and fix it. So that's good. And we're gonna come all the way over to this point. Click hold in drag. Okay, we have a curve and we don't want a curve. Said go back to your last point. Click hold and drag again. A curve Click, Holden, Drag! We're gonna do this all the way back up his face. You're probably getting very good at this now. You're not hating the pen tool so much right now. I want a nice, beautiful curve here, so I'm gonna put a point here and get that curve the way I want and then I'm going to just come up here. Doesn't matter what happens in this part of his head. Okay, so we're gonna go back, okay? So we can perfect this point if we want. Remember, we had done this in a previous video where we went to the anchor point and kind of pulled down a bit. So you can always do that. Get that anchor the way you want. I want that to be even, and I'm gonna zoom in here because I don't like what's happening here. We kind of got this round. Think so? I'm gonna pull this point over and hold down option as I kind of move that anchor point this way. Okay, so now we can color this, reduce that. We're gonna make the fill the rest color, and now we're gonna do this part of his head, which is on top. So again, we want no fills. We can see what we're doing. Go to your pen, Tool P. And we're going to start from the top middle here. Click Hold, drag. As we know, we're gonna have a curve on both sides. So click. Hold on, Dr. And we're just gonna try to get this Probably the furthest point out here, Probably right here. And then we want to get this part perfect, cause this is going to go over the top here, So I'm gonna click, hold and drag, and again, we don't want that curve. You see, it's kind of looping. So click on your last point and we can either click Hold on, drag. But I think that that's gonna extend that handle too much. So I'm going to go to the innermost point here and then click down. I think it would give me more freedom to get this curve just the way I want. It doesn't matter what happens behind the nose, so I'm just gonna kind of square that off, and I'm gonna try to match my point right where it is here, kind of on this side. I think it will keep my curves close all the way here to my endpoint, and then we're gonna go up again. I'm gonna try to match this curve and then come around the top and we're gonna make sure it close is the pack closes and you can pool your handle, okay. And then this area we're going to make it. We want this solid. We want that to be the cream color. Oh, I have that in reverse. We want that to be the rest, and we want this part to be the cream color. Okay, it's coming along. Let's go ahead and do the nose and the eyes and then we'll come back and do the details for the nose. We can go up here to where you see the rectangle to go down to the Ellipse and we're just going to click and drag and hold until we get a shape. We like the size you want And I am going to color that this dark gray with the black outline lets you with a dark grey out. Okay, And remember, things look a little funny because we have this template behind it. And then let's go ahead and zoom in and do the eyes. So this is a C curve, so we know we're going to click and go down the direction of the curve just like we're drawing it. So if we were drawing, it would start made pull down, and then we would get to here and we would pull up. So we're gonna click here and pull up. Try to make your handles about the same length, and we want a no feel here. Okay, Exit. You want to escape that path or exit that path? Okay. And the next we have the little lashes to do so p for pencil. And you can just click. I'd like to have just a little curve to my lashes, give a little personality. And this is where you want to use the command. So click your point, click, drag and hold. I'm going a little curve Go off and hit command and that Will you get right back to that pen tool, and you can do it again. Now, if you want, you can copy and paste that same I to this side and flip it. Let's go ahead and do that. We're gonna copy. I'm gonna select this with the Black arrow, the selection tool. Gonna hold down the shift and select these other pieces. I'm gonna group them by going object group. I'm gonna coffee, edit, copy and it paste. So I have to, but I want to make sure that it looks like it's flipped. So it's It's flipped around, so it looks the same. You see, this is kind of like a little bit whiter than this side. So I'm gonna go object, transform, reflect, and we're gonna reflect the vertical. And now we have the same. I flipped around. That'll give us a little bit of cemetery before we move on. We can do the same stroke as before, so let's go ahead and select what we've made so far. I'm gonna do the eyes a minute and let's go up and hit that feather brush that we did the charcoal feather and go to 1/2 a plane. And then we can decide if we would like to make the eyelashes the same type of brush stroke , the charcoal feather brush or not, This is where we can make some choices and make it our own. In this lesson, we completed the fox head from front to back. We used the same tip that I showed you before with the shape builder tool using it to trim . And we used the charcoal feather brush on the heads Who would match the body 16. Project Part 4: The Details: in this lesson. We're gonna concentrate on the details for the fox. We're gonna start with the feathers and move on to the headband. Will also used to shape builder Tip that we learned in the last lesson. Okay, in this lesson, we're gonna work on the details. We're going to start with this feather, and we're gonna make a copy, and we're also going to work on this headband. Let's get started. We're going, Teoh, make a new layer. I'm gonna lock this so that when we work on these other pieces, we don't get in the way. We're not accidentally clicking things. So all I did was hit lock on the head and I'm gonna hit a new layer. And I'm gonna call this layer double clicking layer for and I'm gonna call it details. So we want to make sure that we click on this layer. That layer is highlighted, and we're gonna go ahead and collapse at menu by hitting those double arrows and go to our Pentothal again. We're gonna work on thing that would be the furthest back. And that would be this feather. And we're actually gonna do to feathers were gonna make one copy and paste it. So we have to and modify one of them. So I'm going to start down here behind the headband. Click cold and drag. I'm gonna make this curve here again. The less points, the smoother your lines will be You can see that we're getting a curve And we want to go to a straight line So click the last point Gonna just zoom in and click We're gonna go to this top part of the feather So click hold and drag To get this the way we want it We want to come down here That's obviously a problem Click, click Hold on, drag And this is a problem Go to my last point Click We're gonna click holding drag one A little bit of a curve there Look our last point because we're making a straight line Come down and then you can come right down here to the bottom and close it and pull out. We're looking at that left side. Don't worry. What's happening with the right side? Pull out and make sure that you kind of like where your feathers going at the bottom? Remember, at this point, we can hold down option on the Mac Ault on the PC, and we can just adjust those if we need to. So I'm gonna go to the direct selection to look at this handle, and I can adjust that one as well. Okay, so this feather color is going to be orange kind of this lighter orange color, and I think I'm just gonna copy this at it. Copy. And I'm gonna edit paste, and I'm gonna move this feather over here for a minute. I'm gonna change this to the green color, and I think I'm going to get rid of this area right here. This is a corner point. I want to make that a smooth point. So I'm gonna click hold in drag. So it's nice and smooth, and I'm going to move these bottom points up a little bit, and I'm going to add a point onto each inside here that's going zoom in. I'm just trying to change the shape of this so it doesn't look like we copied in pace, but we can use the and we spent a lot of time, you know, creating artwork. So this is a way to simplify it. Well, down your option key. I'm gonna go ahead and straightened that one out down option Just changing the shape here a little bit. Okay, so we've kind of got more of that kind of feather where the point comes in. Let's put that down a bit. Okay? So just play with your feather there and see if you can get a shape that you like. That's just a little bit different. I just added a point, subtracted some points, okay? And that saves you time from recreating that whole feather all over again. So now let's go ahead and add these stroke down the middle, so I'm gonna click. Hold, drag, click, Hold, drag. Okay. And you can reposition that if you need to. Just a bit. Okay. So we're gonna do the charcoal brush, and then go ahead and change it to a 0.5. Okay, so we'll select both of them together and go object group, and we're gonna bring that and we're gonna put it right behind this peach colored one object. Arrange Send it back. Okay. We're gonna add the details, and then we're gonna rotate this feather. So let's go to our Pento. We're gonna click and hold, click and hold. I'm dragging a little bit getting that shape that I want Okay? And then we're gonna hold command to click off that path. Remember, we want to get back to the pen tool because we're going to be making me. So click and release. Click and release command. Click and release. Click and release Command. If you're on a PC, you'll be doing control. This is where that becomes a shortcut when you're making and you want to go back to the mental over and over. Okay, so I'm going to select all the pieces holding down shift clicking on each piece. Now I'm clicking the outside of the feather I'm gonna say charcoal brush that charcoal feather brush and I must say half a point. And while everything still selected, I'm gonna group. And that way I can move that feather over a little bit. If I hold my selection tool right over the top, it'll turn into two arrows and I can just pool. I'm pulling kind of down into the right kind of separate those feathers a bit. It looks a little bit different because your temple underneath this little different Okay. And then now we're gonna do the headband so you can take your pen tool again. We're going to go past the headband part here. We're going to go past onto the years, so click, hold and drag. And this is just a gentle see curves You can click hold in drag. We want Philip. None exit off your path. We'll do that again. Click cold in drag click cold in drag And we'll even that out. Just a second escape. Okay, so let's zoom in here, and we can perfect this and get this exactly the way we want. So maybe we need this handled to be a little bit longer. And my drawing is a little bit off again. That adds to part of the charm, but we want to even out this headband just a little bit. These may be a little hard to see so you can select those and stroke and then make this, like one point, so it's easier to see. Okay. And now we're going to make the little triangles inside. I'm gonna move this one down, Okay? So with the Penta where these are all gonna be close shape, So let's start in the middle of the Fox's head and we'll do this one. These don't have to be perfect. I think it's more charming for them to be a little bit wonky. You're just gonna click and make straight lines and close each path. Make sure each time you get to the top that you see that little circle icon. Okay, we can select these, and we're gonna go ahead and colorize thes one at a time. So the first one's gonna be this peach color, and then it's gonna be a blue, the light cream back to the peach blue cream back to the peach. Okay, so now you can select all of these and we can say no stroke. All right. Now, if we want to fill in the shape in the back, there's no shape. Right now, there's just a line and the line. So if we tried to color it, it's just two lines. So we're gonna go back and we're gonna go to our layers and unlock the head so we can select that part of the head. We're gonna suck the line, the line in the head. We're gonna go to our shape builder tool again. We're gonna hold down our option, or Ault, and we're gonna click once and get rid of those little pieces off the edges. And then we're gonna click the inside here, and that's going to allow us to color that background green. The outside of that shape it took on the attributes that was right here on the outside of the head. Okay, let's take a look at our work. Let's turn off the template and it is coming along. I'm noticing my feathers or in front of the headband, so let's go ahead and look at our layers. The headband is now on the same layer as the face because when we made that shape, they had van moved to that layer. So what we can do is take these two feathers and whole find the layer and click and hold and drag those down to the head player. So what, We're gonna just take the headband and drag that to the top. Okay, so now the headband is on top and the feathers are behind. And why don't we just take all of these triangles are part of a headband. Click the first and then click all the way down shift click. We're gonna say Object group and then let's just move. Goes down to the headband lair as well. You're doing great. Don't forget to say in this lesson. We completed two feathers, one feather we made and then we copy painted and modified it. We also created a headband is in triangles and close paths, and we used the shape builder tip once again to trim excess lines. 17. Project Part 5: The Background: in this lesson, we're gonna work on the background. We're going to start by creating the background color, and then we're gonna move on to the triangles and the circles that are in the corners, and we're gonna rough in those circles up a bit. Let's get started. Okay? We are almost done with our illustration. In our last illustration, we had our feathers and are headband, and we decided to drive them down to the head layer. So we still have this detailer that is empty and that is fine. We're gonna leave it that way for now. I'm gonna go down here to the new layer. It's right next the garbage can and hit create, and I'm gonna double click this and I'm gonna call this background and I'm gonna move this layer down to the bottom by clicking, holding and drank ing in this lesson, we're gonna go ahead and do the background. We're going to start by hitting our rectangle tools here on the left side. And if you click and hold, you may see a triangular polygon tool in years but we're gonna click and hold and take the rectangle tool and we're gonna go to the top left corner of our document Click one time that's gonna populate this window, and we're gonna go ahead and type in what we want. I've done this before, but you would say eight for the whipped and 10 for the height, and then you'd hit. Okay? And that's gonna make a rectangle the exact size that we want. We're gonna go to our swatches palette, and we're gonna choose this lighter green. Nikola had swapped those out, and I'm gonna say no stroke and collapse that back down while it's still selected. I'm gonna go appear to the align panel. And if you don't have that, you can go to the window. Gautam Online. Sometimes when you open this panel, you may not see this part of the window down here. There may be an arrow you have to click, but we're gonna hit a line to art board. And what that's gonna do is that's gonna line this background box exactly wherever we tell it to. So we wanted lying to the top and we want a line to the left just to make sure it's exactly in the position we want. I'm going to go back and hit a line and make that disappear. So we have our background right there. I'm going to go ahead and lock that and just add another layer so we can do our triangles and our circles here on the next layer without accidentally hitting this next, we're gonna go to the template, turn it on so that we can see where we're gonna be putting our triangles and our circles. So get your pen tool for P, and we're gonna go ahead and we're gonna make some triangles with the closed path. You can do three different triangles, or you can have the same triangle that's up to you. So why don't we go ahead and color this? I'm gonna color in the same order of the headband. So I'm gonna make the 1st 1 peach with no Phil. Okay, next that we can do is we can take this triangle and there's two ways to copy and paste. We've done both of them. You can go to edit copy, edit paste, or you can make sure it selected. Then hold down your option key and then drag and let go. I'm gonna hold down my option key again. Drag and let go. Okay. What? This is selected. I'll choose this as this cream color. I keep doing that as the cream color with no Phil and this one I will choose. Make sure your feels in front. I will choose the blue. Okay. And then we can do is we can go ahead and use the selection tool and select our first triangle. Hold down the shift like the second select the third again we could copy and paste if your comfort that come in or we can hit option And I can just drive these down here So I'm just gonna now I'm just dragging And then I can rotate thes arounds with my items still selected on the selection tool. I'm just gonna hover in the top corner here, and I'm gonna flip this around his drag around, Hold shift towards the end and make sure it's perfectly vertical. Okay, next we're gonna dio are circles So under that same tool for the rectangle click and hold and go down to the Ellipse tool. I'm gonna go up in this corner here, top left corner and I'm gonna click and drag and I'm gonna hold down my shift key and get my first circle kind of the way I want. And then I'm gonna hold down option and I'm gonna get my second circle Click Hold on, drag and then click holding drag again. Next, I'm gonna zoom in. Okay, so these circles are too perfect for me. I don't want them to be this perfect. So while they're selected, I'm gonna go toe effect, distort and transform. I'm gonna go to roughen, and I am gonna go to about 2%. I've already played with this and this will be about eight and smooth. And what this does, is it ruffins up the circle a little, but I'm gonna turn off the template and show you the circles were too perfect. I wanted to be a little more hand drawn, so I went ahead and used that technique. I'm gonna go and click thes holding down shift. I'm gonna go ahead and add it and copy this time because I have to go to the other side of the art Bored. I'm going to zoom out and I'm going to paste and bring these down to this corner. Get that the way I want Henrico. And you can play with that. If you need Teoh and you can open up your circles, give him a little more space, if you'd like. Okay. Wonderful. Look at how great this is Looking OK? In the next video, I'm gonna show you how you can customize and do a few things to make this fox around. Okay? We completed our background. We created a big rectangle in the background and we colored it, and we aligned it. So it was perfectly in length of the art board. We created triangles with the pen tool, and we're totally comfortable with that now. And we created circles and roughen them up. 18. Project Part 6: Customizing: in this video, We're gonna look at customizing the fox. We're gonna look at the eyes, adding some hair, cheeks and freckles. We're at the final review of our artwork, and it's time to make this our own. And we can do this through customizing our own details. So this is a great place to do that. To make some custom is ations and make it your own. The first thing that we're gonna do is we're gonna open up the layers panel. We have the details layers that is blank. I'm gonna unlock my background layer and I'm gonna rename that details slash background. I'm gonna take Blair six where we did the circles and we did the triangles. I'm gonna drag that down the background layer sets all one layer. Now I'm gonna take later six, which is empty, and I'm gonna throw it to the trash. So now I have the details, layer the body, layer the head layer, and I have the template layer which is turned off. So the important thing is we want to make sure we're working on the details layer. So when you're zooming in and you're making changes that we're gonna make You won't accidentally click things you've already done. If you want to make changes to these particular layers the head there, I know we're gonna change eyes. Then you would unlock it. So we're gonna go ahead and start there and we're almost done. So, for example, one of the changes I'm looking at is I want to move this I over a little bit. And after looking at this, I think that I want both of the eyes to have the same stroke and then I'll hold down shift selected ship and change it to this feather, this charcoal feather, and then I'm going to move it Teoh 1/2 a point. So that's one of the changes I want to make. So I'm gonna make a black stroke and get the pencil. I'm going to zoom into this little fox face, but before I do, I'm gonna lock down the head. I'm gonna add a new layer right above them. I just want to make sure that I don't damage any of the work that we've been doing. So I'm going to zoom in and I am just going. Teoh had a little bit of hair on his face. So I'm just gonna add a few strokes just to give him a little personality. And this is just a fun way, you know, the details is where you can a little personality to your artwork. Look at those tool tips so you'll know if you're about to and onto a path that you already have. Okay, so I'm just gonna select those little hairs, make this easier on myself. It's like those hairs. I'm just holding down the shift key, clicking and adding each one of those, and I'm gonna change this to charcoal feather, and I'm gonna change it to 1/2 a point. So that just gives you a little something. And then another thing you can do was add like little little freckles. Arnold cheeks, You can do this with a circle tool. We can make little circles. I didn't have to be the same size just to give him some little freckles for those, like little areas where the whiskers are. And I don't want them to be exact. So that's it. And if you don't like that, you can do like little pink cheeks. Nothing you can too add a little pull Cipto. It's another option to kind of customize. So I'm gonna delete these and I'm gonna click this hold down the option, drag it over, and then I'm just gonna rotate that just a bit. That would be another option if you felt like it needed a little something. You want to customize it a bit? Just bring that up. Don't forget to save. Congratulations. You did it. You completed this fox illustration. I can't wait to see it. Post your project in the project gallery of this class seen in the closing video. 19. Closing: congratulations. You made it through the course. What an accomplishment. Remember the beginning of the course when the pencil was hard and confusing? Now you've got it down. You've been able to make straight lines, and curves have been ableto put them together, and you've been able to create a piece of artwork. If there's one thing I hope you take with you from this class, that is, you can manage the mental. Remember, just do one small piece at a time. Look at one small shape, create that curb for that line and then move on to the next shape. If you get stuff, remember the key and go back to the last anchor point and start again. From there, you've got this. Upload your project to the Project Gallery section of this class. It could be the fox that we created together. Maybe you customize the box with your own color palette or your own details, or you can post your own illustration that you make with the mental either way posted. I can't wait to see it. I'll be following along in the discussion area, responding and commenting. I can't wait to hear from you if you enjoy this class. Please go ahead and review it. Also feel free to follow me on my profile and I can let you know what's coming up next. In this class, I combine my three favorite things teaching technology and creativity. I hope you enjoyed it. Thanks again. See you soon.