How to Use Pen Tool in Illustrator, a Comprehensive Guide to Learning for Beginners

1. Introduction, Understanding How to Use the Pen Tool in Illustrator: Welcome everyone to this course, understanding how to use the Pen tool in Adobe Illustrator. Hi, I'm your host, Elianapls. I've been an educator over the past 28 years, teaching in universities and social platforms covering vector design, page layout, animation techniques, and prototyping. In this Illustrator course, we'll learn how to draw open and closed paths. How to combine curves with straight lines. How to create multiple curves, and how to draw more complicated curves with corner points. In addition to further understanding the functionality of the pentul, we'll practice step step drawing, two ornamental designs. Combining all techniques with tons of tips and trix. By the end of this course, you will have a firm knowledge of how to use the penrul for any platform and get you ready for your o vector projects. 2. How to Use the Pen Tool Setting Up: All right, everyone inside Illustrator, and before I start drawing paths and curves, a couple of things to bring to your attention. Inside the preferences panel under the selection and anchor display. And all the way at the bottom where it says enable rubber band for the Pentrlll. Go ahead and disable that. Would disable the show path preview. While drawing, I'm going to click okay on that. Then under the View menu, I'll check if the smart guides are on which this should be. By default we can have object snapping. Smart guide helps us align, edit, and transform objects or artboards relative to other objects. 3. How to Use the Pen Tool Straight Paths with Open Path: Now looking inside the layers panel, I have created a bunch of examples to help you understand the different concepts of using the Pentrol. Beginning with the first example, we have straight lines with open path. So inside the layers panel, I select this layer from the T bar, I grab the Pro, I will click right here to add the first Eq point, then go right here to add the second Ek point. As I move to add the next Ek point, I get the smart guides, magenta line indicator, which helps me to align things up. I will continue adding more K points with the help of the smart guides to complete this straight segment. As you can see here, things get covered with the white field color assigned to this layer. To remove that inside the property spanel and under the appearance, I will click on the Field thumbnail and then select None for color. Now we have an open path, straight segment indicated by a separate anch point on each end. 4. How to Use the Pen Tool Straight Paths with Closed Path: For the next example, we have straight lines with closed path inside the layers panel. First, I would toglef the visibility of the first layer, toggle on the visibility of the second layer, Select the layer from the tool bar. Once again, I grab the pencil and I'll make sure that I only have a stroke color. Then right here I'm going to click once to add the first point. Now moving on to the second point, right here, I'll press and hold the shift key on the keyboard to make sure the path is a straight path. And click once with the shift El still pressed and with the help of the smart guides indicated by the magenta line, I'll go ahead and continue adding more straight segments to close the path. I'll mass over right here on the first icy point. Now a small circular pierce right next to the penul pointer. All I have to do is just click once to close the path. Now we have a close path where all c points are connected to each other. 5. How to Use the Pen Tool Combining Curves with Straight Lines: Next up, we have combining curves with straight lines. Once again, I will talk a the visibility of this layer. Talk on the visibility of that layer selected, Grab the petrol, make sure that only have a stroke. We click and drag upboards to create the first smooth point. A smooth point is made up of two linked control handles. That's why we're going to create those score paths. Now, in the event that you misplaced the smooth points with the mouse held down, I'll press the Space part on the keyboards and move the smooth point around and place it to the desired position. Release the Space bar and then press the shifty on the keyboards to constrain the tool movement to multiples or 45 degrees, in this case, the score. Keep it right here and I'm going to release, then I'll go right across right here. With the help of the smart guides and the magenta line indicator, I will click and drag downwards and also press the shifting on the keyboards to constraint the movement and release. All right, now we have a curve followed by straight path, which means we don't need this outgoing control handle. I will have her over the last points. A convert point icon appears next to the pentrol. I will click on this K points to convert the smooth point to a corner point. All I have to do is just hover over right here and click on to create the straight segments. Now a curve path is coming, which means this last K point needs to have a control handle to be able to create this upcoming curve path. Once again, I will have her over this last Kpoints convert point icon appears. We'll click hand drag downwards and pressure shift key on the keyboard to make sure this is straight. I'll release that. I'll go right here. And then click hand drag upwards. As I press the shift key on the keyboard to constraint the movement, I release that. Now from the curve path, we have a straight segment, which means we don't need the outgoing control handle. In this case, I'm going to hover over this last K points. A convert point icon appears. Click on that to convert the smooth points to a corn points. All I have to do is here is just click once to create the straight segments. Once again from the straight segment, now we have a curve path following, which means we're going to need a control handle coming out out of these anchor points we'll have over here. And then click drag upwards, and press shift key on the keyboard. Release that, and then go right across, Click, drag downwards, press shift key. Here we go. We have combining curves with straight lines. 6. How to Use the Pen Tool Multiple Curves: For this next example, we have multiple curves, which means we are going to need smooth points all around. I grab the pencil, I make sure that I only have a stroke. And then right here I'm going to click and drag airpods to create the first smooth point. I'm also going to press shifting on the keyboards to constrain the movement and release. I'll go right across and with the help of the smart guides and the magenta line indicator, I will click and drag downwards and press shift on the keyboard to constraint the movements. I'll release that. Go right across, then click upwards and press shift on the keyboards to create this curve path. I release that right here, right across. Again, with the help of the smart guides, I will click downwards and press shift on the keyboards to create this curve path as well. Now I have an open path with multiple curves. 7. How to Use the Pen Tool Curves with Corner Points (A): All right, here we have the first example of curves with corner points. Once again, I'll grab the pencil, I'll make sure that I have a stroke. Then right here, I'm going to click and drag downwards to create the first smooth point. As I do, I'm going to press Shift on the keyboard to constrain the movements and release. I'll go right across. And with the help of the smart guides, I'm just going to click once to create a corner point. Now a curve is coming up, which means we're going to need a control handle coming out of this anchor point. I would have over till I see the convert point icon. Then click and drag downwards and press shift on the keyboard to constrain the movement and release. I'll go right across here and click on to create the Conner points. Once again, a curve is coming up, which means we're going to need a control handle coming out of these anchor points. I will hover over till I see the convert point, then click drag downwards and press shift as to constrain the movements. Release that right here. Just click on to create the Conner points. Here's the first example, curves with corner points. 8. How to Use the Pen Tool Curves with Corner Points (B): For this last example, we have rather more complex curves with corner points. Let's see how that works. I grab the petrol, I make sure I don't have a stroke. Then right here I'm going to click, hand drag up parts to create the first smooth point with two linked control handles. I'm also going to press Shift on the keyboard, constrain the movements and release. I'll go right across here, and with the help of the smart guides and the magenta line indicator, I'll click and drag downwards. And also going to press Shift key on the keyboards to constrain the movements. Here is the extra technique, still with the mouse held down, still with the shift key press. I'll add the alt key or the option key to the mix. That will be a shift option shift. As I do, I can break the pairing of these two linked control handles. Position the at go handle right on top here. Release that. Go right across, click and drag downwards. As I do, I'm pressing the shift key on the keyboard to constat the movements without releasing the shift key. I'm going to add the out key to the mix. There will be a shift option, shift position, the at handle, right here, right on top. I release that. Go right across, right here, click and drag downwards. As I do, I'm pressing the shift key on the keyboard to constate the movements. Then shift option shifts to create the last curve. I will position the control handle right here on the top. Release that, then click and drag downwards pressing the shift key on the keyboards. And here is a more complex example of curves with corner points. 9. Illustrator Pen Tool Drawing an Ornament Setting Up: All right, before I start drawing the first ornament, some things to set up inside the preference spanel under the selection and anchor display. All the way at the bottom I will check off the enable rubber band for the pentel, which will disable the show path preview while and then click Okay. In addition, under the View menu, I'll check if the smart guides are on, which should be by default. So we can have object snapping under the Fun menu, I'll click to place. I will click to select the first ornament. I will place this as a template layer and then click to place. Now looking inside the layer spanel, the template layer is a locked layer. It is a non printing layer that I can use to manually trace the image. In this case, I will double click on the template layer thumbnail. Inside the layers options, I'm going to dim the image even more. I'm going to bring this down to 30% and then click, okay, I'm ready to go to the next step and start drawing the ornament. 10. Illustrator Pen Tool Drawing an Ornament Drawing Shapes (A): To start drawing these ornaments from the tool bar, I'll grab the pen thru, I'll make sure that I don't have a field color, I just want to a stroke. I will click none or I can also use the keyboard shortcuts. I'm using a stroke of one point and I'm also going to make sure that I'm inside the ornament layer. I'll start this by creating the first smooth point right here. I'm going to click and to create that. As you can see, a smooth point is made up of two linked control handles. I'll release that for the next smooth point. The key thing here is to cover a distance as possible. Avoiding this way multiple anchypoints, which they can be hard to manage for the next smooth points. I'll go right here. I'm going to click and drag. I'm also going to pressure shift key on the keyboards. I'll Zoo for the next smooth points, since I want to cover this distance here to create this curve right here, I'm going to click and pressure shift key to create the next smooth points. Now as you can see, I get this extended path. And that's because Illustrator tries to cover the distance between this anch point, this key point, which is quite short. The fix here is to press and hold the control key, or the command key. I will click and drag, and as I do, I'm also going to press Shift Key to understand the movements. I'll release that for the next point. Since this is a straight segment, all I have to do is just press shift key on the keyboard. Click on, press the shift key on the keyboard. Click on right here. I'm going to click and drag and pressure shift key to create a smooth point because a curve is coming up, We'll click and drag. I'm pressing the shift on the keyboard as I do to create this nice curve here. I'll admit the right here. That will be the next smooth point. We'll click drag that. Now, with the mouse still held down, since I want to follow this image path, I'm going to change the direction of the control handle. I'll press the Lk of the option key and I'm going to break the pairing of the to link control handles. I'm over right here, since I'm following this image here, I'll release that. Then I will have it over on the first key points. I'm just going to click once, close the path from the tool bar. I grab the direct selection two. Now I can smooth those curves nicely since I have the control handles. Same thing for this right there. And then I can just bring this up. Let's go ahead a zoom. See what's happening here. I'll mark you select with the direct selection to, let's see, this actually can be right here. There we go. That looks good. I can also bring this out just a bit or bring this in. As long as you can see this is a smooth curve. All right, on this one right here, well we have some options. I can just click and dark on this handle, that looks good. I can do the same here, can leak out this one right here, I believe. Now I have a nice transition here, perhaps a little bit here. I can also bring this up a bit. See, as long as you have a nice transition, there we go, that looks good on this one. I can just bring this in just a tad. There we go. All right. I like what I see now. This is the first shape and this is identical to this. I will mark you select with a selection tool, then click hold to get to the reflect tool. I will tap click on that. I will leave everything as I'm just going to create a copy. Back on the selection tool, I will click and drag to move this to the other side. I'm also going to press shift on the keyboard to contrate the movements and release. 11. Illustrator Pen Tool Drawing an Ornament Drawing Shapes (B): Continue drawing the ornament. Once again, I grab the pencil. I'll make sure that I don't have any field colored as the stroke. It's going to remove that using a keyboard Shockut. I'm going to zoom in here and just click to create the first smooth point. I'm also going to press the shift key on the keyboard. I release that, Go right across here, click to create another smooth point. With the mouth still held down, following the image path, I need to change the direction of the control handle. I press and hold the Lk of the option key and I'm going to break the pairing of these two link control handles. I'll release that. Go right across, click and drag to create a nice smooth point. Once again, I need to break the pairing of these two link control handles option on the keyboard. For that I'll release that. Go right here at the bottom, click and drag a option, then Nlm, going to hover over till I get the magenta line indicator coming from the smart guides, I will click and drag and pressure shift on the keyboards and release. I'll grab the direct selection tool. I'm just going to fix my curve sum to have a nice transition here. This one to this one. I'm just going to move this there and this one here, All right? I believe things looking great. Maybe this one I can make was just a little bit smoother, something along those lines. All right, we'll select the selection tool. Select that. Since this is symmetrical shape, I'm going to double click on the Reflecto. I'll create a copy, Grab the selection tool, click and drag to move this to the other side and release. Now I need to join those two shapes together. So I have one shape. I'll grab the direct selection tool. The first I will select the two points. Now to join first I need to make sure that those two points line perfectly in relation to each other under the Obsc menu path. Average both, then Obs menu path and join. I'll do the same one here. I will mark select two end point with the direct selection tool. But actually I can use a keyboard shortcut that will average both of these paths and join them together at the same time. That will be control. I'll shift J. I'm going to click, okay, great. But that shape. And we can also double check our work inside the layers band. Here's the path. It's a single path. All right. I'll do the same on here. I'll select the pento. I will click and drag to create the first smooth points. I'll release that click, Add option to break the pairing of these two link control handles. Then right here I'm going to click and drag and press Shift on the keyboard. As I do, I'll grab the direct selection tool, and I'm just going to have a nice curve here. I'll release that. Grab the selection tool, Mark selects, double click on the reflector, create a copy, grab the selection tool, click and drag as. I'm also going to press Shift on the keyboards. Move this right across and release. I grab the drag selection tool, Mark selects two end points. I'm going to use the keyboard circut to average both join them at the same time. Same thing here. I'm going to use the keyboard circut to average both join them at the same time, then click okay. 12. Illustrator Pen Tool Drawing an Ornament Drawing Shapes (C): All right, so to complete the ornament, we have one more shape to go. I'll grab the pencil. I'm also going to make sure that I don't hand in field color. I'm going to zoom in a bit here and then click and drag to create the first smooth point. As I do, I'm also pressing the shift key on the keyboard and release that. I go right here. Click to create the next smooth point. With the mouse still held down, I'm going to press the Alk of the option key. Change the direction of this control handle. Release that. Go right here. Click, press Shift key and release. I'll go right here at the very bottom. This is a straight segment, but we also have a curve coming up, which means we're going to need another smooth point. Right here, I'm going to click and drag. Press Shift key to create another smooth point. Release that click and drag to create another smooth point. Then go right here. I'm going to slowly hover over till I get the magenta line indicator coming from the smart guides. I press Shift key and click once to make sure that I have a straight segment. All right, I'll grab the direct selection tool. This looks good. Maybe I can just bring this down just a tad. Then right here, I'm going to bring this up a bit to have a nice transition that looks good. I will grab the selection tool, Mark you select that. I'm going to mirror this to the other side. I would double click on the reflect rule. I'll create a copy back on the selection tool. I'll click and drag to move this to the other side, right there. And then I grab the direct selection rule. Select those two end points. And I'm going to use the keyboard circut to average both and join them. I'm going to click okay here. I'll do the same one right here. Will select those two points around the keyboard Circut to average both and join them at the same time. There you go, the whole ornament using the very powerful pen tool. 13. Illustrator Pen Tool Drawing 2nd Ornament Drawing Shapes (A): To draw the second ornament. Once again I'll grab the pendrl from a tool bar. I'll make sure that I don't have a feel, I just want to have a stroke inside the layers panel. I'll click to select the ornament layer. The very first smooth point it will be right here. I'm going to click and I'm also going to press specifically on the keyboards to constrain the movements. I'll release, let's say around here. I'm going to click and drag to create the next smoothpoint. I'll release that right here. Click again. I'm pressing the shift key on the keyboard to constrain the movement and have straight control handles here, right there. Click drag to create another smooth point. While I'm pressing the shift key, release that, Then right here, I'm going to click drag to create another smooth point. Before I release, I'm also going to press the L K of the option key to break the pairing of these two link control handles In order to follow this image path here. I'll position it right there. I'll release everything and click once. All right, now I can continue actually with the penol, but this one here looks like a circle. At least some of it in this case. I'll go ahead and get the help of the ellipse tool. Then right here I'm going to start drawing. And as I am going to press Shift option shift to create a perfect circle from the very center. Now with the mouse still had down, I'm also going to add the space bar onto the mix. Reposition this, release the space bar, continue drawing from the center, and release everything. All right, now I need to create a cut right here. In this case, I'll grab the S tool then nice and carefully I would place the mouse right here, path. I'll click once to create a cut. I'll grab the direct selection tool. I'll select this path here. Press delete key of the back space on the keyboard. Select that, press delete key, press a delete key again, the marquee. Select this end points and delete that as well. Now I have, as you can see here, two open paths, which is quite correct, but I need to combine them as a single path. With the direct selection tool, our marquee, Select two end points under the object menu select path. Then I'm going to average both to make sure both of these aligned perfectly in relation to each other. Now they do. Then back on the object menu path, Enjoy. Great, now I need to continue this. Once again, I grab the pen tol to join on to an open path. You see this is an open path. I will have over right here, the end anchor point. Now the tool shows a forward slash, that means I can click and drag upwards as I do, I'm also pressing the shift key to drag out a directional handle. Now in addition, still with a mouse held down, I'll try to keep both of these opposite handles equal in length. That will help me to create the upcoming curve path with a nice transition. I'm going to eyeball this one here. Let's say around there, I think both of them are equal in length. Then right here I'm going to click drag. And I'm also going to press the shift on the keyboard. Now I have a very nice transition between those two points. I release that, go right here, click Shift. As I do, I release that click and drag. I'm also going to press the Alta of the option key to break the pairing of these two link raw handles and to be able to follow the image path right there. I'm going to click once the nice and slow, I'm going to hover over till I get the magenta line indicator coming from the smart guides. In this case, I'll press the shift on the keyboard and click once to have the perfect segments. Now grab the direct selection tool. I'm looking at the overall shape here, actually looks great. What can I improve? Maybe I can bring this one down a bit. Again, I'm looking for the perfect transition here. You need to spend a little time just in case you need to improve certain things. Maybe I can bring this up a bit tad. We have to do the same one here too. See very nice transition in the curve overall. I like what I see. I can also move this one in altogether to the left side, and I'm pressing this swiftly as I do. There you go again. Very nice transition. Now I need to create a duplicate, a mirror. This to the other side. I grew up the selection tool. I'll select that, then I'll click and hold to get the reflect tool. I'll double click on that. And inside the reflect dialog box I'll keep everything as is, but I'm going to click to create a copy. I grab the selection tool and then click and drag. And as I do, I'm also pressing the shoot key on the keyboard to contain the movement. And this is going to snap. I release that. Grab the direct selection tool, mark you select two endpoints. Then under the object menu, first I will average both to make sure both of these aligned perfectly in relation to each other. Now they do, then back on the object menu path and then join this one. I'll do the same market, select those two end points of the direct selection tool and then object menu path, average both the object menu path and join. There we go, we've got the first shape. 14. Illustrator Pen Tool Drawing 2nd Ornament Drawing Shapes (B): To complete drawing the second ornaments. Once again I grab the pencil and I'm also going to make sure that I don't have a fill color. I just want to have a stroke. I'm going to zone in a bit here, and the first anchor point will be right here. I'm going to click and drag upwards as I am. I'm also going to press Shift on the keyboard to constant the movements and then release the next booth point will be right here. I'll click and drag before I release the mass, I'm also going to press the out key of the option key and break the pairing of the to link control handles in order to follow this image path. Here I release, go right here. Click and drag again. Out or option. Change the direction of this control handle. The right here, I'm going to hover over till I see the magenta line indicator coming from the smart guides. And then click drag downwards. And I'm also going to press the shift key on the keyboard and release. I grab the direct selection tool. Now that I have both of these handles here, I can just go ahead and drag this out. There you go. Maybe for this one I'll click on that to be able to see the handle here. I'll try to split the distance between those two handles. There you go, to have a nice and smooth curve here. All right, that looks good. All right. Now I'll go ahead and grab the selection tool. Mark. You select that because this is asymmetrical path here. I'm going to create a copy and then join them. I'll double click on the Reflectol. I'll keep everything as is, create a copy, Grab the selection tool and then click and drag. And I'm also pressing the shift on the keyboard to cons the movements and then release. I'll zoom quite a lot here. Grab the direct selection tool, mark selectors to end points. Instead of using the path average both of the join. I can also run the keyboard shortcut to to do both of these tasks together. That will be the control. I'll shift and J at the same time. I'll click to join. I'll do the same one right here too. I will run the keyboard shortcut to join this two, and then click. Okay, look inside the layer spanel. Here it is. This is a single path. As for this one, I'll grab the Penrol. I'm just going to click once because a straight segment is coming up. But then we have a curve coming up. We'll click hand upwards. And I'm also pressing the shift key. Before I release, I'm also going to press the Al key on the keyboard or the option key to change the direction of the scuptroal handle. I'll move it right here. Click and drag out option, and then right here, I'm going to close the path by clicking and drag into the Tads and release that. I'll grab the direct selection tool. Let's see, I'm going to first have a nice smooth curve here. This one too. There you go. That looks fantastic. All I have to do now is just select that close path, double click on it, create a copy. And then move this to the other side, this one right here, press Shift key and to constrain the movement. All right, now to color these, since all of these are actually strokes, I'll mark you select with the selection tool. I flip between the stroke and the field and then double click on it. Perhaps use a color of my choice here, any color. And then click okay, like so. 15. Elias Sarantopoulos Thank you: Thank you so very much for spending time with me, understanding how to use the Pentrol in Illustrator. Reach out if you have any questions or feedback about the course, it would be a great help to hear from you.