Learn to love the pen tool!

1. Introduction: hi there, and Mako and this in my office buddy Beijing. I've taught illustrator both on campus and online to over 1000 students in the last seven years, and Beijing has been stepping on my keyboard and blocking my view for nine years. I love the pencil, and I think you will to want to understand how it works. You can use it for everything from logos to infographics character designs to promotional materials. The best thing about the pen tool is that it can help you draw smoother and more precise shapes than most of us can draw by hand. And if you like to create hand drawn sketches, it can really help you take those to the next level two. I like to show people how to use it in the easiest, most efficient way possible, so you'll be learning shortcuts along the way. Let's dive right in 2. Creating a Template from a Sketch: Hi there. In this video, I'm going to show you how you can take a sketch that you've drawn and place it to use as a template, an illustrator to draw over. First, you'll need your sketch, and you'll need to have it digitally available on your computer whether you've scanned it in or taken a photo of it with your phone or air dropped it from another device. At that point, an illustrator up at the file menu, you're going to go to file place, and you can note that shortcut there. If you like that shift command P or if that was on a PC, that would be shift control P. Then you're gonna navigate to the folder that you've saved your sketch in. It could be a J peg PNG. Most raster formats are gonna be just fine, and once you select it down at the bottom, you have an option to click on template. Linkous. Fine will keep that rather than embedding it. It'll keep your file a little bit smaller. You just want to save that file so it can reference it. And then when I click on template, what that will do is once I place it will create a template layer that's automatically locked and a new layer above it that I can drawn. So once I say plays, there's my image. Now, here in the layers, you can see what I was talking about. There's my template layer, and you can tell it's a template layer because instead of an eye icon, it has this little kind of rectangular icon. It's by default lot, so we don't edit or draw on this layer by mistake. However, as you can see, my image came out way too large. So I'm gonna need to fix that easy to do by clicking on that little padlock to unlock that layer. And at that point, I can select my image, and I can move it. Or more importantly, in this case, skillet. When you're scaling an image, make sure that you're holding shift as you grab a corner and drag inward or outward. If you need to make it larger, the reason you wanna hold shift is so that you keep the perfect proportions of your original. That way, once you draw over it, you won't have a version that looks squished or stretched. It's absolutely fine if that image goes off the art board a little bit, as long as the part that I need to trace over is on the art board positions, as I like it to be positioned. Once I'm done positioning that, I can go ahead and re lock that layer. And now I'm ready to draw on layer one. 3. Drawing Straight Lines with the Pen Tool: Okay, now that we have our template in place, we are ready to start drawing with the pen tool. And if you're just practicing or you don't have a sketch that you want to use to trace, feel free to take a screen capture of mine and place that in illustrators a template instead. I'll leave this up here for a second. If you need to do that, just press pause on the video and grab that screen. So next step is to go to the pen Tool P is the hockey for that. So if you just type the letter P on your keyboard is gonna jump you to the pen tool. We're going to start with the very easiest thing to draw with the pen tool, which is simply straight lines. Now there's a few things I do to set up when I'm drawing with a pen tool, and the first thing I do is I take my fill off and I draw with just a stroke on. I can always put a fill on my object when I'm done drawing it. But if I'm drawing with a fill, then eventually at some point is going to hide my template if I'm using a template and at the very least, be a little bit confusing and distracting while I'm drawing so I can very easily turn the filter. None just by having my fill active. And I know my Phyllis active because it's overlapping the stroke down here right now. If it wasn't, I would just click on it to make that active. So if I click on the stroke that overlap since active, if I click on the pill now, that's active, and I can click on the little box with the Red Slash to make that none. And I usually just use Ah, black stroke at one point because again, all of that could be changed later. But that's a good size to be able to see what I'm doing without being too thick to cover up my line Work. Straight lines are really a simple clicking and letting go with the mouse, and by the way, if you're using a track pad right now, please get a mouse, get the cheapest miles. It doesn't really matter. It could be an $8 males that target whatever, but I don't suggest as a beginner, attempting the pen tool with the track. Pat is matter of fact. After years of practice, I still don't do it unless I absolutely have to. But assuming you are using a mouse, if you click and let go, that creates an anchor point, and then you move the mouse to where you want the next point to go click and like, Oh, and that makes the next anchor point. So it's really kind of connects the dots in between your points. I'm just kind of practicing up here, and you can do the same now, the first short cut I'm gonna show you guys with the pen tool is probably the most useful one, which is simply that if you are on a Mac, you'll press command. If you're on a PC, you're gonna press control and where you see generally and I come for your pen. Once you have that pressed and held down, you'll see a white arrow, which is the direct selectable. And this is great because the direct select tool will allow you to edit your path by grabbing a point and moving it. And you can do this while you're still drawing it, so that by the time you're done with your path, it looks exactly the way you intended. When I'm done editing, I can let go of Commander Control and I'm back on the pencil. I can continue along on my path. Does a huge time saver because the pencil draws pounds but the direct select at its path. And I would know you don't actually want to go over to the toolbar and switch to the direct selection tool because what happens is if you do that instead, yes, you'll be able to select points and move them. But when you go back to draw your path, it will have dropped the path. Do you see this? So maybe that's fine if you're done with your path, But I like to read it as I go along now with that said, sometimes best intentions. We drop the path anyway. If you catch it right away, you can Commander control Z once or twice till you back where you were, and all you have to do to pick up a path that you unintentionally dropped is hovered. The pen tool over the last point drawn, and you'll see what looks like a little black Astra becomes a forward slash that tells you it's ready to pick up the path and you can click on and be on your merry way. Now, if, on the other hand, and I'm gonna purposely drop this path and draw another one if you don't notice that you've dropped the path until after you've done quite a few points, I don't feel like you have to undo all the way back and redo that we can connect £2 the way to do that is you would actually start out with both of them de selected and a quick way to de select cause when you're working with a pen, tool is just pull down that commander control. You'll get your direct select, and you can click away Teoh de Select. Then, just like before, I can hover over one of the open points on a path till my little black gastric becomes afford slash and then I can hover over the point of the path I want to connect it to, and I'll see a little square with a line between it do now I can connect it now That's a little messy. Of course, we're just practicing anyway, so the whole thing's messy, but that kind of gives me an extra point in between these two. The second really nice thing about the pen tool. The second shortcut I'm going to tell you is that you can delete an ad point straight from this tool. You never need to go to the ad anchor point or delete anchor point tool. I'm not even sure why they're still there if you don't know where they are there, hidden under the pen tool. But you don't even have to worry about them because with the selected path and I can tell this is selected because the little points are hollow and it's blue. Instead of just the black line, I can hover my pen tool over any point I don't want, and I'll get a little minus sign. You guys see that and I can click and let go and it deletes it. And alternatively, if maybe I've deleted too many points. Or maybe I just didn't have enough to begin with. I can hover my pen tool over a point on the path where I want it, and I'll get a plus sign. Now that's only gonna happen if that path is selected, otherwise it would start a new path. But again, we know this path is selected so I can click there. Now, I've got new point, and then I can hold command or control and move that as necessary. So that's how you create straight lines. I'm gonna go ahead and delete that by pressing delete twice, and I can do these little house right here. Now, You noticed I went a little bit outside the line and you may also notice I'm using some short cuts here. I'm using Space Bar Plus Command That would be control on a PC to get my Exume tool. Because again, when I'm on the pentacle, I don't want to switch tools, so that allows me to zoom. If I need to zoom out, I would just add older options. Now I'm gonna press command again. That would be controlling a PC and I congrats those corner points now that I can see more precisely where they need to go, and there they are, 4. Shapes vs Lines: Okay, So before we move on to curs, I want to talk a little bit about the difference between closed paths or shapes and open paths or lines. And this becomes important when you start thinking about wanting to be able to either fill objects with color and or create a more complex illustration. Now there are definitely different ways to color objects in Illustrator. There's live pain. You can make layers below things and use the blob brush. But I'm going to keep it basic here and show you guys the way that illustrator has always been designed, in which case you have a close path or shape that could be filled with color just by virtue of selecting it, having the still active and quitting on a color. So let me show you the difference. If I'm just kind of quickly and letting go like I waas in that previous video and I say, OK, I'm done and I just end somewhere other than where I began. And by the way, when you're drawing lines and you're done and you want to come draw something else, the way to tell Illustrator that is simply by de selecting the path and the easiest ways to compress controller command. Get your direct selecting click away. There's nothing wrong with this is a line, but if I go to fill it, I am going to run into some weird stuff, so I'll show you what I mean. Let me grab my color when. No, here. If I select this because it's an open path, if I go to fill it with the color, it's really unpredictable. Where the color lays supposes Ayer, my mountains. I go to fill it with color, and it's all really wonky. So if you need to fill something with color, it's best to think about that as you're drawing it and draw it as a complete shape. No, I'm gonna go ahead and take off the color by clicking none, and I mean a de select and use my pen tool to pick up that path and make it a complete path so I can just hover over an open point on that path. Like it the forward slash i can click to pick it up, and then once I go ahead clicking, it has picked up the path, and when I'm ready to connect it I just hover over the first point of my top that I drew, and I'll get a little icon to the lower right of my pen tool. Those little icons air so helpful this one's a circle, and that indicates closing the path. At that point, I can click on it, and I have a closed path. Now, if I go to fill it with color, it's much more predictable. It fills the shape. Now I might have a couple extra points there that I don't need. But remember, just with the pencil over selected path, you can simply hover over a point you don't want until you get a little minus sign and you can quickly let go. And that deletes it. So that is the difference between an open or closed path. And it's an important distinction to make. Yes, sometimes I'm just wrong lines, and even for this little demo, I'll draw some lines a lot of the time. My end goal is a shape that I can fill with color. Now you know how to do that 5. Drawing Curves: Okay, so now we are ready to tackle curves. Curves are a little bit trickier than straight lines with the pen tool, but with practice you'll be able to draw a really nice move curves much more easily than most of us can draw by hand. I like to set up the way I normally would with depend tool, which is to draw with no bill and just a stroke so that if I am using a template layer to trace over, I can see what I'm doing. And I'm going to practice a little up here before I tackle these hills down at the bottom so that I can show you a few things. So when we were drawing straight lines, which is clicking and letting go, there's basically two elements. There's the anchor points, and those happen everywhere you clicked. That produces an anchor point, and there's the path that automatically appears between the anchor point. Now we will still have those two things When we draw curves with the pen tool, however, we're also going to have to other elements, and those are direction, handles and direction point. To get those, there's a clicking and dragging motion with the mouths. So instead of clicking and letting go, I click with the pen tool and drag. And as I'm dragging direction, handles are dragged out of my anchor point. These direction handles are separate from the path that they control the path. So if I click and drag up, the path will go in an upward direction. I can come over here and click and drag down to finish it. I've got nice, smooth curves now. The way to get the smoothest most even Kerr is to look at your two direction handles that control back curves in this case, this one right here and this one right here and have them be about even in length now it doesn't have to be perfectly even. But the more even they are, the more smooth the curve is now. Of course, there will be times when we want to create more lopsided and not such smooth curves. But assuming we just want a smooth curve here, what I would do to achieve that is hold down command or that would be controlling a PC. We'll see our direct select, and we can drag the direction points just the way in the past, we've used this handle to drug anger points. The further we dragon, the bigger the curve, the shorter the direction handle, the smaller the cur, and the direction of the handle indicates where the next curve it's so this handle coming out the other side of the anchor point is going down. That means that that curve is stay sing down. I click and drag up, and that finishes the curve. So each curve is really controlled by two handles by default. When you click and drag with the mouse before you let go and when you let go. That indicates how long those direction handles are gonna be by default there the same way coming out of the anger point. However, after you've drawn them, you can hold down Commander Control to get your direct, select and shorten or lengthen either side of those. So the length is changeable, however, that seesaw action that stays. So if I change the angle of one, it changes the angle of the other. And that's the tricky part because I might need to change the angle for this curve, and that does, to some extent effect the curve beforehand. But if we want smooth curves with no points in between them, that's what we want to work with. So with that in mind, I'm gonna go ahead and delete this and start on these mountains in the background on I'm clicking and dragging in the direction that I'm going as far as where the plane place point each. Kerr, like if this is a curve, really only needs two points. You don't need another point on the crust of it. Now, you see, when I place this point, my path so far does not perfectly match my sketch. I'm gonna press command and I'm gonna click and drag to shorten that direction handle Until that curve matches that a little bit better. I'm gonna come over here and click and drag to finish that occur. If I need Teoh, I can even this up now. The other great thing, of course, is that we can make our vector drawing better than our sketch. My sketches by no means perfect. If yours is, that's great. But mine's not. And yours doesn't have to be. I'm also I'm not gonna worry about where the flower will eventually be in front of these hills, We will use stacking Order an illustrator to wear objects on top of one another, so that will be hidden eventually. I don't have to worry. Now that you'll see here like this so much I can do with one side. I actually, that gets pretty close. But the other thing I can do is I can stop here and then lengthen their I'm in a click and drag here and then I'm gonna end somewhere out here. Now, remember, our talk about clothes path vs opened half. I'm not going to just leave. This is the line because I would like to fill this with a color. So I'm gonna come down here and click in life. Oh, clicking let go. And I'm gonna close this path here. Now you will notice that my path is going outside the edges of my art board or page an illustrator. That is absolutely fine. If I send this to print that wouldn't show if I saved it is a pdf that wouldn't show if I export that and I choose to use the r word when I export is a raster format such PNG or J peg Nothing off the art board will show. Now I can come over to my colors quick on a nice green. Wow, that's right. That's fine. And up to me, whether or not I choose to keep the stroke on it. Once I have it done, I might choose not to help the start on it. So that is how you draw curves. Now for the curves behind this, you can see, I only see part of it. Some of it's going to be covered by these curves. I don't really have to worry about that. I'm gonna go ahead and set up like I normally would, which is no fell black stroke. I'm gonna start outside the page. And again, I'm not gonna really worry too much about where, How it'll look where it's gonna be covered. But I am going to make sure that where does show in match of the path as closely as possible? Any time you see this little white arrow, my spring, the direct select. That means I'm holding down, man. I'm on a Mac. You may be holding down control if you're on a PC and you don't want to use a lot of points when drawing curves because they're smoother and easier to edit, the less points they have. And yet every curve needs at least two points into handles. I'm just clicking and dragging with the mouse before I'm letting go again once them at the end. Since I'm out here, I can just come anywhere to close up half same thing. Now I can take off that. Maybe I want a pretty close color to this one, but a little darker. I could go to my eye dropper and click on that. Now I can double click on my color picker and just go a little bit darker. And then I can send it behind us because whatever you draw, most recently is gonna be in front of an illustrator. That's the natural stock mortar, so there's a few ways to do this. I could go to object, arrange send back. Alternatively, I could have also right clicked on that and use my contextual menu to send back. And either way is fine. 6. Refining Curves: Okay, so let's pick up where we left off. We've got our hills all done. We've got a few more curves here to work with the so I'm setting up pen tool. No, Phil, Black stroke. And technically, we could just use any lips to draw this this circle, the sun shape. But also, it's really easy with the pen tool. I'm just going to click and drag. Now, here, I'm gonna show something important to know. Um, what if I want to close a path and it's not off the page now this is gonna be hidden by the cloud anyway. But let's suppose it wasn't and I want to close it perfectly. I don't want to just click and let go there, because then I'm gonna have a point where I really wanted to be a curve. You guys see that? It's never gonna be perfect and smooth, so I'm gonna command Z instead. I'm gonna hover over that point until I see my little icon. That tells me it's ready to close the path and I'm gonna click and drag that way. I've got direction handles coming out of both sides of that anchor point and I've got nice , smooth shape there. This isn't a perfect circle. I really kind of don't want it to be a perfect circle. In this case, I wanted to have, like, kind of a fun quality, so that's gonna be my little fun. Um, I can go ahead and color it. I did the stroke by mistake. A quick fix for that. This little swap key will swap the filin struck. Now, now that I've done that, I realized you know what? Maybe I feel that a little bit too soon because I also want to create his little face things. And now I can't see them. So sure, you. Another trick to I can select a shape with the selection tool to make sure the whole thing is selected and I can hide it. And you can find that under object Hide selection. That is a shortcut that's worth memorizing. Command three on a Mac, and that's gonna be control. Three on a PC. Now, I could go back to my pen. Tool P is my hot key. Black stroke. No, Phil and I could draw these little curves. So remember when I said sometimes you do just want to draw lines and consume in a little. I'm using my shortcut of space barn command. Get my zoom tool and I can use just the space bar for the hand tool. Now, if I need to, I can hold command and get in there with my direct flak. Make that nice and perfect. Another thing that I can do is I can really play with us with the stroke menu. So, um, I'm gonna pull my stroke menu in from off the screen. If yours looks like this, just click the little arrows until you see everything I see, I might make this a little bit thicker and give it a nice round couch. Then when I'm done with that, when I want to come over and do this when I'm gonna hold down command until I get my direct select with the way I can Quick Indra click and drive for my nice little curve. And because my last line had these qualities the next line I draw husband to until I change them It's when the nice things about illustrator I'm gonna command click to de Select Let's do this nice smile and I'm clicking and dragging in the direction the path is going. So I clicked and dragged up because the path was going up there. But I clicked and dragged down here and click and drag. Don't forget, you can always move anchor points as well with your direct select. All right, so now I've got a little smile. Now, if I want to see that sun again, I can show it. Actually, first, if I'm thinking about my work flow, I'm gonna do this cloud. So I do the sun right now if I show it is gonna hide the clouds So I'm gonna click and drag rather quickly through this I'm not actually even necessarily worried about if it absolutely matches my sketch because, honestly, I could make it better than my sketch with the pen tool. And the more that you practice memorial start to kind of intuitively know I'm clicking and dragging to finish that. Where to place your points. I can still any time I need to hold down command or control for my drug select and start to smooth this out in any way. I see fit either by shortening, lengthening or changing the angle of the direction handles or moving those anchor point. And if I feel like I'm trying to do too much with too little, I can add a point just by clicking on that selected path with the pen tool. And then I held down command so I could move that point. Now that I've got my cloud, I can go ahead and say, Show all there's my son. There's my cloud. Maybe I'll just make this a light gray. Maybe I don't need this stroke, but don't worry about that later. I probably will at a stroke, but I can always do that later. The last two curved pieces is these little birds super easy by now, right? You can drag quick and drive. Okay, here's something that we've come up against. How do I have a point in between two curves? It's not gonna work for me to just come over here and click and drag like that. So that's what we're going to explore in the next video 7. Converting Points: Okay, so this is where we left off. We know how to draw curves. We know how to draw straight lines. But what happens when we have to connect curves with the point instead of connecting it with a smooth curve like in our cloud? Or when we have to combine straight lines with points like we will have to for our stem in our league? It's actually really simple. And I'll tell you, it's actually simpler than just doing smooth curves next to each other because I'm going to introduce a shortcut that will allow us to break that seesaw action that the direction handles half and this is how it works. So with the pen tool, I'm all set up. No, Phil, just a stroke. I'm gonna start this curve of this little bird the same way I normally would click and drag up in the direction of occur, click and drag down to finish the Kurt. Now, here's where we would be stuck. We didn't know the shortcut because basically this direction handle, it's going down, needs to go up. But I can't just move it up with my direct select or it'll move this one down due to the seesaw action. So now we have to break that Sisa action. And the way to do that is by holding option or Altana PC and you'll get this little tool that looks like an upside down V. That is not a V. It's the convert tool or also knows the anchor point tool. And with this, I can grab that handle of the direction handle and move it in the direction I need it for my next Kirk. Once I've moved it, I'm going to stop pressing all the option on back on the pen tool and I can click and drag to finish that Kurt. Okay, so very simple. And I'm gonna I already have, like, a round and cap. I'm gonna make around join as well, and that'll kind of round off that little spot where those points join. Okay, so I'm gonna command click to de Select. I'll show that again. I'm clicking and dragging to start the curve like I normally would clicking in Dragon to complete it and making it more perfect than my sketches. I like to dio I'm gonna hold option fault if you're on a PC and I'm gonna move the direction. Handle the next curve where it needs to be before you even draw that curve. And then I can click and drag to finish that Curt Aiken Still, if need be pulled down, command anytime I want and adjust the direction handles. So let's see how that will look when we tackle the flower, though the flower actually has a whole seminal leaf, which I can't see very well right now it's my mountains. So let's use that handy shortcut that I showed you guys or told you guys about before to hide objects. You could also do this under object hide selection, but I'm going to use command three. Okay, those were hidden there. There. I can get them when I need them, so no, I'm gonna zoom in a little bit more. You don't want to strain your eyes? P for pen tool, black stroke? No, Phil. All right. Says nice big curves here. I'm gonna click and drag and as needed, I can well, man, get my direct select Make that fit that curve a little bit nicer. I can't even move the anchor point if I need Teoh sometimes if it moves it too much. I find that if I zoom in, you'll let me be a little bit more precise with where I move it. Just one of those little courts of illustrator. All right, I'm gonna hold options so I can break that seesaw action that will be ultra pure on a PC. Now, I'm set up for the next. For again. I can change if I want. This is gonna be smoother than my drawing ever waas The great thing about illustrator. So I'm just Option Dragon whenever I need to break that seesaw action. So any time you see that little upside down V, that means I am holding down the option tool and you will do the same. Or Ault, if you're on a PC option drug, let go back on the pen tool, click and drag option drugs. Let's go back on the pen tool, click and drag option drag. Okay, so here's something different. I need to close this path. And if I just click and let go, No matter what I do here, this curb is never gonna be a full curve. Remember earlier I said that every curve deans at least two direction handles That's why I'm gonna do that. On the other hand, I don't really want to click and drag here because although my last herbal look, it'll mess up my first curve. Yeah, I can fix it, but it's annoying. I'll show you a better way instead, if I need to close this curve without affecting the initial curve. And yet I need a handle on the side to get the truthfulness of that curb. I'm gonna actually hold down Option or Aldonin PC before even quick to finish it and look at that nice and perfect. Now we've still got some finishing up here straight lines. By the way, when you finish a close path, you don't need to de select. It just automatically will start a new path so I can click, click, click. If I want to take the same stylus. My birds, I can go to my little eyedropper and click on them. Now it's you know that nice, thicker path with the round cap in the round corner. P for the pen tool click click click Straight Lines seems so simple now, don't they? So here we have straight lines with the curve not too hard But I am gonna introduce something new. We know. Straight line through. Easy right. Click and let go quick and let go. But here I have a curve and four full curve. I need a direction handle on each side of it. So illustrators smart enough to know that you might want to put a curve next to a straight line or vice versus so I can without holding down any key. And if you could see me, you'd see I'm holding my non mousing hand up, um, in the air to prove it. I could just position my pen tool over the last point drawn. You see that little mini upside down B That told me I can click and drag out of handle, all right? And then to end now. Remember what I did when I was ending this flower here. If I don't want to mess up this straight line when I go to click and drag to end, I'm gonna hold down option or old on a PC so that I could get a handle for the segment that I'm closing without actually messing up that other one. So that's nice and neat. That's a close past. I don't need to de select it. All right, Here's my rather wonky stem. It'll prettier an illustrator. Now, think about what I said about filling the shape. I am not going to just draw this line Tow line. I'm gonna actually connect it up there and connected down here so that I could feel it more easily. I'll show you what I mean. I'm gonna actually start out up here. I'm a little bit off the page. Click, click, click. Super Easy Right here. I've got that curve again. So I'm gonna hover with the last point draw until I get my little mini upside down V and I'm gonna click and drag. So I get a nice handle there. I can click and drag full command. And in a set up here, I can break that seesaw action by option or all clicking and dragging that direction point . And I'm gonna drag here. I'm gonna make whom the top of this a little thinner to match that. Now here's something different. Now. I'm going from a curve to a straight line and just the same way every curve needs to handles. Every straight line needs none, but think about it. We can just position or pentacle over that last point drawn. And when I see that little upside down be this time instead of clicking and dragging out a handle If we need to get rid of a handle, we click and like Oh, because remember, straight lines are clicking The letting go curves are clicking and dropping so I can click and let go That gets rid of that handle. I'm gonna come up here room. That part will be hidden anyway. But now that's all complete fairly nicely. 8. Finishing Touches: OK, guys. Now we're ready for the fun part. Finishing touches. Most of the hard work is done. Do you see a little line there? I forgot. So I'm just gonna real quickly get that little curve in. It does get faster, the more you practice. So be sure to practice. I'm gonna grab my little eye dropper. Eyes the hockey for that, by the way. Big surprise and make sure I make it the same with some my other strokes. So now I can start thinking about coloring. Let's not forget our mountains. I'm going to go ahead and show all there's my melons. So I'm gonna make this some different green than the greens I'm using. But I might start with that green and then make it even a little bit brighter. Wow, this is gonna be very bright. That's okay. Now, here's something When I colored this. See color doing long? Maybe a little kind of pinkish purple E thing. You see how it's behind that stem and I need to bring it to front. But I don't want to forget my little facial expression. Right. So I'm gonna select all three of those and I clicked and dragged marquee with my selection tool to do that. And then I can right click and say, Arrange, bring to front up sex. Maybe the inside of the mouth should be black. If I just want to swap the fill in stroke, I can do that. Okay? If I want a color in the background, there's no such thing. Technically is a background color and illustrator, but it's so easy to achieve. I will just draw a rectangle, color it how I want it to B for the background sky and I will send it back. That's a nice color object Terrain sent back. Those are short cuts worth learning, by the way. Okay, and now I can come up. See? Do we want to keep strokes on strike some everything. I don't know. You kind of play around with it, right? So let's have thes things. Look, with a stroke, I can definitely select multiple things to color them or stroke them. How did these look with a stroke? Why not let let's just have everything super consistent? Okay, so that's what I'm good. But let's not forget our little white capped mountains here, and here's a situation where I drew it as a line, so I can't just fill it with white. So I'm gonna show you guys one other trick that you can use to be able to do something like that. I'm gonna zoom in a little hair. What I'm gonna dio is I'm gonna extend it a little and I'm just holding shift. Teoh extended I It doesn't even have to match up perfectly with the mountain for what I'm gonna do next. I'm extending it off and I'm going to use the Pathfinder, which, by the way, is one of my favorite tools and illustrator. I'll probably make a whole class on how to use that at some point. But for now, what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna select the line in my little mountain hill shape and I'm gonna press divide now. What's happened is that if I n group this, I can select this little guy and I can fill it with white. So that's how I would get the white capped mountain and looking pretty good. That's about it for today. I would love to see what you guys create with your own sketches or even with my sketch. So please post them when you get a chance. Thanks