Master the pen tool in Affinity Designer for iPad

1. Welcome!: Hello. Welcome to mastering the Pentl in affinity designer for iPad. The Pentl in Affinity Designer, Adobe Illustrator or any other vector drawing app can be pretty intimidating. Lines are not doing what you want them to do, handles sticking out like pins in a pin cushion. And worst of all, curves seem to live a life of their own. Yes, I recognize this. Your artwork comes out differently from what you had in mind or what you had expected. So you escape to using the pencil because that is much easier. Well, it's not easier. It's different. Think of the time when you were a kid, you picked up a crayon and started scribbling and doodling away. Then remember when you had to learn to work with scissors and colored paper and not scribbling because using a ruler and a triangle to get lines you were asked to make. In that, you succeeded, as well. And even if you've never done it before, you will know what I mean when I talk about hammering tiny nails into a wooden board and then connecting them with colour threads. That's called string art. Vectors and especially the pentle can be compared to that string art. You plot your pins, anchor points, and you start connecting the points with thread, in this case, lines and curves. Well, that doesn't sound too complex, does it? Don't worry, we're going to do this string art bit with the pencil, and you'll be on board in no time. Hello. My name is El raids. I'm a graphic designer, illustrator, photographer, author, and I'm a Skillshare teacher. I live in the Netherlands. With many years of graphic experience, I love to help people in developing their skills. Requirements and other useful information. This class is for beginners, but, of course, everyone is welcome to join. What do you need? An iPad and an Apple pencil. The software I've used is affinity designer for iPod. The version is 2.6 0.4 In the resources section, you will find downloads of the JBAG files that I use in this lesson. That way you can join me right away. About the class assignments, the assignment is to create a butterfly using the pentel. In the resources section, you will also find the one that we're going to work with in this class. Feel free to experiment, use your own favorite colors, use fills and gradients. Go wild. Post a JPEG of your butterfly drawing in the project gallery, and as always, if you have any questions, I would love to hear them. And now, without much further ado, let's get started. 2. Why vectors?: The pen tool seems intimidating, but it really isn't that bad. If you follow this class, you'll see that by the end, you will have a much better understanding of what is happening and how to work with it. First, some explanation why vectors? Why not pixels? Vectors provide razor sharp edges and lines regardless of enlargement or reduction. This is very different from pixels photos. Here you see the same image three times. On the left, a photo at 72 DPI, low res, in the middle, a photo at three on the DPI, high res, and on the right, a vector with no resolutioning involved. When I enlarge this image, you immediately see that photos start to become blocky and grainy and blurry. The enlarged vector remains razor sharp. You can always export vectors to JPEG or PNG, in which case, the image will behave like a photo. You can also export vectors to SVG, in which case, the scalability, the sharpness, and editing possibilities are preserved. SVG is also supported online. Vectors are widely used in logos because they often need to be used in so many different sizes. The final size file of vectors is also much, much smaller than a photo, even when the artwork is very large. But the sharpness after enlargement or reduction in size is probably the trademark and the unique selling point for a vector. 3. A short intro at the pen tool: How the pen tool works. When you draw, you put your pencil on paper and immediately start drawing lines and shapes. That is also the way you draw digitally in, for example, Procreate Photoshop, Affinity Photo, clip studio paint or within Affinity Designer with the pencil tool. Vectors work differently. If you select the pen tool and try to draw, as I just described, nothing happens. Remember, vectors connect strategically placed points. Uh, help? What does that mean? This is difficult? I'm going to give up? No, no, no, don't. It sounds much more complicated than it is. After all, you can also work with a ruler in a pencil, right? Well, this is the same thing. A vector is a mathematical method for creating lines and shapes. Simply put, a vector is a line based on mathematics rather than pixels, so you can make it infinitely large without becoming blurry. Do you remember from school, when you learn what a straight line is, a straight line is the shortest connection between two points. An equilateral triangle is the shortest connection between three points, a square between four and so on, you get the guest. The lines are therefore formed by connecting points to each other. These points are called anchor points. By placing anchor points in the right places, you can create the shape that you want. Let's start with the most basic vector that Affinity Designer has the line. The pen tool has several modes. You can see it in the menu pen, Smart, polygon, and line. Roll through these or click the arrows beneath. Before we continue, set the fill to none and give the stroke a color and a thickness. I will give mine a thickness of ten, 15 points, but this is mainly to see easier in the video. You can choose any line thickness that you want. With the line tool, you can only create straight lines. You tap once to indicate the starting point of your line. Keep the pen on your screen and move to the position where the line should end. Release, and you have your line. You see the line while you drag. Affinity Designer connects these two anchor points, and the action is complete. This is sometimes called self terminate. To make another line, repeat this process. So tap, drag, release. The line can go in any direction you want and can have any length that you want. If you want to make the line perpendicular or at a 45 degree angle, click on the Command controller. The circle is always somewhere on your Affinity Designer screen, and press the shift key. As long as this is highlighted, the perpendicular 45 degree setting remains active. To apply this setting only in your current line, you do not necessarily have to use the command controller. Tap at the first position, put two fingers on the screen, tap at the second position, and lift your fingers again. Another useful gesture combination is four fingers on the screen. This moves the entire line to a different position. As you can see, the anchor points are small squares. This may not be very easy to see in the video, but in your own work, you will detect it instantly. It indicates that these are right cornered angles. More about this later. One more thing about the command controller, by holding the circle for a moment, you can move it to any position on your screen. Sometimes it's just in the way when you're working. At 12:00, you'll see the shift at 3:00, the command, at 6:00, the Alton option, and at 9:00, the control key. These correspond to the same keys on a separate keyboard. You can use multiple controllers at the same time. 4. A closer look at the line: The easiest way to start with the pen tool is by using the line. You can get there by tapping on these little triangles until you see the line, or you can just scroll through them, and the line is right there. Choose a color for your line. I've chosen orange and choose a thickness. I've chosen ten points. Tap, hold, and drag and let go. This line is self terminating. So when I start a new line, it will not continue from the previous one, it will be a new line. I can make them straight by putting down two fingers on the screen. I can make them vertical by putting two fingers on the screen or in 45 degrees increments. And remember that because that's going to happen a lot. Now, I have turned on snapping enable snapping. And when I look right there under the magnet, I want to snap two notes turned on. Because I've turned on snapping, you can see instantly when I reach the height of a line, I get a red intigator that tells me that I'm at the same height as this line. And when I let go, I'm sure that these two are in the same height. A red line again. Here's a green one that gives me a vertical line. And that's part one. That is the line tool. 5. A bit of polygon: Et's see what we can do with a polygon tool. To get there, first, I'm going to do something else. That's three fingers wipe down, select all and throw this in the bin. I'm going to import an image, go to place from files. Go to resources. And start with the what's Basics. Drag to place. Well, let's drag this. Okay, and it looks like this, which is great. Perfect. Can also make sure that it is a bit bigger or smaller, but this is perfect. The next thing I'm going to do is change the opacity to multiply. And then I'm going to lock this. Next, I'll make a new vector layer, and I'll call these polygons. Okay. When I go back to the basics, I want the opacity to go down a little bit. Okay. And I'm going to make sure that I have my pentol selected, the orange color again. And I'm using ten points, so you can see it better. I'm going to choose the polygon tool here. There it is. Now, a polygon works like the line tool. You can't make any rounded or circular lines. You just tap, and then you tap. If you want to go in a straight line, put your finger down. And as you can see, I'm just tapping a little off the image. I'll show you in a minute why. It's very easy just put your finger down if you want lines to be exactly straight. If you want your lines to go perfectly straight, you've got it. But you can't make these lines around, and that's what we're going to do in a minute. Now, you've seen that I want my lines to be slightly different from what I've drawn here. So what I will do is take the no tool, make sure that Snap two nodes is turned on, and then just simply move it to a place where I want it to be. And you will see that thanks to snap two nodes, the parallel lines are much better in balance as I have drawn them initially. So that's the most important thing about the polygon line. What I would like you to think of is that a polygon line needs a stroke. But if you start drawing with a polygon line as a fill, show you what happens then, you will, let's see. I have it. I've changed it now, and as you can see, this doesn't really work very nicely. It's only until I close the shape, I really get the fill visible, and it doesn't work like that. Not very easily. So what I would like you to do is make sure that when you work with a polygon line that you just have the stroke, and I like this orange color. You just have a thickness, stroke width, and no fill, and you can see what you're doing. 6. The pen tool: So let's see what we can do with the pen tool. Select the pen tool. Make sure that you have the pen right there. Pen. Make sure that you have a fill and a stroke. Here is the pen. And in the layers panel, you can see that I've imported or placed the Dodge JPEG file. I already changed the opacity to about 25%, and I turned the blend option to multiply so that I can see it properly. And I've added another vector layer by tapping the plus where I can draw and show you how it works. Let's get the pen. Now, just tap once. Tap in another spot, keep your pen on the screen and start moving your pen in the direction where you want the next curve to go. Let's stop right there. I can see these two blue control handles, and one is sticking out in the direction where I want the first part of the next line to go to. Now let's step again and hold, and as you can see, that's also going in the right direction. So let's make sure that this understands that the next line needs to go there as well. I want this wavy curve right there. So the length of these control handles determines the shape of the stroke, the line. There it is. Tap this little X, which is over the trash can twice. Otherwise, you would continue with your drawing. So that's just tap, drag. Now I put a finger on the screen two fingers, sorry, on the screen to get this perfect 45 degrees increment corner. And I'm going to do it again. You can see that when I cross with my control handle over the other control handle, I get a very strange shape. So it's important to keep the control handles close together. Make sure that they don't cross. It's like ghostbusters. Don't cross the beams. So that's not very difficult, is it? All right. This is one of the most important things of the pentil. You've got these two wavy lines, and that is basically what Bzier curves are all about, working with the control handles. But let's do something else. I want to have a straight line. And now I want a line to go over there, but have a curve. How do we do that? Keep the hand or keep the pen on the screen, put two fingers down to get a nice parallel line and then let go. Great. You can see that I have two control handles, and they are equally long. So if I press here now, I will have first some sort of swoosh right there. Let's do it. And that's not what I mean. I want it to go straight down. In order to do that, just tap there. And now tap down again. And I'll do it again. I'll just tap there, hold, put two fingers on the screen. Move. Let go and let go. Again, just tap once to make sure that you have a straight line and you can tell because it's a square now instead of a circle, move it down. And if I want to go up there, let's say there, just move, move, move. And I have this beautiful shark coming up. Go. And again. And if I want to go that way, then that's the same. Just tap, hold, go down, and make sure that you have these nice lines, these control handles at your service in the parallel area. Now, let's go here. And now I didn't need to do anything because those control handles were equally long and I have these dots to guide me where to put them. And I want to have this one go, let's say, right there. So I'll just tap one, tap one, and tap ones. I Pac Man. And let's go here. And this is a way that you can just make anything work for you in a beautiful, beautiful way. Now, if I want to go that way, it's the same story, tap, hold, and you have the same idea, right? I want a corner there, and now I am completely round. And that's how you use the pen tool and you can use off course, you can use the controller. But to me, this works best. Just use the tap on the point method to change from smooth to cusp or to straight line. 7. Node editing: You might feel that it's necessary to change some things in your drawing. Well, this is, of course, beautiful. So let's see how we can do that. I can just easily move that anywhere I want. That's not a problem, right? But I don't like this point. So I can use the node tool to do some editing. I can either make that round, and I can do that by double tapping, and now I will have a smooth line. Or I can just throw that away altogether and move this one up. As I have my snap two nodes on, I will get the perfect horizontal reference line that I need and that I showed in the previous lesson, right? Now, let's say I want this line to be around as well or have a curve as well, or this one. That one may. So do I have to press those two lines to change that? I can just stand on it and just move it about. And it doesn't make a difference if you hold your fingers on the screen. This just turns into a curve. And that can be very useful. If I stand here now, I get the control handles, and then I can use the parallel direction that I want when I put two fingers on the screen. So that's right there. And now, my drawing, let's tap out of it. Now my drawing has this cute bulge there. And let's make this move it about a bit. And I want this part to be round, as well. So I'll go to the now tool and I'll just move that. I'll tap there. Two fingers on the screen. I can't go that far, of course. Oops, as I am. Already near the edge of my paper. And again. So I might want to change this. If I take this out, just tap on the bin, and that particular point will be taken out. And we'll have a straight line. Now I can change that. I can put this one over there. And as you can see, it's all coming together, right. And this is the way that you can change the direction of existing nodes just by simply using the node tool. These control handles are really, very powerful. I can just use those to put nodes in a different spot. And as you can see now, everything will change. But I can also use it to move the control handles more to the left or to the right. So that works really well. And by using those nodes, what's called Snap two nodes and the geometry, it will try to find the same height and the same vertical position or horizontal position as the adjacent points. Sometimes it's really difficult to think of how to say this. But that's just really what it's all about. 8. Working with predefined shapes: Getting these shapes done is often much easier when you think about them in straight lines. So instead of making them in a cross, I'll begin by using a good collar. Let's begin with. Let's make this four points. And then I'm going to draw, well, that's maybe even a bit big three. Okay. And now I'm going to duplicate this and then turn it around. Okay? Select both. Go back to the shapes and make sure that they are all turned into converter curves. Now, let's use the corner tools to change all the corners at the same time. That looks good. Next, I'm going to use the line tool, and then it's the line. Remember the one that we started with these select all and make sure that I have a correct line right there. That's good. I'm going to take that line duplicate it and then change direction. I'm going to select all of these. Make sure once again that they're all converted to curves. Pick the shape builder tool, grab the minus and make sure that that which overlaps is taken out. And this one is going all the way to the center. So this one has to go and this one has to go. And in this case, that one has to go and that one has to go. And now I have the shape, and I'm going to turn it 45 degrees, put it in place. Maybe enlarge it a little bit. Make the line a wee bit smaller. It's a bit big. Two points is great. And my drawing is done. I'm going to select it going to match curves, and they form one shape. So that was not difficult at all. So I'm going to pick an ellipse, make it really big, make sure that it is a completely, beautifully full circle. And it's probably not what I need. This one's better. Let's bring it there and then enlarge it like that. Well, as you can see, it's important that this line ends up right there. It's not going to be exactly in order. So I do this. And maybe one here as well. Alright. Now I'm going to pick a rectangle tool. I hardly ever use the rectangle tool with the corner options because corners can always be made, but you can't undo them if they're in there. That's right. It to be an arrow. Let's convert these to curves. Alright. Now, let's pick this one. And I want these two to have curves. So I'm going to move these in. Like so. If I look at it in the outline, I must take a good look if they are close together. Yes, they are. That's good. What I'm going to do now is select all, go back to the merge tool again and take out, which I don't want to have. Mmm. That's the shape. And if I turn off the example, I think this should be a way, as well. So we're not ready yet. And here's a problem. I don't need I still need that, but I can't use this. So what I'm going to do is turn this as we've done before into a straight line. Now I can take this out, move this up a little, turn this down. Move it up a little. And as you can see, sometimes you really have to do a little bit to get it to work as you want it to work. And second Tulip logo is done, as well. I'll group this group. Tu Like that. Okay, let's look that, and this one's the cross. I think it's just like a Band Aid. Rename I would take up too much time to show you the entire drawing process for all the logo shapes are made. So I've sped up the video. As you can see, I made extensive use of the standard shape library. I combine these with the pentilll give it a try yourself. Don't forget to convert those shapes to curves so you can edit them further. Make use of the merge tool to bring parts together, for example, split them and delete unwanted parts. Always try to make use of the existing shapes as much as possible. Vector artwork is often about working efficiently, and the shapes provide an excellent starting point. Look through the design, as it were, to identify the basic shape and use that insight to determine the most effective approach. So good luck and enjoy yourself while figuring out your personal way of working. You 9. Class assignment: the butterfly: In this last lesson, I'm going to make the butterfly. Again, think of the best way to work. By the way, many ways lead to roam, as we say here. If you feel more comfortable using straight lines and then adjusting them to curves, later, great. If you want to draw the curves right from the get go, great. In any case, make sure you look at the extrema, the bounding box that will help you position your anchors in the right way. It makes sense to draw one side of the wings and once it's done, turn it into a group, duplicate it, and mirror the copy. Another amazing approach is turning your wings into a symbol. You can place an instant of that symbol and mirror it. But the advantage here is that the changes you make in the original wing will instantly be updated in the instance. Especially when you're working with a strong mirrored image, the use of symbols works like a charm. Don't worry, you can break the link to the symbol if you want to change one side and make it different from the other. Of course, you don't have to do this, but as stated, efficiency will help you work better and with more ease in vectors. Drawing the butterfly is the last what I'm going to show you. And with the Pen tool now, we've been able to do quite a lot of things. The first thing I would like you to do is import or place the butterfly dot JPEG and bring down the opacity a little let's bring that down a bit more. Then add a new vector layer. Pull this butterfly vector. And then we can start drawing. I've taken a red color, and I'm going to go for a nice, not too thick line because this is a smaller drawing. And first, I'm going to draw one side of the butterfly. So I'll just tap using a Bentle I'll tap. I'll go to this point to this and to that. What I'm trying to do is find the extrema in this drawing. An extrema can be seen or found when you are thinking of a box around the outer edges of an image. I think this is a point that can be used very well to make a curved line, and I'm going to show you how? If I use this part, I can see that I can put it right on top of this edge. And I made this butterfly in different software. So it's not that I know exactly where I've put them before. This is really just how you work when you are more experienced, and you will find it if you do this a lot, it gets easier. So that's one part. Okay, exit out of it. Get the pen tool again. Let's see, somewhere around here. The point. I'm closing it again. And I'm doing the same, moving the image to where I think it should be. And now, when I look at this, I can see that this is still a square point. So the moment I start moving it, you can see the point change into a circle. So maybe I should try to see what happens when I use, I hope it can be visible. And now this is a point with equally sized handles, and that's probably best in this case. And again, right there. I'm also going to take a look at the previous corner square point. So I want to turn it into a round point like that. Okay. Now, that looks good. And what I'm going to do is I'm going to put these two together. And when I go into the layers panel, I can see it's a curve, and then I'm turning those into a group, and I call it upper wing. Okay. So you can see it's really not that difficult to make at all. Good. Now a new one. Exit out of it. Let's pick a different color. I'll choose blue. I'm going to do more or less the same. I'm going to look for points where I think I can change the direction of the handles. Maybe I can just this seems right. But this is probably a good place. And maybe I'm entirely wrong, but we'll find out soon enough. Let's draw this one that one down or drag a should draw drag. And let's see what happens here. Look, this is exactly the shape that I was going for. So you can use the node tool to either drag on the handles or move the point itself. This one's not yet entirely good. So maybe I should move that a little. Ooh. And there it is. This one is still straight. Right. That looks good, and this was on the same shape. So I think I've done a pretty good job in just a few minutes. Let's turn this into a curved line, as well. Curved point, I must say I curved line, it's a point. And, in fact, I think I'm done now. I might want to change that one into a curve as well. It's not really. Entirely to my satisfaction. These points, as you can see, these are all squared. So they are corner points. And these points, well, this one, that one are curved lines. So it's a good thing to see the difference in two. I'm going to turn that into a group, as well, even though it's only one, and I'm going to call this lower wing. Alright. Now, let's look the lower wing and the upper wing. And I'm going to make the antenna. Now, here's one. As I told you before, think about the most efficient way. I want a small circle here, so I put a finger on the screen to get a circle and then just move that right there. Okay. Tap here, to convert it to curve, so it won't behave like a circle anymore, okay? I'll tap out of it. And then I'm going to use the pen tool and I will pull a straight line, and that's it. And then I'm going to draw and get this right. And now half of my butterfly is already done. So I'll use the antenna and that little ball here, and I'll select them, and I'll turn it into a group. I'll call it antenna. Okay. And I can also lock this. Now, I'm going to turn off the visibility of these, and I'm going to make the center part. Let's pick the ellipstol and form the head of the butterfly, maybe a little smaller. Like that. And the first thing I'm going to do is head back to the shapes and then convert it to curves, so it won't behave like a regular circle anymore. Next up is the body. And what I want to do now is, let's see, take this diamond tool, bring it in the right place and convert it to curves. Now, select both points here and move them up. All right. And now, selecting all. I'm going to turn them into soft curves and look done in an instant. So that was very quick. Again, I'll put these two together, and I'll call that body. And now if I open everything or I show everything, let's take off there. It all looks quite nice. What I'm going to do now is select everything. No, everything but the body. And I'm going to group those again. One side. Okay. Now, I'm going to the symbols, and I'm going to put turn this into a symbol. So I'll say add symbol from selection. It's a bit difficult to see, but it's right there. And if I say insert symbol, it's right there. It's exactly the same. What I'm going to do now just move it a little. Flip horizontally and then move it into place. Using the symbol makes it very easy to change. Just suppose that I would double tap. I would change this into a fill. Now both are filled, which is fantastic, of course. And I'm also going to swap this, but I'm also going to give it a gradient. Okay, maybe the other way around. Like so. And as you can see, I'm only changing one, but the other one is coming along effortlessly because it is a symbol. Let's see, I have a grittinOly if I'm not mistaken, right. Let's take that out. Same going to do for the lower part. Do I have that one? Yep, the curve, the lower wing. And I would like this to be gradients as well. I will change the antenna. That's good. And the body is something that can go the other way around too, but I'm going to turn that into brown and right there, turn that around into brown. Maybe I want them to be merged, merge curves. Let's give that a nice color as well, bit like that. I want this to be radio bit like so. Let's say you can tell that the body is not exactly in the middle. So what I'm going to do is tap the body, and I'm going here at the bottom, a line, and I'll just make it line to the center of the page. Then I'm going to select the two halves which are already in the same height. I'm going to group them. Wings. And I'm going to do the same alignment relatively to the page, and now it's exactly in the middle. Now, last but not least, let's say that I want to add something right near this blue wing. Take out my pen, make sure that I don't have anything selected. And I want this nice pop this light green. And I'm going to wildly do a bit, turn this around. Okay. Move it below the curve of the wing, and they're right there on both sides. I can already tell that it's not really following properly, so just let me change that a little bit. And I would love for that to have a gradient as well. I'm really a sucker for gradients. I really like that. And I want this one, this color to be more like that. And the butterfly is ready. 10. Final words and finish: So, final words. Before we call this a night, I want to emphasize that the logic in the way that Affinity designer uses, the command controller or the two finger gestures and those two combined are not always as transparent as they could be. Remember that the moment you put your finger or fingers down, make a lot of difference. The tool you have selected, the direction you want to go to, et cetera, this is really a matter of getting the feel for it rather than learning by heart what everything does. So don't despair, give it another try, maybe change the order in which you execute an action. And with that, we've reached the end. Yay. Hopefully, you've come further in understanding how the pencil works and in your efforts to try. Share your project in the project gallery, leave questions and comments there. If anything is unclear and vector away. Review would be highly appreciated. Bye. Thanks for now, and we'll see you again next time. Bye bye.