Adobe Illustrator CC Digital Classroom

Lesson 5: Working with the Drawing Tools

 

Adobe Illustrator includes a number of impressive drawing tools that allow you to create a wide variety of artwork with speed and precision.

What you’ll learn in this lesson:

• • Using the Pen tool
• • Editing existing paths
• • Working with tracing presets
• • Creating vector artwork from placed images

Starting up

Before starting, make sure that your tools and panels are consistent by resetting your workspace. See “Resetting Adobe Illustrator CC Preferences” in the Starting up section of this book.

You will work with several files from the ai05lessons folder in this lesson. Make sure that you have loaded the ailessons folder onto your hard drive from www.digitalclassroombooks.com/epub/illustratorcc. See “Loading lesson files” in the Starting up section of this book.

Working with the Pen tool

The Pen tool is one of the most powerful tools in Illustrator and it allows you to create any line or shape that you need. The Pen tool creates anchor points that can be rounded, smooth, sharp, or angular. Using the Pen tool, you can create any line or shape that you can conceive. Using the Pen tool and mastering line construction is all about understanding the nature of anchor points and how to create and work with them.

There are two kinds of anchor points ...