Chapter Two. Drawing Lines and Shapes

The paradox of digital illustration is that often the simple things are complicated, and the complicated things are simple. Anyone can apply a complex set of effects (drop shadow, blur, even rotation) to a drawing. But on the other hand, drawing a curved line is probably the most essential and challenging skill you need to master Adobe Illustrator CS3. However, Illustrator has built-in tools for drawing shapes such as ellipses (including circles), rectangles (including squares), rounded rectangles, preset (but flexible) curves, and of course straight lines.

Drawing simple shapes in Illustrator can be counterintuitive because the process corresponds to Illustrator’s underlying vector logic. When you draw a ...

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