Adobe Illustrator CS4 How-Tos: 100 Essential Techniques

#13 Drawing Lines

Perhaps the simplest way to generate a path is to draw a straight line. Drawing a line with the Line Segment tool is a good way to become familiar with generating paths in Illustrator. Drawing a curved line with the Arc tool is more challenging. When you draw an arc, you create a line segment that curves. Both the Line Segment tool and the Arc tool are found in the Line Segment gallery in the toolbox.

Constraining Arcs

To draw symmetrical curves, hold down the Shift key as you draw. This constrains the arc to increments of 45 degrees.

Hold down the Option/Alt key as you draw to generate an arc using the initial click point as a center point.

You can combine both these tricks: As you draw, hold down the Shift key and ...