Adobe Illustrator CS5 One-on-One

What Makes the

Straight Line Bend

Shapes and lines consist of anchor points and paths,

as you learned in the last lesson. You can think of the

shape like a subway system: Anchor points are the sta-

tions, and paths are the tracks. You can move a point,

but the path still has to travel through it, so the path

follows the point, wherever you move it. Anchor points

are just that—they anchor the path in specifi c locations.

You can also think of anchor points as a dot-to-dot

puzzle. Each anchor point is a dot, and you connect

those dots with what Illustrator refers to as a segment,

so-called because it is just one piece of the whole path.

Unlike dot-to-dot puzzles, however, segments in Illus-

trator don’t have to be straight; they’re free to curve.

But how does Illustrator know which way to curve the

segment? And by how much?

That’s where Illustrator relies on another kind of point.

Not an anchor point, mind you, because this point is not

part of the path, but a point that I refer to as a control

handle (or just handle for short). Control handles have a

more indirect, almost gravitational, effect on the shape of

a path. Pull the control handle one way, the path bends

toward it; push it the other way, and the path is repelled,

as in Figure 3-2. (The original path is shown in light gray

for comparison.) These control handles are what make

Illustrator; they’ve been there since the very beginning,

one of Adobe’s fi rst patents. And the pen tool is the only

way to have complete control of these handles as you

draw. (Control handles are fi rst covered in the exercise

“Drawing Fluid Bézier Curves” on page 96.)

In this lesson, we’ll start out using the pen tool to draw

straight-sided polygons, eschewing the control handles

until later on in the lesson. With a little perseverance, by

the end of this lesson you’ll have created a full-fl edged

piece of vector art, using only a handful of paths.

Figure 3-2 .

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What Makes the Straight Line Bend