Adobe Illustrator CS5 One-on-One

sible you won’t need to edit your artwork, that’s usually not the

case. The addition of a new path often forces you to reassess

another path. You may decide to construct a complex path in

pieces and then join them. And some reshapings that you can

do after drawing a path are simply easier (and more fun) when

applied with tools other than the pen.

Which is why Illustrator lets you select and enhance your art-

work. As I demonstrate in the Video Lesson 5: “Selecting and

Aligning” you can select through one shape to another below it

in the layers stack, select a range of points with the lasso tool,

select related objects with the magic wand, select all segments

in a path independently of their anchor points, and save selec-

tions for later use. Once you’ve selected precisely those parts of

those paths you want, you can enhance them by adding center

points, copy colors independently of their fi ll and stroke attributes,

transform paths from independent origin points, scale

and fi lter individual segments, and merge a single stroke

across multiple paths.

Illustrator’s white arrow tool gives you a surgical level

of control over the nipping, tucking, trimming, and ul-

timate reconstruction of any path in your illustration.

It’s indisputably one of the most basic and powerful ed-

iting tools. But the best illustrations ultimately use a combination

of the white arrow tool and the transformation functions; you turn

to whichever tool provides the best control and the most effi cient

means to the desired end.

Moving and Cloning Path Elements

In the fi rst two exercises, I’ll walk you through creating a

fanciful (and utterly fi ctitious) ancient Pueblo stop sign,

a stylized hand symbol that I invented to warn the cliff-

dwelling Native Americans of dangerous intersections.

You’ll start with two simple shapes, a line and a spiral,

shown in the upper half of Figure 5-2. Then through a

series of pictured transformations, you’ll create the fi nal

art shown in the lower half of the fi gure. (You’ll also

add a few effects to polish the fi nal shape, as you’ll see

at the end of the second exercise.) These exercises entail

no drawing: simply a series of manipulations to create the

fi nal artwork. And with that, let’s get started.

Figure 5-2 .

Start here...

...and end up here.

...follow these steps...

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Moving and Cloning Path Elements