Now let’s figure out how to add a point to a path.Īgain, hover your pen over your star shape but this time, hover it on the path we’ve just created. If you click on the point while this icon is showing, you will delete that point, like this:Īs you can see, by removing that point, the path adjusts to align in between the 2 closest points. Hover your Pen Tool cursor over one of the points in your star: You’ll see a little minus sign icon appear to the bottom right of your Pen.
Select the star, then bring your pen tool up again (‘P’ on your keyboard). Now we’re going to play around with some of the points, to show some of the things you can do to edit a shape. OK, I didn’t actually draw this: stars are pretty hard to draw freehand, so I cheated and used the Shape tool’s ‘Star Tool’. Let’s take a look at what you can do with your Pen Tool while you’re drawing. This is because there are a lot of options for your pen tool that only show when you’re hovering over a point. You can’t do that with a pen and ink drawing!Īs you’re clicking, you’ll notice that little ‘X’ icon that was appearing next to your pen tool has disappeared. This is one of the best things about vectors: you can tweak them as much as you like, without degrading your file. You can move them around or even turn them into curved shapes (which we’ll cover shortly). A blue filled point means you’ve got that point selected and it’s ready to modify.
This is because, at any point, you can go back and edit your points. If you continue clicking, you’ll notice that whichever point you’ve placed last will show blue, while all the other points are outlined with a white inside: Now move the pen tool somewhere else and click again. Congratulations, you have just created your first point! It will show up as a small blue square. With a new document open, click the pen tool once onto your artboard. The Pen Tool cursor looks like a little crowquill pen with a tiny ‘X’ on the bottom right corner. You can also find it in your Tools palette. In Adobe Illustrator, you can bring up your pen tool at any time by hitting ‘P’ on your keyboard. Let’s play around with some options using our Pen Tool. You can add curves to your paths to create rounded shapes, and use points as corners. Think of points like a connect-the-dots game: you’ll be drawing lines in between points to create an image.
Paths are created by drawing a series of points (also called ‘anchors’ or ‘anchor points’). This is how a vector looks in outline view (which you can get to in Adobe Illustrator by hitting ‘Command-Y’ on a Mac or ‘Control-Y’ on a PC):Īs you can see, the only data in your file are the outlines (paths) around all your shapes. When you’re in a vector program, you can switch your view of a file to see the paths (as opposed to all the nice colors and shading you’ve added). These outlines will print sharp and clear no matter how big you resize it, because the file’s appearance isn’t defined by little dots, just the outlines. Instead of being made of teeny dots of color, a vector file’s appearance is defined by the outlines on each shape. When you enlarge one of these rasters, the pixels will get bigger and bigger: Eventually you will start to see some degradation in the image quality, as the pixels look pretty jagged and lousy at large sizes. Digital images (which we call ‘rasters’) are made up of tiny pixels of color. Instead, we’re going to show you how to use the Pen Tool.įirst off, let’s talk about what makes a vector different from other digital imagery. It’s not at all like drawing on paper and you probably won’t be too happy with your first results. Unfortunately, it’s not so simple with vectors! There is a tool that will let you draw on-screen (the pencil tool), but it’s tricky to use. You can do this in Photoshop and it works fairly well. Many artists assume you open your vector program and then doodle right onto the screen. In this tutorial, we’re going to start at the drawing board and show you how the Pen Tool works, rather than make you struggle to figure it out on your own!
Your first foray into vector software can leave you frustrated, disappointed and confused. Making the leap from traditional illustration mediums (pencil, pen and ink, paints, etc) to vectors is tough. At first it will feel very tedious, but over time you’ll get much faster, we promise! This will give you practice using the Pen Tool features, and give you experience in adjusting your points and paths to align with an existing shape (the objects in your photograph). Tip: The best way to experiment with your Pen Tool is to trace something.