Getting to Know Basic drawing tools in illustrator

Today I’m going to look at a few tools you would typically use with illustrator when creating basic concepts. We’ll be looking at using the pen tool, at text boxes, and some common practices you should try to employ to keep your work organized.

Show Grid, and SNAP to Grid are two of the most convenient settings I would recommend to new users or even veteran users trying to save time. This makes drawing things simpler. If you feel too constrained, then draw things on a large scale and then scale them down. If you like you can draw objects with snapping on and then scale and place them when it’s off.

Drawing a myriad of objects with both the grid visible and snapping becomes very easy.

Here is a concept for a web page I’ve been working on. Let’s look at some of the components to see some tools in use.

When using the paintbrush tool it is recommended to make your strokes as deliberate as possible. Your strokes are actually being simplified by the program once you release the mouse button.

The entire diagram above is made with brush strokes with the paintbrush (other than the straight lines of course). I would recommend trying to keep your strokes short and then combining vectors afterwards to create a seamless image.

Notice how easy it is to create a series of well organized geometric shapes when using the snap to grid feature. If you're working on a concept that requires lots of precise positioning, snap to grid will be invaluable.

Using the Pen Tool is a matter of practice. You need to get accustomed to how anchor points work. Here is an illustration of a click and drag motion.

Note the square is the original click point and the anchor is created in the direction where you drag the mouse.

Notice the curvature of the line created when clicking on two different points from the same anchor.

Once you’ve created this curve, go ahead and select the Direct Selection Tool. It differs somewhat from the normal Selection Tool you’re accustomed to. You’ll notice with this selection tool that you see anchor points that you couldn’t see with the other selection tool. Select those anchor points and move them around, you should see the curve adjust to the anchor point location accordingly. Once you’ve understood this basic principle, you should be able to learn the rest of the functionality that the pen tool offers.

For reference, the carrot on a stick was created with the pen tool and the white rope with the paintbrush tool.

Working with text

There are two basic set ups you can go with when working with text. One is simply clicking an area and beginning to type. Your text will not be formatted to any particular dimension. Further when trying to scale this text window you will notice that your text is stretching. Note the difference between the text windows you see here, one of them is manually formatted; the other is created with a bounding box.

A bounding box is created by using the Text tool to click and drag a box in which your text will appear. Your text should now properly wrap around and fit within that box. If the box can no longer contain all of the text you will notice a little red square, indicating that you have to cut some text or resize the box to fit it all. Notice the difference between the two text boxes, one created in a bounded box, the other adjusted manually.

While they look the same, the one on the right can be adjusted to fit somewhere else, whereas the one on the left must be adjusted heavily to fit a new format, notice what happens to the text when it is copied and pasted into a new size box:

The line feeds are all wrong. Note the red square at the bottom indicating that some text is blocked.

Stay tuned, I will be covering grouping and expanding objects in a future guide.

Post your comment

Submit