From the course: Illustrator 2020 One-on-One: Fundamentals

Drawing with the Curvature tool - Illustrator Tutorial

From the course: Illustrator 2020 One-on-One: Fundamentals

Start my 1-month free trial

Drawing with the Curvature tool

“

- [Instructor] All right let's take a look at drawing with a curvature tool which is different than any of the tools we've seen so far. Now I'm going to start things off in the usual way by going up to the file menu and choosing new from template and then I'll locate my RGB with center guides file and open it up in order to create a brand new untitled document. Now the curvature tool is located right here in a single column toolbox between the traditional pen tool and the type tool and it has a keyboard shortcut of shift tilde and as you may recall the tilde key is located in the top left corner of an American keyboard and it makes a certain amount of sense as a keyboard shortcut because after all the tools icon features a kind of vertical tilde and after you select the tool and move it into the document window you're seeing a horizontal version of that tilde. We're also seeing an asterisk which tells us that we're about to create a new path outline. And so notice if I click right here for example I will create a new anchor point which will appears circular when you're working with a curvature tool and if I move my cursor away you can see that the asterisk has disappeared which tells me that I have a path in progress. Now initially you're not going to see any kind of segment connecting your cursor to that anchor point not until you create a second anchor point anyway and so notice as soon as I create that second anchor point I connect the two points together with a straight segment but notice that the segment begins to curve as soon as you move your cursor away from that anchor point and it curves even more the farther that you move it away. All right I'll go ahead and set another point at this location just by clicking and now as I move my cursor away I'm changing the curvature of both of the previous segments. I'm also seeing by the way a preview of the next segment I'm going to draw which is known as the rubber band feature inside Illustrator. At any rate I'm going to set the point right here and now notice I want you to see how as I'm moving my cursor around I am changing the curvature of both of the segments that I've already drawn as well as the segment I'm about to draw but as soon as I set this guy down by clicking, once again and I move my cursor away from it things are settling down. So the first two segments are no longer changing just the most recent segment I drew and of course the segment I'm about to draw. And then as soon as you hover over the very first anchor point, you are going to see a little circle next to your cursor which shows you that you're going to close the shape but I do want you to see that I'm about to modify the curvature of that next segment. The first one that I drew and that's because when you're working with the curvature tool there's a high degree of interdependence between the anchor points. All right so I'll just go ahead and close that shape and notice that I now have an asterisk next to my cursor once again which tells me that if I were to click I would begin a new path outline. But you also have the option of editing the existing path and so notice if I move my cursor over the segment I see a little plus sign which shows me that I'm going to add an anchor point if I click at this location and then if I hover my cursor over that new anchor point I get an arrow cursor which means that I can go ahead and drag that point to a new location. And so the curvature tool doubles at a path editing tool and this is true regardless of what kind of path you're working with. I could've of started with a rectangle that I drew with the rectangle tool and I could still edit it using the curvature tool. All right I'm going to create a point right there on that segment and I'll go ahead and drag it down to about this location as well and those are a few basics for working with a curvature tool here inside Illustrator

Contents