In this exercise I'm going to show you how to draw stars in Illustrator and the Star tool is one of the most flexible tools in the program, it's actually a lot of fun to use. So I've gone ahead and saved my changes as Compound paths.ai found inside the 05_shapes folder, and as long as I have my drawing layer expanded, I want to go ahead and select these two Compound Paths and combine them into a single group. Now, there's a variety of different ways to select these paths, I could meatball one shift+meatball the other, not too tough, however, I want to show you a special trick that allows you to select all of the objects inside of a given layer at once.
Now this is different than meatballing the layer itself, which includes the objects inside the layer by association, but really targets the layer as we saw when we changed the Opacity of the shapes layer. Instead what you do, I'll go ahead and press Ctrl+Shift+A or Cmd+Shift+A on the Mac to select nothing, and you press the Alt key or the Option key on the Mac and click on the layer, and notice by Alt or Option clicking, you go ahead and meatball the items inside of that layer. Then I'll press Ctrl+G or Cmd+G on the Mac to go ahead and group these objects and I'll rename the group Circles.
Even though they're really elliptical crescents, circles will do, and I'll click OK. Alright, before I draw the star I want to set up white as my default fill color but when I look up here on the Control panel, I sort of take a step back, because I'm seeing this question mark that indicates that I have multiple fill attributes going on and then I see that my Object Type is Group, which means I still have a selection inside of the illustration and if I go changing the fill color, why then I will change those selected objects. So I'll press Ctrl+Z, Cmd+Z on a Mac to undo that modification, press Ctrl+Shift+A, Cmd+ Shift+A on a Mac to deselect.
Now I see up here on the Control panel that I have No Selection, so thoughtful of it to tell me, and I'm being sincere by the way, and I can see that white is my default fill color, black is my default Stroke color and as long as I'm here I'll change my Stroke Weight to 10 point like so. Now I want you to select the Star tool, and I'm going to go ahead and scroll up a little so I have some room to work. The Star tool always draws from the center outward, all the time, and notice by default it draws a kind of slightly bulbous five pointed star.
You could change that to a classic five- point star like on an American flag, by pressing and holding the Shift key, that'll go ahead and constrain the star so it's upright and then if you press and hold the Alt key or the Option key on the Mac, notice that you make those sides nice and straight, so that one point is in perfect alignment with the opposite point. Now you might find it to be a little bit of a pain in the neck to continue to press the Shift and Alt keys or Shift and Option on a Mac when you can also use the arrow key to change the number of points associated with your star. So I'm going to release Shift and Alt for the time being, Shift and Option on the Mac and then I'm going to press the up arrow key a few times and it seems to be very sensitive, it's adding a lot of points very quickly, I went too far, so I'll press the down arrow key.
I want eight points altogether, think I have nine. So I'll press the down arrow key and now I've got it. So we're looking for an eight pointed star, so you press the up arrow key to add points, and you press the down arrow key to delete points, be sure not to press and hold because then it goes really fast like that. Anyway, now that I've completely messed things up, there we go, that's what I'm looking for, good job Deke. Another thing you can do, as you're drawing with the tool, you can press the Control key or the Cmd key on a Mac to move the spikes independently of the interior points.
See that, and that's a function of pressing Control or Cmd as I say, and I can also of course, press the spacebar to move the star to a different location, and that works for all the tools incidentally. And then I can align my star to these guidelines, if I so desire, but my center point has gotten all goofed up, because I went and spacebar dragged. So you know what, I'm going to go ahead and release the mouse button and restart this shape, so I'll press the Backspace key or the Delete key on a Mac to delete the star.
I know I told you never to delete shapes inside of Illustrator but my caveat was, if they're totally wrong, just get rid of them of course. It's only if they're good design elements that don't fit that you want to keep them around. Anyway, I want to drag from, I think about there and I'll drag down this vertical guideline like so until I get a shape that more or less matches the one in the Template and I might need to press the spacebar and drag down just a little bit in my case, you might need to do something else and you can also modify the position of the star after drawing it of course by nudging it using the arrow keys.
Anyway, this looks pretty good. I'll go ahead and release and notice by the way when you're tracing a Template, you want the path outline to go through the middle of the Stroke. There's other ways to position the Stroke, but that's your best bet. And then release the mouse button in order to draw that star. So remember, you've got Shift to constrain the angle of the star, Alt in order to make sure the opposite edges line up with each other, which mine don't, by the way, so I didn't use Alt or Option on a Mac. You've got Control or Cmd to make the points more or less spiky and you've got the arrow keys to add and subtract points on that star.
Author
Released
5/28/2010- Creating great art using basic tools
- Brushing and building organic artwork
- Scaling and rotating path outlines
- Creating and formatting text
- Drawing articulated paths with the Pen tool
- Combining paths with Pathfinder operations
- Printing and exporting to the web
Skill Level Beginner
Duration
Views
Q: I was not able to locate my saved shortcuts and cannot locate the folder I created to place the preferences into. The Illustrator steps are clear and using the search function I should be able to find the folder, but it cannot be located. How can I find the shortcuts file on a Mac?
A: To search for the shortcuts file on a Mac, press Cmd+F. Then change the option that says "Kind" in the top-left corner to System Files by choosing "Other" and selecting "System Files" from the menu.



Q: The instructions for installing the dekeKeys don't work on my computer (which is running Mac OS X Lion). Is there an update to these?
A: The dekeKeys distributed with this course will still work for Lion. You just need to add them to a slightly different folder than in previous versions of OS X.
Open a new Finder window and choose Go > Go to Folder. Type the following file path exactly as written below. Copying and pasting may result in an error.
~/Library/Preferences/Adobe Illustrator CS5 Settings/en_US
Move and/or copy/paste the dekeKeys to this folder and follow the rest of the instructions as outlined in the video, "Installing the dekeKeys keyboard shortcuts."
Related Courses
-
Deke's Techniques
with Deke McClelland154h 49m Intermediate
-
Introduction
-
Remapping OS shortcuts6m 56s
-
1. Making a Document
-
Managing artboards1m 20s
-
The Welcome screen3m 49s
-
Creating a new document7m 13s
-
Advanced document controls6m 52s
-
Auto-arranging artboards3m 42s
-
Rulers and artboards6m 40s
-
Saving a native AI document7m 25s
-
Closing all open documents2m 45s
-
-
2. Navigation and the Workspace
-
Using tools to zoom and pan5m 56s
-
Scroll wheel tricks2m 13s
-
The tabbed-window interface6m 17s
-
Closing all but one document3m 30s
-
Saving a custom workspace4m 57s
-
Hiding the bounding box4m 27s
-
Keyboard increments7m 15s
-
Cycling between screen modes5m 21s
-
3. Opening Documents and Getting Organized
-
Opening a document5m 2s
-
Introducing Adobe Bridge6m 6s
-
File-type associations4m 3s
-
Previewing and collecting8m 17s
-
4. Basic Line Art
-
Everything is anything1m 14s
-
Meet the line tools3m 30s
-
Saving large layer previews5m 50s
-
Creating custom guides5m 31s
-
Creating a heart using arcs3m 51s
-
Adjusting control handles4m 13s
-
Drawing a line segment4m 51s
-
Rotate, Fill, and Stack4m 37s
-
Drawing a looping spiral4m 41s
-
Tracing a template layer5m 1s
-
Selecting similar objects3m 32s
-
-
5. Geometric Shapes
-
The anatomy of a path1m 41s
-
Meet the shape tools3m 32s
-
Creating a compound path4m 29s
-
Drawing rounded rectangles3m 28s
-
Aligning to a key object3m 47s
-
The constraint axes4m 11s
-
Using the Flare tool5m 32s
-
-
6. Paint, Build, and Transform
-
Painting artwork from life1m 21s
-
Tracing a photograph2m 41s
-
Draw, Move, and Duplicate5m 27s
-
Rotating and duplicating6m 1s
-
Pressure-sensitive input4m 24s
-
Using the Shape Builder tool4m 57s
-
Establishing design groups5m 54s
-
When to rotate vs. reflect4m 55s
-
Simulating beveled edges6m 46s
-
-
7. Swatch, Stroke, and Stacking Order
-
The Document Color mode6m 20s
-
Introducing the Stroke panel4m 46s
-
Cap, Join, and Miter Limit6m 42s
-
Managing color swatches4m 55s
-
Filling paths inside groups6m 24s
-
Adjusting the stacking order7m 44s
-
Combining multiple fills5m 29s
-
Creating a tile pattern9m 2s
-
The new CS5 arrowheads5m 44s
-
Creating a callout line7m 1s
-
Width tool tips and tricks8m 47s
-
8. Working with Type
-
Next-generation text1m 19s
-
Making a margin guide5m 7s
-
Offsetting flush-left text4m 47s
-
Placing and threading text6m 18s
-
Working with point text7m 10s
-
Redefining paragraph styles6m 42s
-
Using the Glyphs panel6m 41s
-
Spell-checking text4m 24s
-
Updating a graphic style5m 43s
-
Creating type on a path7m 26s
-
Adjusting baseline shift4m 18s
-
-
9. Using the Pen Tool
-
Moving and deleting points7m 46s
-
Editing a path as you go7m 5s
-
Faking a spline curve5m 54s
-
Adding corners to a spline7m 15s
-
How control handles work10m 17s
-
Aligning open paths5m 38s
-
Splitting and joining paths8m 51s
-
Cusp points and miter limits6m 45s
-
Using the Convert Point tool4m 42s
-
Stacking clipped paths4m 28s
-
10. Pathfinder Operations
-
Unite closed, join open4m 46s
-
Switching shape modes4m 43s
-
Adding to a compound shape5m 32s
-
Outline Stroke and Unite3m 37s
-
Painting in the foliage5m 23s
-
Filling in and erasing away6m 31s
-
Painting more precise holes5m 17s
-
Adding in rough edges7m 53s
-
Contouring roots and limbs8m 56s
-
Filling in the limbs4m 19s
-
Using the Divide operation5m 46s
-
11. Printing a Document
-
Converting type to outlines8m 55s
-
Setting trim size and bleed6m 22s
-
Stroking a placed image4m 54s
-
Filling in your bleeds5m 34s
-
Troubleshooting weak blacks6m 36s
-
The General Print options5m 20s
-
Placement, scale, and tiling6m 39s
-
Trim and printer marks6m 23s
-
Warnings and document raster5m 21s
-
12. Exporting to the Web (and Elsewhere)
-
Saving a high-contrast GIF7m 18s
-
The versatile PNG format6m 33s
-
Saving a full-color PNG4m 47s
-
Placing an AI Smart Object7m 38s
-
Conclusion
-
Until next time1m 33s
-
- Mark as unwatched
- Mark all as unwatched
Are you sure you want to mark all the videos in this course as unwatched?
This will not affect your course history, your reports, or your certificates of completion for this course.
CancelTake notes with your new membership!
Type in the entry box, then click Enter to save your note.
1:30Press on any video thumbnail to jump immediately to the timecode shown.
Notes are saved with you account but can also be exported as plain text, MS Word, PDF, Google Doc, or Evernote.
Share this video
Embed this video
Video: Drawing a multi-point star