I am still working inside the file called Blobby green head.ai found inside the 09_pen_tool folder and all I have done is turn off the ancient image layer and I have drawn an ellipse using the Ellipse tool. Now what I would like you to do is grab your White Arrow tool, assuming that you're working along with me here, and you may recall, we are going to be drawing an absolutely exacting perfect ellipse or circle, your choice, depending on what kind of shape you started with here using the Pen tool, which is a fairly disciplined act I have to say and hopefully it will give you little bit of a sense for how to draw smooth points inside of illustrator.
I want you to click off the shape and then click on that anchor point to select it independently of the other anchor points inside of the shape. Another thing I could have done, by the way, and this is a good habit to get into sometimes. If I switch to the Black Arrow tool and click on this shape, then the entire thing is selected. I will press the A key to switch back to the White Arrow tool to select this top anchor point. I could have marqueed around it like so and then I wouldn't have had to deselect the shape and reselect it, and also by virtue of working this way, I know exactly where that anchor point is, so I don't have to sift around for it.
Alright, the next thing I would like you to do is go up here to the Control panel and notice there is this Handles options. Currently, it's set to Hide handles for multiple selected anchor points, so you are only going to see the Control handles for a single selected anchor point, and for the two neighboring segments. Remember, I was telling you, whenever you select an anchor point inside of Illustrator, you also select the two segments that neighbor it. That is the segment coming into the anchor point and the segment going out of the anchor point. The one exception is when working with an end point, which only has a single segment associated with it, in which case you just select that one segment.
Anyway, so we are seeing the control handles that are associated with the two neighboring segments. Let's say, we want to be able to see all kinds of control handles at a time. We want to be able to see in fact all of the control handles for this ellipse. Then you would switch to this option, Show handles for multiple selected anchor points. Go ahead and click on it to make it active. Now that's not going to change what you see on the screen, because you still have just one anchor point selected, what I would like you to do now is press the Alt key or the Option key on the Mac and click on that point again, and then you'll select all the anchor points in this ellipse, and you'll now see all of the control handles.
If I had not turned that options on, just a moment ago, now it's not available to us anymore, but if I had not turned it on a moment ago, then we would not be seeing any control handles, because we have multiple anchor points selected. Now you might wonder why in the world that's not the default setting, when do you always want to see all your controls handles? And the answer is, yes, kind of. The problem is, once you start working inside fairly complex shapes, seeing all the control handles can be a little bit overwhelming. And not so much of overwhelming, it's just confusing. It just gets in your way of seeing what's going on.
So you can always change that setting back and forth as long as you have at least one anchor point fewer than all of the anchor points selected for the given shapes. So in other words, if I were to Shift+Click on this anchor point down here at the bottom of the ellipse in order to deselect it, then I would see this handles option again. I'll show you the difference. This is how things look normally if I turn on the Hide handles for multiple selected anchor points options, and this is how they look now. So again, you can switch back and forth between that options anytime you like. Alright, the next thing I want you to do is press Ctrl+R or Command+R in the Mac to bring up your rulers, and then we're going to create a fairly Byzantine Network of Ruler Guides, and here is what I want you to do.
We are not going to keep the ruler guides; we are just going to create them temporarily here. You know what, let's go ahead and make a new layer; just so that we can pull out all these guides a little more easily in the future. I am going to Alt+Click or Option+Click on that Page icon at the bottom of the Layers panel, and I am going to go ahead and call this layer Guides, and I'll change the color to let's say Olive, and then click OK. Now let's go ahead and move the drawing layer on top of the guides' layer like so, and then I am going to click on the guides' layer once again to make it active, even though the selected object appears on the drawing layer, we can create new guides on the guides layer.
Alright, now go ahead and drag out a guide from the horizontal ruler like so, so that it snaps into alignment with the top anchor point, and I will drag another so it snaps into alignment with the middle anchor points, both on the left and the right hand sides. And I will drag a third horizontal guide line so it snaps into alignment with the bottom handle inside the shape. Let's do the same thing with the vertical ruler, so drag a guideline to the left point, the center point, and to the right point like so. Now we need to add guides for each of the control handle.
So, I will start with the horizontal guidelines and snap into alignment with that control handle right there and then I will draw another one that snaps into alignment with this bottom control handle. Notice by the way the control handles on the left and right sides are symmetrical with respect to each other. So all you are going to need is a system right now of five horizontal guides and pretty soon we'll need five vertical guides as well. So I will drag a guide from the vertical ruler that snaps into alignment with this control handle, and another one that snaps into alignment with this control handle.
And that's all we need. Now we are done with the ellipse. If you want to get rid of it, which I suggest you do, just press the Backspace key once or twice in order to get rid of that shape that would be the delete key once or twice on the Mac. Alright, so with my best efforts all these guides appeared on the drawing layer. That's not what I wanted. So I am going to go ahead and grab all of these guides by clicking on one, and Shift+Clicking on another, here inside the Layers panel. It's the easiest way to work, because the guides are locked by default, and I will go ahead and grab these guides and move them on to the guides layer like so.
Alright, that just helps to clean up the drawing layer. Alright, so now we have the guides' layer that's full of guides. Ha, what a happy surprise? Alright, I will go ahead and twirl guides close once again, and now go ahead and grab your Pen tool, and watch what I do, because if you're just starting and trying to figure out what to do with this matrix of intersecting guidelines that you have created, it might be a little difficult to follow. But if you watch me, I think it will make a modicum of sense. Notice that we have one, two, three, four, five, vertical guides and one, two, three, four, five horizontal guides.
So I will start things off top middle and we are going to drag with the Pen tool, and we are going to drag in a continuous direction when you're creating a perfectly smooth fluid path using the Pen tool. You either want to draw consistently in a counter clockwise fashion or consistently in a clockwise fashion with respect to that one shape. You can always change your mind back and forth between different shapes, but as your drawing one shape, if you start in a counter clockwise direction, you want to stay counter clockwise. If you start clockwise, you want to stay clockwise.
But I am going to start clockwise. So I'll click here and drag to this location and notice that I've created an anchor point right there and I have created a control handle at this location so I snapped into alignment with this guide intersection, and I also created another control handle in the opposite direction. Alright, now move your cursor all the way over to the far right guideline, and you want to position your cursor at the middle horizontal guide, and then drag down.
So notice, I am continuously drawing in a counter clockwise fashion. It's not a matter of whether I am dragging consistently to the left or to the right, or up, or down. It's directional. In another words, you've got to think in terms of a continuous organic, fundamentally circular or circle like shape, and it doesn't necessarily look circular. But it's going to loop around and ultimately closed is the idea. So I went ahead and drag down from this point, create an anchor point at this location, a control handle right there at the end of my drag and another control handle in exactly the opposite and symmetrical direction.
Now, drop your cursor down to this location. At least that's what I am doing. By the way you could start in anyone of these far guide intersections, if you want to. So you don't have to draw things exactly like I am. This is just so that, you can follow along with me. I will go ahead and click at this location right there at the bottom middle guide intersection and then I'll drag over to the left and snap into alignment with this guide intersection right there. So I have got an anchor point at the bottom, control handle at the end of the my drag, another control handle symmetrical to my drag and then the fourth point will occur right there, I'll drag up and snap into alignment at that guide intersection, and so once again at the risk of over documenting of what I am doing here, we have got an anchor point at the beginning of my drag, we have a got a control handle at the end of my drag and another control handle symmetrical to the end of my drag, and then finally, I will not click at this point.
If I did that, that's going to result in a cusp point, and we are going to have a dent on the side of the ellipse. I will go ahead and press Ctrl+Z, Command+Z on the Mac to undo that. Instead, I will click at this point and drag in the opposite direction of where I want my control handle to be, because again, I am dragging in a consistent fashion. I started in a clockwise direction, I am continuing throughout the creation of this path in a clockwise direction. And then you end up having a perfect ellipse, something you don't see people create very often that you managed to make along with me here, using the Pen tool inside Illustrator.
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
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Deke's Techniques
with Deke McClelland154h 49m Intermediate
-
Introduction
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Remapping OS shortcuts6m 56s
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1. Making a Document
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Managing artboards1m 20s
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The Welcome screen3m 49s
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Creating a new document7m 13s
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Advanced document controls6m 52s
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Auto-arranging artboards3m 42s
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Rulers and artboards6m 40s
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Saving a native AI document7m 25s
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Closing all open documents2m 45s
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2. Navigation and the Workspace
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Using tools to zoom and pan5m 56s
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Scroll wheel tricks2m 13s
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The tabbed-window interface6m 17s
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Closing all but one document3m 30s
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Saving a custom workspace4m 57s
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Hiding the bounding box4m 27s
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Keyboard increments7m 15s
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Cycling between screen modes5m 21s
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3. Opening Documents and Getting Organized
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Opening a document5m 2s
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Introducing Adobe Bridge6m 6s
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File-type associations4m 3s
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Previewing and collecting8m 17s
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4. Basic Line Art
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Everything is anything1m 14s
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Meet the line tools3m 30s
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Saving large layer previews5m 50s
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Creating custom guides5m 31s
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Creating a heart using arcs3m 51s
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Adjusting control handles4m 13s
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Drawing a line segment4m 51s
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Rotate, Fill, and Stack4m 37s
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Drawing a looping spiral4m 41s
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Tracing a template layer5m 1s
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Selecting similar objects3m 32s
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5. Geometric Shapes
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The anatomy of a path1m 41s
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Meet the shape tools3m 32s
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Creating a compound path4m 29s
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Drawing rounded rectangles3m 28s
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Aligning to a key object3m 47s
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The constraint axes4m 11s
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Using the Flare tool5m 32s
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6. Paint, Build, and Transform
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Painting artwork from life1m 21s
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Tracing a photograph2m 41s
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Draw, Move, and Duplicate5m 27s
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Rotating and duplicating6m 1s
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Pressure-sensitive input4m 24s
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Using the Shape Builder tool4m 57s
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Establishing design groups5m 54s
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When to rotate vs. reflect4m 55s
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Simulating beveled edges6m 46s
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7. Swatch, Stroke, and Stacking Order
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The Document Color mode6m 20s
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Introducing the Stroke panel4m 46s
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Cap, Join, and Miter Limit6m 42s
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Managing color swatches4m 55s
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Filling paths inside groups6m 24s
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Adjusting the stacking order7m 44s
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Combining multiple fills5m 29s
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Creating a tile pattern9m 2s
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The new CS5 arrowheads5m 44s
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Creating a callout line7m 1s
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Width tool tips and tricks8m 47s
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8. Working with Type
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Next-generation text1m 19s
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Making a margin guide5m 7s
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Offsetting flush-left text4m 47s
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Placing and threading text6m 18s
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Working with point text7m 10s
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Redefining paragraph styles6m 42s
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Using the Glyphs panel6m 41s
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Spell-checking text4m 24s
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Updating a graphic style5m 43s
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Creating type on a path7m 26s
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Adjusting baseline shift4m 18s
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9. Using the Pen Tool
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Moving and deleting points7m 46s
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Editing a path as you go7m 5s
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Faking a spline curve5m 54s
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Adding corners to a spline7m 15s
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How control handles work10m 17s
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Aligning open paths5m 38s
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Splitting and joining paths8m 51s
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Cusp points and miter limits6m 45s
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Using the Convert Point tool4m 42s
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Stacking clipped paths4m 28s
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10. Pathfinder Operations
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Unite closed, join open4m 46s
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Switching shape modes4m 43s
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Adding to a compound shape5m 32s
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Outline Stroke and Unite3m 37s
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Painting in the foliage5m 23s
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Filling in and erasing away6m 31s
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Painting more precise holes5m 17s
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Adding in rough edges7m 53s
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Contouring roots and limbs8m 56s
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Filling in the limbs4m 19s
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Using the Divide operation5m 46s
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11. Printing a Document
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Converting type to outlines8m 55s
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Setting trim size and bleed6m 22s
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Stroking a placed image4m 54s
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Filling in your bleeds5m 34s
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Troubleshooting weak blacks6m 36s
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The General Print options5m 20s
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Placement, scale, and tiling6m 39s
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Trim and printer marks6m 23s
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Warnings and document raster5m 21s
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12. Exporting to the Web (and Elsewhere)
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Saving a high-contrast GIF7m 18s
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The versatile PNG format6m 33s
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Saving a full-color PNG4m 47s
-
Placing an AI Smart Object7m 38s
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Conclusion
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Until next time1m 33s
-
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Video: Drawing perfect smooth points