Drawing perfect smooth points

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.