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- [Voiceover] In this
movie, I'll introduce you

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to the new and improved pencil tool.

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Now, assuming you've created that

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center guides template,
a few chapters back,

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go up to the file menu and
choose new from template

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or you can press that keyboard
shortcut of CTRL+SHIFT+N

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OR CMD+SHIFT+N on the Mac.

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Then locate your template,
it my case it's called

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RGB with center guide.ait
and click on a new button,

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and you'll end up with a blank document.

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Now go ahead and select the pencil tool,

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which is located midway down the toolbox.

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If you don't see it at this location,

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go ahead and click and hold and choose

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the pencil tool from the fly-out menu.

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Now if you've upgraded to the most recent

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version of Illustrator, you'll see

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that the pencil shares a fly-out menu with

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a shaper tool as well as the join tool.

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Both of which we saw
in a previous chapter.

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Also notice that it has
a keyboard shortcut of N

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and the reason that it
doesn't have the more obvious

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shortcut of P, is because
that key is assigned

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to the pen tool, which we'll
see in a later chapter.

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Alright now just go
ahead and start drawing,

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and I should say by the way, first of all

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I'm creating a heart, in
case that's not obvious,

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and I'm drawing with a mouse,
as opposed to a tablet.

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Which I think is obvious by
the roughness of this outline,

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but notice, as soon as I release

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that we get a smoother
shape as we're seeing here.

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Well let's say it's not
quite smooth enough,

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then you can press the backspace key,

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or the delete key on a Mac,
to get rid of that shape,

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and then with the pencil tool active,

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go ahead and press the enter key,

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or the return key on
a Mac, to bring up the

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pencil tool options dialogue box.

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And notice this Fidelity
option up here at the top

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if you're working with a
tablet, you might wanna

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make your path outlines more accurate.

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In my case, because I'm
working with a mouse though

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I wanna make them as smooth as possible,

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so I'm gonna crank that slider triangle

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all the way over to the
right and click okay,

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and now if I draw the path, even if

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the preview's looking pretty chunky,

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I should expect to see smoother results.

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And sure enough, as soon as
I release the mouse button

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I see a very smooth shape indeed.

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Now, the one unfortunate problem with it

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is that it's an open path
outline instead of a closed one.

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Notice if I press the A key to
switch to my wide arrow tool

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and I click on one of these points up here

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at the top of the heart, the two points

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are not joined together by default.

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Now you can join them, just by moving

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one directly on the other like so,

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and then marquee-ing those two points

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in order to make sure thy're both selected

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and then just going up
to this option right here

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connect selected endpoints, and that'll

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go ahead and fuse those
endpoints together,

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in order to create a closed
path outline like so.

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So that's one way to work, the other is to

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redraw the shape, subject
to a different setting.

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And to demonstrate that,
I'll press the backspace key

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a couple of times here on a PC,
that would be the delete key

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on the Mac, in order to
get rid of that shape,

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and I'll switch back to
my pencil tool once again

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and I'll press the enter
key, or the return key

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on the Mac, to bring up the dialogue box.

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Now this dialogue box
has been in a high state

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of transition, so you
may see different stuff.

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But currently we have this checkbox

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"Close paths when ends are
within", however many pixels,

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by default it's set to
fifteen, so in other words

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you need to make sure that you end your

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path outline within fifteen screen pixels

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of where you begin it, and so I'm

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gonna go ahead and turn that checkbox on

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and click okay, and now I'll go ahead

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and draw the shape once again,

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but I want you to note the cursor

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see how the pencil has a
little asterisk next to it?

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That tells you that you're creating

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a new path outline, like so, but notice

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as soon as we arrive
at the very first point

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inside of the shape up here at the top,

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that we're gonna see a
circle next to the cursor,

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which tells us that we're
gonna close the path outline.

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Now the one problem with it, at this point

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is that it's rounded off, so
the closed points tend to be

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what are known as smooth
points, as opposed to corners.

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If what you want is a
corner, then try beginning

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the draw at a different location.

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So for example, I'll just go ahead and

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press the backspace key there, and again

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that's the delete key on a Mac,

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and then I'll draw the hump of the heart,

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and then I'll come back around

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and draw the center of it, like so,

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and then I'll go ahead and
connect those endpoints

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In order to create a nice,
clean, smooth, fluid shape

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complete with corners at
the top, and the bottom.

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Alright, now I'm gonna make
my shape a little bigger

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by clicking on the word transform up here

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in the control panel, or
again if you don't see it

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click the X, Y, W, or H
and I'm gonna make sure

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that both the values are linked together,

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that is both the width and height values,

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and then I'll change the width

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value to, let's say 500 points.

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And next, I'll go ahead and give the shape

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a thicker line weight by taking that

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stroke value up to eight points,

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and I'll click on the fill
icon, which is the first stroke

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up here in the control panel,
and I'll change the color

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to the shade of red, Rx237 Gx28 Bx36

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in order to create this final effect here.

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And that folks is the
basics of how you use

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the best free-form drawing
tool in the business,

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the new and improved pencil
tool here inside Illustrator.