- [Male Instructor] In this movie
I'll show you how to extend and connect open path outlines
regardless of what tool was used
to draw them in the first place, using the pencil tool.
I'll start by selecting the pencil tool
either from this free-floating toolbar
or from the standard vertical toolbox.
Then I'll press the D key which establishes my default,
fill, and stroke settings.
It gives me a one point line weight as well.
I'm going to take that line weight up
just a little bit to two points.
I'll click on the word stroke here
and turn on both round cap and round join.
Now I'll press the escape key to hide that panel.
I'll begin drawing some frills
around the outside of this heart.
Some of them are turning out to be a little bit lumpy,
it looks like, but I'm hoping that they smooth out
by the time I'm done.
Sure enough I do have quite the lump there.
So I'm going to try to redraw this section
just a little bit like so.
As you can see here that ended up
killing the better part of the path outline.
If that happens to you, just press control Z,
or command Z on the Mac, and try drawing that section again.
Sometimes you just need to go the other direction
or draw a smaller line.
Now notice that the path outline is selected
and so if I move my cursor away,
I'm going to see a little asterisk next to the pencil.
But if I move my cursor near to the open path outline,
I see a little diagonal line which tells me
that I'm going to extend that selected path like so.
That is a function of a couple of settings
in that pencil tool options dialogue box.
I'll go ahead and press the enter key,
or the return key on the Mac,
to open the dialogue box on-screen.
Notice this checkbox right there keeps selected.
You most likely want to leave that on
because that way the last path outline you
drew remains selected.
But you can turn it off; it is an option.
Then notice that you can edit selected paths
as long as you drag within six screen pixels from them.
Again, you can turn that off
or adjust that distance as you like.
I'm just going to go ahead and click OK
to dismiss the dialogue box.
Let's say that I just want to
extend things a little farther up and over
in this direction to, let's say right about there.
Or I may just decide to draw a completely different section.
You can see, even though the other path outline
is selected because I did not drag sufficiently close to it
I'm seeing an asterisk next to my cursor.
At which point I'll go ahead and release
in order to create an independent open path.
Let's say you want to connect two open paths together.
Then press and hold the control key,
or the command key on the Mac,
to get the last used arrow tool,
which in my case is the black arrow,
and then add the shift key and click on this path.
In other words, I'm control shift clicking here
on the PC, that's a command shift click on the Mac,
and what that allows me to do is select
that other open path.
Then you just drag from it's end point
to the other path's end point.
You'll see that slash next to the cursor again
and you'll join what were formally two open paths into one.
Now I'll go ahead and finish things off
by dragging from this end point
and then finally releasing on the other end point
in order to close the path outline like so.
That, friends, is how you extend
and connect open path outlines using the pencil tool.