- In this movie, I'll show you how to draw
straight and perpendicular lines using the pencil.
But before we begin, I'm going to change the color
of this layer, because otherwise we're going to see
red on red,
which is really difficult to make out.
So I'll go ahead and double-click on an empty portion
of that drawing layer,
and I will change the color to, let's say, yellow,
so it really stands out.
And then I'll click OK to accept that change.
Now notice what happens if I press the Alt key,
or the Option key on a Mac,
at which point we see a straight line
next to the pencil cursor.
And so let's say I want to add kind of an eye to my heart.
Then I would just go ahead and Alt- or Option-drag,
in which case the pencil tool works just like
the line segment tool.
And so then, once I get a line at the right angle,
I'll go ahead and release the Alt key
or the Option key on a Mac in order
to switch back to the free-form behavior
and I'll finally close the line like so.
Another way to work is to draw a perpendicular line,
that is, a line at a 45-degree angle,
and to achieve that, you press and hold
the Shift key instead.
You're gonna see that same cursor,
but now if you drag with that cursor,
you're going to draw a horizontal line,
or some other line at a 45 degree angle like so.
Now, I'm looking for a horizontal line,
so I'll just go ahead and drag over to the left here,
after which point I'll release the Shift key
in order to return to the free-form behavior,
and I'll go ahead and finish off the path like so.
Now notice that we have a little bit
of a mistake right here.
I'll go ahead and zoom in on it
by Control-Spacebar clicking,
that's a Command-Spacebar click on a Mac.
And so notice how we have this little hitch
in the path outline right out there.
The best way to get rid of it is to press the A key
to switch back to the white-arrow tool,
and just click on the point you want to get rid of,
which in my case is this top anchor point,
and then press the Backspace key,
or the Delete key on a Mac,
and that'll create a break in your path like so,
at which point you can switch back to the pencil tool
and just drag between those two points
in order to connect them.
Alright, now I'm going to press Control 0,
or Command 0 on a Mac,
to zoom out.
You can also use those tricks after you begin
drawing a path outline.
And so let's say I want to create the free-form portion
of the smile first.
Then I just go ahead and drag with the pencil tool,
and now if I want to close the path outline
with a straight segment,
I would press and hold the Alt key,
or the Option key on a Mac,
and then drag over to the first point like so.
Alright, now I'm going to press the V key
to switch back to my black-arrow tool,
and I'm going to go ahead and Shift-click
on these other path outlines,
including the big heart shape,
so that all of these paths are selected,
and then I'm going to combine them together
by going up to the Object menu,
choosing Compound Path,
and then choosing Make,
and we end up turning all of those new path outlines
into holes.
And to see what that looks like,
I'm going to go ahead and click on this outermost path
to select it and then I'll right-click on the path,
choose Range, and then choose Send to Back
in order to send that path outline to the back of the stack.
And then, finally, I'll click on the Fill icon
on the far-left side of the Control Panel,
and I'll change the fill color to, let's say,
this shade of purple here inside of this swatch group.
And we can now see that purple showing through the holes
in the heart.
And that, for better or worse,
is how you draw straight and perpendicular segments
using the pencil tool here inside Illustrator.