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- In this movie, I'll show
you how I was able to trace

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my turtle using the Pencil tool

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combined with a drawing tablet.

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Even if you don't have such a device,

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I think you'll find a lot
to learn inside this movie.

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So I'll go ahead and switch
over to that tracing template

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that I created in the previous movie.

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Now I'll select the Pencil tool.

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Again, you can get it
by pressing the N key.

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And I'll press the enter key,
or the return key on the Mac,

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to bring up the Pencil
Tool Options dialog box,

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and I'm going to scoot
this Fidelity setting

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one tick mark to the left of smooth,

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which tends to be my favorite setting.

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And then I'll go ahead and click OK.

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All right, now I'm going to
zoom in on the turtle's head

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down here, and armed with my stylus,

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I'm going to trace around the head.

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And notice how I'm no
longer seeing that preview

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right there.

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That's a bug.

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And by the way, as soon as I release,

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we are going to see the line.

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But naturally, you'll want
to be able to see the preview

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as you work.

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And if that ends up happening to you,

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you want to go to the View
menu and choose Preview on CPU,

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and that'll take care of
that problem in the future.

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All right, now let's say I
want to draw another line

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down here but I don't want to do it yet

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because my path outline is selected.

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And so if I were to just
start in dragging like so

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I would redirect the path outline,

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which is not what I want.

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So I'll press ctrl + Z or cmd
+ Z on the Mac to undo that,

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and then I'll deselect the path outline

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and you can do that by
going to the Select menu

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and choosing Deselect.

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But you're going to be doing that a lot,

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so I recommend you memorize
this keyboard shortcut,

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which is ctrl + shift + a here in the PC,

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or cmd + shift + a on the Mac.

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And that'll allow me to
start a new path outline

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as we're seeing right here.

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And I'll go ahead and extend
it all the way to the shell.

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And now, just so I don't have
to deselect the other path,

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I'll draw this one up here,
and there's nothing that says

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you have to get the entire path finished.

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You can always continue a path like so,

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and you can redirect it.

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If you find out you're drawing badly,

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just start redirecting that
path, as you see me doing here.

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All right, now I'll go
ahead and draw this line,

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and I'm also going to draw his eyes.

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So I could draw this
using the Ellipse stool.

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But as long as I have
the Pencil tool selected,

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I might as well use it.

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And then if I don't like
that shape right there,

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I can just drag over it again,
but make sure you release

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back on the path outline
each time you try a redirect,

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because otherwise, you're
going to open that closed path

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and make a big mess of it.

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All right, now I'll
press ctrl + shift + a,

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or cmd + shift + a on the Mac,

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in order to deselect that circular path,

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and I'll go ahead and
draw in the eye like so.

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All right, now I want my
path outlines to be thicker,

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so I'll press ctrl + a
or cmd + a on the Mac

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to select everything.

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And then I'll change the
line weight up here to 3 pt,

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and then I'll click on the word Stroke

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and I'll select both the
round cap and the round join

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in order to keep my strokes
as smooth as possible.

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All right, now I'll go ahead
and press the escape key

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and I'll press ctrl + shift
+ a or cmd + shift + a

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on the Mac in order to
deselect my artwork,

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and I'm going to go ahead
and paint the shell.

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And actually, there's
not a turtle on earth

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who has a shell like this,
but I think it's pretty cool

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so I'll just go ahead and
trace around the outside

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in multiple takes, and that's
because I'm trying to anchor

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my hand as I work here.

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And notice there, I
goofed up a little bit,

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if you can see that,
oop, I made it even worse

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by dragging at it a little bit more.

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But I think I can do a redirect
like so and clean that up.

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And I was totally wrong,
I still got a problem,

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so I'm going to go ahead
and ctrl + space bar

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or cmd + space bar + click to zoom in,

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and then I'll drag from right there,

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up to that portion of the path outline,

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and that smooths it out nicely.

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Now here's the point at which
you're going to want to know

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this information no matter what,

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whether you have a drawing tablet or not.

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Notice that our path outlines
are not really meeting up

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with each other, and we
have little curlicues

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at the end of some of them.

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That's when the White
Arrow tool comes in handy.

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So I'll go ahead and select that tool

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or press the A key, of course,

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and then I'll grab this
anchor point right there,

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and I'll drag it 'til
it snaps into alignment.

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You'll see the snap if
you've got your smart guides

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turned on.

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And this guy here looks like
he's in the right position,

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but he's got a little bit
too much curvature going on,

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so I'll press the N key to
switch back to the Pencil,

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and I'm just going to go ahead and see

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if I can make this smoother.

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And that time, I just drag
with the mouse by the way.

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All right, now I'm
going to press the A key

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in order to switch back
to the White Arrow tool,

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and I'm going to go
ahead and grab this guy

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and drag him down, got a
little bit of an auto scroll

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going there.

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And I'll drag this point down as well.

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Now this is something
that happens frequently

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with the Pencil tool.

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It goes ahead and creates
an extra point at the end.

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Obviously, if you don't want that,

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you can just select it and
press the backspace key

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or the delete key on the
Mac to get rid of it,

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and then I can go ahead
and drag this point down

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just a little bit and so forth.

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So I would be remiss if
I was to suggest to you

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that you're going to draw everything right

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with the Pencil tool.

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That's just not going to happen.

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You're going to have to go back
and do some additional work,

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very likely using that White Arrow tool.

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In this case though, I
want to just go ahead

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and redirect this path a little bit,

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so I will click on it
with the White Arrow,

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then I'll press the N key to
switch back to the Pencil tool

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and I'll go ahead and
drag on that path again.

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And you can see that its
head is a little lumpy here,

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so I might, this time,
switch to the Smooth tool

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and just drag over this region like so,

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to smooth it off nicely.

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Now I'm going to go ahead and
zoom out a little bit here,

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and I'm going to continue
painting that one path outline.

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So I'll press the ctrl
key or cmd key on the Mac

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in order to get my White Arrow tool,

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the last used arrow tool on the fly,

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and I'll just click to select
even just a little bit of it.

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And then I'll press the N key

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to switch back to my Pencil tool,

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and I'll continue drawing
this path outline like so.

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And at some point, I'll end
up finishing it up here,

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so I'll just go ahead and space
bar + drag up a little bit

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and then finish the top of the shell.

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And in my case, it ended up
meeting in a corner point,

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which is nice.

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However, that's a terrible edge,

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so I'll just go ahead and redraw it

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and see if it looks any better.

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This time, notice this point
up here is a smooth point.

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So what that means is now we're getting

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a bunch a curvature there.

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We don't really want that,

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so I'm just going to zoom in
and see if I can redraw this

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section better so that
we get a nice corner

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at that point.

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And that's looking better,
it's not best by any means yet.

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All right, now I want
you to see what happens

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with this sort of spiral,
which of course no turtle has,

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but it looks great on this guy.

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And so I'm just going to
drag along the spiral.

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This is yet another method
for creating spirals

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inside of Illustrator.

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And again, I think it's
preferable to drawing a spiral

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with the dedicated Spiral tool,

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because you can get some
really great results

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as we're seeing right here.

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And it's pretty darn smooth as well

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for my first attempt at this.

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And now I think I just made it worse

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by dragging over it again,
but that sometimes happens.

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Now I'll try to drag even still more

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in order to get that curve to
come out a little bit like so.

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All right, so I'm not going
to draw the entire turtle

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in front of you, I just
wanted to give you some tips

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for how to get the best results

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and how to take care of the edges

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so that everything lines up
exactly the way you want.

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And that's at least one
way to trace a turtle

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using the Pencil tool combined
with a professional quality

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drawing tablet here inside Illustrator.