- All right, so far everything we've drawn has involved
corner points, which if nothing else, proves how
extremely flexible corner points can be.
But in this movie we're going to move on to smooth points.
Specifically, we're going to draw the one element of
this artwork that's exclusively comprised of smooth points,
and that's the letter G.
And it's a great exercise in drawing
and positioning smooth points inside Illustrator.
All right.
So I'll go ahead and switch over to my
illustration in progress here,
and I'm going to create a new layer for the letters
by Alt, or Option clicking on the little page icon
at the bottom of the Layers Panel.
And I'll go ahead and call this layer Letters
and I'll change the color to Gold.
And then I'll click Okay.
All right, now what we want to do is
zoom in on this second to last block,
which is the one that contains the letter G,
and we want to be able to see through all the other layers.
And so we have one of two choices,
one is to turn them off,
which is not really the way we want to work
because then we wouldn't be able to see
the blocks that we've drawn.
The other is to set these two layers
to the Outline mode, and you do that
by pressing the Control key,
or the Command key on the Mac,
and clicking on the eyeballs for each of these layers.
So if I Control click the eye for the Blocks layer
that's going to set that layer, and that layer only,
to the Outline mode.
And now I'll Control, or Command click on the eye
for the Table layer, and it will be set
to the Outline mode, as well.
And you can see which layers are set to the
Outline mode because they don't have pupils.
They're little Orphan Annie eyes.
All right, I'm going to zoom in just a little bit more here,
and scroll up, as well.
And I'm going o be drawing this shape
in a counter clockwise fashion, by the way,
that's going to turn clockwise at the end.
But that is going to mean, of course,
that as I continue to draw once I start,
in a consistent direction, which is very important
because we are trying to follow a path
when we're drawing a Path outline.
All right, now I'll go ahead and select the Pen Tool,
which of course I can get by pressing the P key.
And as you draw you want to think about
the valuable lesson provided to us by a circle.
So a circle has a point right at its apex,
at the very top, it has another point way at the bottom,
it has a point at the far left side,
and the far right side, just four smooth points,
and nothing more.
So that's what we need to trace this G, as well,
so we're going to start up here at the top
of the inside, and I'm pressing the Shift key
as I drag so I'm constraining the angle
of those control handles to exactly horizontal.
Now I'll choose the farthest left point,
which would be right about here,
and I'll drag down while I again,
press the Shift key and that's going to give me
this nice, prefect arc right here.
All right, I don't want to see a Fill at this point,
so fortunately my Fill is active here in the Swatches Panel
which means I can click on None,
or just press the Slash key.
All right, now we don't want to move halfway down here,
that's not the way a circle works.
We want to move all the way down to the very bottom,
at which point you can go ahead and drag
while pressing the Shift key.
And then because we don't want the control handle
under the cursor to be this long,
I'll add the Control key, or the Command key on the Mac,
and move it back, like so.
Which because we have that Control or Command key down
does not modify the position of the control handle
on the other side of the anchor point.
All right, now I want to modify some of these
control handles a little bit and I like to work on the fly,
you may want to come back later
after you're done drawing,
but I like to update everything as I go.
And so I'm going to press and hold the Control key,
or the Command key on the Mac,
but that gets me the black arrow, which is not what I want.
So I'll press Control Tilda, or Command Option Tab on the
Mac to switch to the white arrow tool.
And I'll go ahead and drag this guy down
while pressing the Shift key, and then I'll move it back up.
I just wanted to move it sufficitently far down
so I can see what I'm doing,
so I can see the template in the background.
And the other option is to change this layer
to the Outline mode, as well.
I just don't want to do that.
And now I'm just going to drag this guy out
just a little bit, this handle, that is, to the right.
All right, now somehow I've lost my rubber band,
as you can see here, although I seem to still have an
active Path outline, as indicated by the lack of asterisk.
So I'll just go ahead and drag up, like so,
at this location, and everything's working out just fine.
So now I'll drag right about there, and I'm pressing
the Shift key each and every time
in order to constrain the angle of my control handles,
either so they're vertical, or horizontal.
Now notice that I could put another smooth point
right about there, but I don't want that.
I'm just going to Control, or Command drag
this handle upward so that I have a little bit of a crimp.
So it's not like you always want super smooth stuff.
Sometimes you do want a little bit of flex
in your Path outlines.
All right, now I'll Control click on this guy
and I'm going to nudge him downward
by pressing the down arrow key a couple of times
and that will deactivate my path, as indicated
by the asterisk next to the cursor.
So I'll go ahead and drag out from that smooth point,
to again, activate the path, and then I'll drag upward.
And I am not sure why I'm missing my rubber band,
but that's okay, we don't really need it.
And now I'll drag up here
in order to create a big, long control handle.
I don't want it to be quite this long
over on the right hand side
so I'll hold the Control key, or the Command key on the Mac,
and back it off a little bit, to about there, let's say.
And now I'll drag down on the far right side of the G
right here, and now I'll Control, or Command drag
this handle back even further.
All right, now I want a point right there,
so I'll go ahead and drag a very small control handle.
And then I'll draw another one at this location,
because this is the far left side of the lip of this G.
Now this control handle has to be
much larger than this, so I'll go ahead
and Control, or Command drag it down.
And then I'll draw another smooth point
way down here at the bottom of the G,
so again, we're going for the extreme sides.
That appears to leave too long of handle over
on this side, so I'll Control, or Command drag it up.
And I'll Control, or Command drag this one outward, like so.
All right, now we want to create another
smooth point over here, so I'll drag a big one,
and I'm pressing the Shift key, incidentally,
in order to make my handle nice and long.
It needs to be longer than that, even,
so I'll Control Shift drag this handle downward,
maybe not that far, maybe right to there
because I've got to move this guy out.
And so you see how I'm compensating
for the curvature of these segments?
And now I'll Control, or Command Shift drag
this guy up, very important to have the Shift key down,
and I'll go ahead and Shift drag a new handle up here.
I'll press the Control key, or the Command key on the Mac,
to bring this handle back a little bit,
so a lot of pressing of keys when you're working
with the Pen Tool inside of Illustrator.
All right, I'll create another guy right there
so you can see that was the bottom of that little flex,
and this is the top of it.
This is the only time I'm going to violate my rule.
I'm going to put this handle over
a little bit on the side, like so,
and I'm not pressing the Shift key this time,
I'm just dragging out the control handles.
And then I'll Shift drag down here at the bottom,
this guy doesn't appear to be long enough,
so I'll Control, or Command drag him outward.
The reason I'm pressing the Control key,
or the command key on the Mac, once again,
is to get my white arrow tool.
And then I'm going to finish things up,
I'm actually going to Control, or Command drag
this guy out a little bit,
and then I'll finish things up here at the top
by Shift dragging the segment outward.
And I went too far with this guy so we'll Control,
or Command drag him back in a little bit,
and I'll Control, or Command drag this guy out
a little bit, as well.
And that pretty much finishes up the shape.
So I'll just go ahead and give it a Fill
so we can see what it looks like
by selecting this second to brightest Gray,
which has R, G, and B values of 230,
and produces this effect right here.
And then I'll press Control Shift A,
or Command Shift A on the Mac,
to deselect the G.
And that is how you create a complex,
real world shape that entirely comprises smooth points
here inside Illustrator.