Basic Pen
page twoPoints which have handles that can be manipulated independently (called cusp points), or which only have one handle are often the most useful kind of point, and I think you will find that they are key to drawing with the pen tool.
A simple exercise for you to practice making them is shown below. With the pen, click and drag upward to make your first point. Click and drag downward to create your second point, and complete the first curve, but don’t release the mouse button from its position at the end of the bottom handle of this second point. Press the Alt key, and drag to rotate the handle to the position shown in the first example below. Release the mouse button. Then release the Alt key.
Alternatively, you can complete the first curve with the handle pointing downward. Release the mouse button. Then, press Alt, click on the handle, and drag to rotate it to the upward position.
Note, that while you are pressing Alt, with either of these methods, you can make the handle shorter, or retract the handle back into the point to create a straight line in the subsequent segment. You can click on the other handle, and manipulate it, too if you like. Be sure and press Alt before clicking, and don’t release Alt until after you have released the mouse button.
Clicking (not dragging) on the smooth end point (not a handle) while pressing Alt will retract the leading handle, and make the next segment a straight line instead of a curve. Dragging from a corner (not smooth) end point while pressing Alt will pull out one handle, making the next segment a curve.
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Now, I’ll get you started on some exercises. Choose the custom
shape tool in the toolbox. Make sure its options bar has the Make
Work Path button selected, as shown above.
Go to the pop-up palette, found by clicking
the little down arrow shown at the extreme right end of the options bar.
You’ll access the palette shown below.
Pick the heart shape, and drag a shape on a new white document. In the
Paths palette, from the palette
menu, choose Save Path, and name it. Work paths are not saved until you
do this.
Click on the shape with the path
component tool (black arrow), and Shift-click to select all the points
with the direct selection tool (white
arrow), as we did with the elliptical shapes. Now, look at the way this
shape was created. Notice that the handles on both sides are not of equal
length. They’re dragged from cusp points.
I added color so you could see that the lime green handles are shorter
than the blue ones. The anchor points are colored red.
If you click once with the convert anchor
point tool on the point on the left side of the heart, it turns that point
into a corner point.
If you then click and drag upward on that same point with the convert
anchor point tool, you can change it into a smooth point with locked
handles, shown in the top example below.
Clicking again on the top handle’s end with
the convert anchor point tool changes it back to a cusp point, and allows
that handle to be shortened, and its angle changed slightly to recreate
the heart.
We can use these custom shapes to do drawing
exercises with the pen. Since you can see where the points are, and how
the handles were drawn before you start, it’s easier to understand
how you can draw the same shape.
Continue on page three
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Copyright © 2002 by Jay Arraich.
All rights reserved.
All photographs copyright ©2002 by Jay Arraich
jay@arraich.com
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