Essential Skills for Designers – Mastering the Pen Tool

Most of the tools of Photoshop, Illustrator and InDesign are easy to learn and understand, but there is one major exception: the Pen tool. In this course you'll become a Vector Master by following along and practicing the many exercises presented. You'll be amazed at your new skills and abilities using this comprehensive and versatile tool.

More of what you will learn from this course:

Five Lessons Learned:

1) You can draw horizontal or vertical straight lines with the Pen tool if you hold down Shift while creating anchor points.

2) You can combine paths into one Vector Mask in Photoshop and also choose how these paths should interact with each other.

3) The Smooth tool and the Simplify feature can greatly improve the quality of your paths in Illustrator.

4) You can align text along a path and you can also control where you want it to start and end.

5) There are several ways to draw symmetrical shapes with the Pen Tool in Illustrator, but probably the most effective is to use a guide for the center of symmetry and then duplicate and reflect half of the shape with the Reflect tool. Make sure to hold down Alt and Shift together while dragging the first half onto the other side.

Course Outline

Chapter 1 PEN TOOL BASICS 12:55
1 Introduction
2 What is the Point?
3 Pen Tool Options

Chapter 2 DRAWING WITH THE PEN TOOL 46:11
1 Drawing Straight Lines
2 Drawing Curves
3 Drawing Complex Shapes
4 Drawing Symmetrical Shapes

Chapter 3 WORKING WITH PATHS 28:48
1 Creating Custom Shapes and Symbols
2 Creating Custom Frames in InDesign
3 Selecting, Editing and Saving Paths
4 Combining Paths
5 Smooth Tool and Simplify Path

Chapter 4 PEN TOOL WORKFLOWS 19:41
1 Making a Selection with Paths
2 Masking with Paths
3 Type on a Path
4 Stroke Paths
5 3D Shapes from Paths