An Ultimate Guide to Use Pen Tool in Adobe Illustrator
By: Reeza Khalique
Tags: Guides And Tutorials, How To, Pen Tool, Graphic Design, Adobe Illustrator

We will see how to use the pen tool in Adobe illustrator so the pen tool can add an anchor point, delete an anchor point, creating closed path and curves. So today we will see how to do drawing through the pen tool

Drawing through pen tool is quite so easy but I know some people find it difficult but if you practice a little bit then definitely you will do it better

In childhood, you had seen drawing books in which you used to connect dots and drawing with pen tool was made exactly in the same way

If you’re using a cc version of Adobe Illustrator you can see a line attached to the pen but if you are using an old version then you will not see this line attached to the pen but there is no very much difference in it

It is just guiding you where you will make your line

Pen tool Vocab and how to use pen tool in Adobe illustrator

Closed Path

What is the meaning of the closing path? As long as this is open it is just a line as soon as you close it this will become a shape so you can fill colors in it.

Drawing with pen tool remember one thing that you can turn guides on which will help you if you are making straight lines then you can press shift it will make straight line no matter how far your cursor goes

Curved Paths

If we want to make the curve so remember one thing for the curve you have to hold the mouse and then drag so what is the meaning of hold and then drag?

It means when you click and then come to below and do not release your mouse so it means you’re dragging this. Drag means you had pressed the mouse button and without releasing the mouse you’re moving it. If you move it in the right direction you can see a curve in a ‘C’ shape

Always remember please if you want to make a curve in a particular direction then drag your mouse in the opposite direction. For example, if you want to make a curve on the left side then drag your mouse at the right side

The pen tool will not leave you alive. If you don’t want to draw further, press escape. If you want to keep it open path then press the escape key, your drawing will stop here

Smooth Curve

If I want a corner instead of the curve I mean a want a smooth curve. How to do this?

Simply go to the last point with your pen tool click on the anchor point when you will click, your curve handle will close and now, you can make your line with a sharp corner

Try to make corners at extreme conditions then only close this curve handle otherwise don’t close it.

when you are making anything with your Pen tool it doesn’t mean that it will become perfect at the first time you can adjust it later by the direct selection tool

Anchor points in Adobe illustrator

Adding Anchor points

If you were to head to the pencil, if you click and hold down you’ll notice there are other options in your actual pen tool, one of those options is to “Add Anchor Point”

Shortcut for this symbol is the plus (+) sign symbol on your keyboard and it’s really easy to remember

So if you wanna add an anchor point you can just click anywhere on the curve and you’ll find an additional anchor point. Now you’ll see that you can flex and move that point accordingly

Deleting Anchor Points

Now if we want to remove these anchor points, so you know the opposite of adding is subtracting so instead of using the plus symbol we’ll use the minus symbol or there is also a “Delete anchor point” option in the drop menu of the pen tool

So this step is as simple as the last one. You just have to click on the current anchor point that you wanna delete and it will connect to the nearest anchor point and you will get the original curve