Pen Tool Probkems

[Miu]

Hi guys,

I am currently struggling to be more friendly with adobe illustrator. I am a graphic design student and now, I am really struggling to mastering the pen tool for my photo tracing assignments (I need to make 3 different versions of the photo tracing). Honestly, I even trying to draw the heart with pen tool and I can't :(

Do you guys have any advice for some stupid newbie like me. I need to boots up my skills ASAP and yes, I will dedicate my self to do the training every single day.

Other than that, I am trying to learn how to make vines, ink splatter, distortion, and some glowing effect like in this guys doing.
http://www.grafikdust.com/ and the pic that I attached.
Can you guys kindly gives me some clues ?

Thank you so much in advanced :)

[MKO]

Google is your friend.
E.g. when you look for "illustrator tutorial drawing a heart"
you'll find http://graphicssoft.about.com/library/tuts/sf/ucsf01-hearts1.htm
and that's just one finding.
Other search suggestions are:
"Illustrator Mastering the pen tool", "Illustrator Using the pen tool" and so on.

Happy searching!

[Miu]

Google is your friend.
E.g. when you look for "illustrator tutorial drawing a heart"
you'll find http://graphicssoft.about.com/library/tuts/sf/ucsf01-hearts1.htm
and that's just one finding.
Other search suggestions are:
"Illustrator Mastering the pen tool", "Illustrator Using the pen tool" and so on.

Happy searching!

Yay! thanks man! for the advice that really helpful :)
by the way, I have no clue for make something swirl and glowing.
What is that effect called?

[Fakie]

A hint with the pen tool, and this will come with practice anyway. I use as few points as I can get away with, don't go more than 90degrees with it though and try to keep all the bezier handles at tangents to your line for smoothest results.

I guess you got all the rest you needed from the google tutorials.

[warking@mac.com]

http://www.warking.com/Clock_Points.jpg

[TORCH511]

A good rule of thumb with the pen tool that will help creating smoother curves is to keep the length of the handle about 1/3 the total length of the segment. If the segment is a double or ess curve, then you want to keep it around a half.

If you look at warking's illustration (the bottom one) you will see that the above rule holds true. It is not an exact science, no need to measure. Some might be a little shorter, some a little longer, and certainly on extreme curves you may be well outside that range but it is a good rule of thumb especially when first starting out to keep the odd dents and bends to a minimum.

[joesatriani]

first post in this forum, though i think it's a good one ;)
had the same problem you have, then i found this tutorial http://school.tatoland.com/illustrator/aipentool.html
Comes with flash movies that illustrate the working of the pen tool!
good luck.
dennis