Learn to create unique shapes and add depth to your images using Illustrator. This article provides a step-by-step guide on how to use the pen tool and the curvature tool to add smooth lines and natural curves to your image.
Key Insights:
- The pen tool in Illustrator allows you to create unique shapes with both angled lines and curves. This is achieved by clicking and dragging the pen tool.
- The curvature tool can be used as an alternative to the pen tool to form curves more naturally. This tool forms a curve as you move your cursor around.
- You can adjust the opacity of your shape to control its transparency. This lets you add more depth to your image without making the shape overbearing.
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In this video, we'll be creating a shape for our background. Let's start by looking at the PDF example.
As we can see here, we have a relatively vague shape with limited opacity in our background, and this just adds a little more depth to our image. So, let's begin creating the shape. We'll go back into Illustrator, and the first way that we can create the shape is using the Pen Tool.
Before creating our shape, we'll make sure that we're in our Back Background layer, and now we can begin. In the past, we've clicked with the Pen Tool to create straight lines. However, if we click and drag, we'll see that we can add curves.
Let's hit CTRL + Shift + A to deselect and then hit V, selecting our object and hitting Delete. Let's do this again with the Pen Tool. We'll click, and as we create lines, we'll drag handles out so that we create curves within our line.
While this can be tricky at first, with a little practice, you'll begin creating naturally smooth lines. We'll then close off our shape here, and we've now created our shape. Let's hit CTRL + Shift + A to deselect it, and let's go over one other method of how we might be able to create this shape a little more naturally.
I'll hit V on the keyboard using the Selection Tool and then click the shape and hit the Delete key. Our second method also allows us to click and drag; however, it creates the curves more naturally. We'll go to the toolbar and select the Curvature Tool right below the Pen Tool.
From here, we'll click, and as we see, it naturally forms a curve as we move our cursor around. In this case, I'll simply click and drag, creating a curve as I go. We'll then close off our shape by clicking back on the point that we started at, and here we go.
We can see that this shape has a more natural and less jagged-looking curve. Let's now change the color of it. I'll hit V on the keyboard and select the shape.
Next, I'll use I to use the Eyedropper Tool. What we could pick from our different colors for this shape, I'm simply going to choose the same color as our background and modify it slightly within our color panel. We can select a color from our color panel, and I'm going to choose a color that's relatively similar but just a little bit different.
And next, let's move this shape below our pattern. To do this, we'll select our path within our Layers panel and simply drag it above the background but below our pattern. Next, let's retitle each of these layers.
We'll double-click the Back Rectangle and title this "Background Solid" and hit ENTER. We'll retitle our path "Background Shape" and hit ENTER, and we'll retitle our top background pattern and hit ENTER. Next, looking at our shape, I want to make a couple of changes.
I'll select it using V on the keyboard and selecting the shape, and the first change I want to make is I want to change the opacity or the transparency of how much it's shown. To do this, I can go to our control bar and adjust our opacity by typing a new number or clicking the arrow below. We'll see that we have a slider. This will show us how the different opacity levels look.
For this shape, I'll leave it right at about 50 percent since this will allow us to see it slightly; however, it won't be overbearing for our image. And next, I'm simply going to adjust the shape here by modifying it, and I can adjust it here, not holding Shift, to warp it and skew it. I'll adjust it until I have a look that I like.
In this case, I like the shape here. Remember that our postcard will get cut at the black line, and so anything outside of the black line will not be on our postcard. However, everything up until the bleed line will still get printed but then cut off. We now have the shape for our postcard. Let's hit CTRL + S on the keyboard to save our work, and in the next video, we'll begin adding our title banners. See you there!