Getting Started :Adobe Illustrator Pen Tool Guide

Here’s a quick guide to the Pen tool in Adobe Illustrator. Mastering the pen tool is invaluable if you are ever to use Illustrator successfully. Some people seem to have trouble getting to grips with this tool, also known as the Bezier tool, and if you don’t understand how it works it can be quite confusing.

The pen tool is located near the top left of the tool panel (circled here in red), it can also be accessed by hitting the letter ‘p’ on the keyboard.

The black triangle at the corner of the icon indicates that there are a few more tools grouped with the pen tool. These are the Add Anchor Point tool (+), Delete Anchor Point tool (-) and the Convert Anchor Point tool (Shift + C) and they can be accessed either by using the keyboard shortcuts detailed above or by holding the mouse button on the pen tool icon then making your selection.

A quick run down of what these do:

The main pen tool is used to put anchor points onto the artboard with a vector path linking them. Each point can have handles that control the curves extending from that point.

The add anchor point tool is used to – yep, you guessed it – add an anchor point to an existing path.

The Delete Anchor Point tool is for taking away unnecessary anchor points – too many points can lead to curves that aren’t so smooth. And I’m all about keeping it smooth.

Using the Pen Tool
Adobe Illustrator Pen Tool Guide
With the pen tool selected, left click somewhere on the artboard to put down a point, move the cursor to another position and click again. Do this a few times, marking out a shape before returning to your first point and clicking to complete the path. You will notice a small circle appearing next to the cursor – this indicates that you will be closing that path and you can then start a new one.

Now this is ok if you only need to draw straight lines, but the real power of the pen tool is in its ability to draw any curve. To draw a curve, simply click and drag to pull out a handle. When you place the next point you’ll see that the path is curved according to how far out you pulled the handle. Play about with this a little to see how you can use the handles of two points to affect the path. Basically the length of the handle determines how much influence it has over the path, i.e. the longer the handle the closer the path will be pulled toward it.

Adding & Removing Points Adobe Illustrator Pen Tool Guide

Sometimes you may not quite get the curve you need (if you’re redrawing something, for example) and it may be necessary to add a point. If you use the Add Anchor Point tool this will let you add extra points onto a path as you need them simply by clicking on the path. Drag out the handles as normal when doing this to manipulate the curve.

Similarly the remove anchor point tool can be used to get rid of any anchor points you don’t need.

Convert Anchor Point Tool

Adobe Illustrator Pen Tool Guide

So far the handles on either side of a point have been the same size, and in a straight line.  To adjust the length of the handle – if you wanted to reduce the amount of curve in the path – you would use the direct selection tool (white arrow tool) to grab the end of the handle. This keeps both handles in line with each other and keeps a smooth curve. If you want to add an angle to the path then using the convert anchor point tool, you can move the handle independently of its partner.

Clicking on a point with the convert anchor point tool will get rid of the handles, and you can easily pull out a new set by dragging as before.

Extra Functions

Adobe Illustrator Pen Tool Guide

There are a few hotkeys you can use with the pen tool to temporarily change to another tool. This really helps to speed up your workflow.

Holding Shift when pulling out a handle restricts the angle to 0°, 45°, 90°, 135° or 180°, and holding Shift before clicking with the pen tool keeps the new point in line with the previous one, on the same angles as before. If you find that you’ve put a point slightly off from where you want it, you can either use CTRL + Z to go back a step and try again, or hold the space bar before letting go of the mouse button to move the point to the preferred position.

You can quickly switch to the convert anchor point tool by holding Alt (Option). This is useful for making adjustments to the handles as you work. You can also change the appearance of the cursor when using the pen tool by hitting Caps Lock to toggle between the fountain pen symbol and a cross hair.

The main pen tool changes when hovered over different areas of a selected path. So when it’s hovered over a point, it temporarily changes to the delete anchor point tool and when hovered over a path it changes to the add anchor point tool. These are just quick aides to save time on changing tools manually.

Conclusion :

Adobe Illustrator Pen Tool Guide

With a bit of practise you will become quite fast at working with the pen tool and you won’t have to think about the keys used for extra functions as it will become second nature.  You’ll also develop a sense of where best to place the anchor points and how you can create the same curve with fewer points as beginners tend to use too many anchor points.

Once you have mastered the pen tool you can easily create any shape in Illustrator which hugely increases your ability to use the program effectively. The pen tool in Photoshop is very similar so you can take what you’ve learned here and use it in other programs too.

All in all, the pen tool is a pretty useful weapon to have in your design armoury, so it’s worthwhile learning how to use it.

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Craig Scott

Craig is a Graphic & Web Designer working from Aberdeen, Scotland. You can follow him on Twitterand check out his website at kaigadesign.com.