So now having done this, having got into this point, let us go over and check out the Shape tools. Now notice that the Shape tools are right next door to the Line tools here. So here is our Line tools, here is our Shape tools, go ahead and click and hold to bring up the flyout menu and then I want you to release on this little Tearoff tab here so that we can get our little independent palette of Shape tools.
And notice what we've got. We've got the Rectangle Tool, draws rectangles and squares. We've got the Rounded Rectangle Tool which allows you to draw rectangles and squares with rounded corners. We've got the Ellipse Tool which draws ellipses in circles. We've got ourself the Polygon Tool which draws regular symmetrical polygons meaning things like triangles, a pentagon, hexagon, octagon, all those gons, every one of them represented here. You can go to an extraordinary number of sides if you want to.
Then we've got ourselves the Star Tool right here and then finally we end up with this goofy tool the Flare Tool, which is only useful if you already have an entire illustration set up and then you want to add a flare to it after the fact. It draws several shapes. It is actually a pretty nifty tool you might want to try it out on a big complex illustration sometime, but we are not going to go into it right here because it has nothing to do with this exercise.
So we are going to stick with these first group of tools here. In fact, we are going to start things off with the Ellipse Tool since it is the one that draws ellipses, ovals, spheres and circles. Now the Ellipse Tool, you get to it by pressing the L key for Ellipse, just in case you want a keyboard shortcut for this tool. Let me show you how it works, pretty simple tool actually, pretty much subscribers have many of the observations that we observed in the previous lesson when we were taking a look at the Polar Coordinates Tool, works a lot like that except it is not drawing multiple shapes at a time, it is just drawing one circle at a time or one ellipse at a time.
So if you drag you create an ellipse, notice that, you create an oval that follows your drag, it is pretty simple. If you press the Shift key as you drag, then you are going to create a circle. If you press the Option key here on the Mac or the Alt key on the PC as you drag, you are going to draw from the center outward and that is what we want to do, I will go ahead and undo that shape.
What we want to do is draw a shape from the center outward here in. So that is what I am going to do, I am going go ahead and start drawing, always better with these tools inside the Illustrator to start drawing before you start pressing keys. It is not always essential, but it is a good habit to get into because sometimes it is essential. So I start drawing, then press the Shift key, press and hold the Shift key and then press and hold the Option key. That order does not really matter, you can do them both at the same time if you want to. On a PC you would press and hold Shift and Alt, as you drag, hold the keys down throughout the length of the drag and then after you release then you can release the keys, the Shift and Option keys on the Mac or the Shift and Alt keys on the PC.
Now we have a slight problem here and we can observe this problem inside the Layers palette. Notice because I went ahead and undid my last operation, that I went back to the circles layer because it was a layer that previously selected before I created the My shapes layer. So Illustrator just happened to go back to it after I undid the creation of that circle. I need to put this circle on the My shapes layer and I am going to do that by dragging this little square all the way up to the My shapes layer. Then I will click on the My shapes layer just to make sure that it's active and we do not have that problem again.
Now at this point, my fill is transparent which is a good thing, I want to make sure it is transparent. If it is not for you, for some reason your fill is showing up with some sort of color if you are covering up, for example, the sun god face with some light, then go ahead and click this down pointing arrowhead up here in the Control palette, right next to the word Fill and change that fill to None. You can also change the fill or whichever property is active here to transparent by pressing the Forward Slash key(/). So just as the Backward Slash key(\) gets you the Line Tool which looks like a Backward Slash, the Forward Slash key(/) gets you no fill because it looks like the No Fill icon. That is pretty straightforward.
I am also going to change my Stroke from red in this case to black, so we are drawing black lines and a 2 point Stroke is just fine. If yours is set to 2 point, great, if not, you can just go ahead and select this value, change it to 2, and press the Enter key or the Return on the Mac. We have now drawn a circle, very easy thing to draw.
Transcription by:
Scribe4you Transcription Services