From the course: Illustrator 2024 Essential Training

Drawing with the Line tools - Illustrator Tutorial

From the course: Illustrator 2024 Essential Training

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Drawing with the Line tools

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- [Instructor] Okay, just as we did in the previous movie with the shape tools, this time we're going to tap back slash on our keyboard to get hold of the line segment tool, and then we'll tear off this tray, which we'll be using in this and the next movie. Okay, so the line tool is pretty straightforward. You can click with the line tool. If you have a particular length in mind and angle, then you can input those values just there. But as with the shape tools before, if you want to click at one point and drag to another, then you can draw a line like that. You can also hold down the shift key if you want to constrain it to 45 degree angles, although that's something you can also change in the preferences, and if you want to draw from the center outwards, you can hold down the alt and option key, and of course, alt and option plus shift means constrained and drawn from the center outwards. The next two tools have more in common with the polygon and star tools here. Let's go for the arc tool. So this allows us to draw arcs, there we go, like so. Now you can change the values associated with that by using the arrow keys, so while you're still drawing, you can see you can draw more or less of a curve just there. You can also flip this over by tapping the F key on your keyboard as you're drawing, and again, if you want to draw an arc that's constrained, you can hold down the shift key to do exactly that. You don't really need to use the option key here to draw from the center, but it is possible to do that, should you find the need to do so. And again, you can click and enter in some numeric values. This thing here open, which means if you have that, you're drawing the same curve as I have, but closed will actually draw that shape line, so with a closed segment around it. The spiral tool, a lot more like the star tool here, so if I start to click and drag to draw a spiral, the arrow keys do have a function. They will add more or less line segments to your spiral, but these are made around a decay rate, so if you hold down the command key, you're actually changing the decay rate like so. And the key you can use here to flip the direction is R. Think reverse, is the best way, I think, to think about that. Again, if you need to, you can simply click with the tool here. You can set the radius that you'd like and the decay rate in there, the number of segments, and the style here is the same as flipping the thing over. There we go, So those are our basic line tools. In the next movie, we're going to take a look at the grid tools.

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