Yesterday, I attended the second of series of design workshops I'm taking this summer in preparation for Grad School this fall. This one focused on one of the more important, yet confusing tools in the Adobe Illustrator Toolbox: The Pen Tool.
I discovered last night that the Pen Tool is one of the most versatile tools available in this drawing program. It has amazing potential and can be the most important tool available to a designer working the Creative Suite, not only being a tool in Illustrator, but Photoshop as well.
The workshop began with an introduction to the Pen Tool Pallet and the functions of all the diverse elements within and was followed by a demonstration of each by workshop presenter Meredith Burke, who works for the Academic Resource Center (ARC) at UB. After demonstrating some the things that each of the tools in the Pallet could do (many of which were unknown to me), Meredith has all of us in attendance work through a series of exercises that allowed us to work with corner anchors, smooth anchors and closed paths. Appearing simple enough, the exercises proved to be "more than meets the eye." Each one stressed the need for precision and proper use of each of the aspects of the Pen Tool for the various tasks we were to complete.
After completing the exercises, Meredith went on to demonstrate free-hand drawing using the Align Pallet, the Pathfinder Pallet and the Reflect Tool, as well as the "Expand" and "Path" commands, all of which I found enourmously helpful in regards to improving my comic lettering.
Finally, Meredith opened the floor to specific questions regarding the Pen Tool. I again found this very enlightening as I was able to discover aspects of Illustrator that will ultimately make me a better creator.
As with the One-day InDesign Workshop, I found this to be hughly beneficial and a resource that was well worth both the time and money invested.
Up Next: InDesign: Type Styles Workshop!
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