The Mighty Pen

Posted on Sep 21st 2009 | 0comments

A work of art goes through many phases of development, but in each phase it is always a work of art

The above quote by Hans Hoffman holds very true for my blog design. The current look of my blog is quite different from what I had in mind a few weeks ago.

My blog header looked like this a few weeks ago.

This design was too boring. Moreover, it conveyed the idea that it has been designed just for the sake of having a header.

Hence, I decided to design a header which would reflect what this blog is all about. So, I came up with the following design. It was completely designed in Adobe Photoshop using the Brush Tool.

The above design is quite similar to the current design. However, it was not neat and was also looking quite dull. Finally, I decided to take a shot at the Pen Tool and finally got a better looking header.

I was always quite reluctant to use the pen tool as working with it is a bit difficult when compared to the brush tool. However, I also observed that any art work done with the pen tool was much neater than that done with the brush tool unless you are a good enough artist to work flawlessly with the brush tool.

Surprisingly, it took me just half an hour to get the feel of the pen tool. Everything became simple once I understood how it works. The Robot was the toughest part to draw in my header. So, let’s see how I drew it using the pen tool in Adobe Illustrator.

First of all, I placed header2 in Illustrator as a template for my new document.

I decided to begin with the robot’s mechanical head. With the pen tool selected, I clicked at the bottom of the head to create an anchor point. With the pen tool, it is important to remember that you will have to predict your next anchor point so as to get the right curve. You do this with the help of curve handles (tangent line in the figure). The direction of your curve handles is the key to get the right curve. The longer the curve handle arm, the steeper the curve. Similarly, I created the third anchor point to get the full curvature for the robot’s head. You can see in the second figure how the curve handles help me to predict my next anchor point. Proceed in a similar fashion to complete the robot’s head.

Thereafter, it was all easy. In fact, you start enjoying working with the pen tool once you get the hang of it. It took me just 15 more minutes to completely design my robot using the pen tool. I then imported this design to Photoshop as a smart object for coloring. Overall, it was a fun experience working with the pen tool. Take a shot at the pen tool and I promise that you will not regret it.Learn more about using the pen tool in this document

Do tell me about your experience with the pen tool in the comments section.

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