Jeff Witchel shares some tips on organizing and navigating Illustrator’s drawing tools.
Author: jeff witchel
Jeff Witchel graduated from Pratt Institute in 1973 with a B.F.A. (Cum Laude) in Advertising Design and Visual Communications. He has been an award-winning advertising art director, writer, designer, illustrator, and TV producer ever since. Before starting his own advertising agency in New Jersey, Jeff built his career at top New York ad agencies such as Young & Rubicam, Grey Advertising, and Wells, Rich, Greene. Over the years, he has created award-winning work for many clients including AT&T, Blue Cross/Blue Shield, Jell-O Pudding, The Plaza Hotel, and Pfizer. His many prestigious awards include N.Y. Art Directors Club Gold Award, One Show Gold Award, N.J. Art Directors Club Award, multiple Andy Awards, Graphis Annual, numerous readership awards, plus an Emmy Award nomination. Jeff is a self-taught computer artist with over 19 years of experience. His initial introduction to the computer was with PageMaker, but he switched to Quark 1.0 when it was first introduced in 1987. Having arrived on the desktop publishing scene so early, Jeff became the "go to" guy for answers when others started getting into computer graphics. As an Adobe Certified Expert, he's provided online support for Adobe and is now an Adobe Certified Training Provider for both Adobe Illustrator CS2 and Adobe InDesign CS2. Jeff is one of just a handful of Adobe Certified Instructors in the New York metropolitan area. He also is a Quark Certified Expert in QuarkXPress 6 as well as a master of Adobe Photoshop and related applications. He counts among his training clients ad agencies, design studios, magazines, illustrators, and photographers in New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and Maryland.
Thnx man! This really helped me. Didnīt know most of those keyboard shortcuts. I’m looking forward to part 2.
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Hi James,
Glad you liked it. Stay tuned for part 2. It’s even better, especially the “wild & wacky” parts.
Jeff
Great tips, thanks alot! I have always been reluctant to draw things from scratch in illustrator, this video helped with some of the basics and made me more comfortable using the tools. Thanks again.
Thank you Sir, very helpful tut.
Thank you that really gave me a refresher.
Your tips are great! Can you give us a clue about the Spiral Tool? I want a tight spiral, and I can only get the open one.
Hi Gail,
Glad you like the tips!
Funny that you mentioned the Spiral tool. There are a bunch of Spiral tool tips coming in Part 2 of Illustrator Drawing Tool Tips.
You can also find an old tutorial that I wrote about Spirals at the following link http://www.layersmagazine.com/illustrator-spiral-tool.html
By the way, to draw a “tighter” Spiral, click with the Spiral tool and increase the Decay closer to 100%. At 100%, there is no Decay and the Spiral will look like a circle even though it’s not.
Happy spiraling!
Jeff
hey for some reason there’s no pop-up menu when I click the tools. How do I fix this?
Hi Tim,
If you click and hold on any tool with a small arrow to to its lower right, you should have a popup menu that will reveal other tools. If you do not, you could be having a problem with the Tools panel and you may want to post a question on the layers Forum.
http://www.layersmagazine.com/forum/
Easy to understand. I learned quite a bit. Thanks.
DRAWRING tools???
and you know know your name is simon…
Dear A-god,
Glad you enjoyed my accent so much.
Best,
Jeff
Thank you so much those short cuts are on the money
Because I am deaf and half blind I didn’t get as much as other people but thank you for the effort. Adobe looks exciting/
Part 1 and 2 very helpful and fast! Thanks for posting this.
thank you very much.
this has helped me mucho.
=]
are you gonna comment me back?
this helped A LOT!
why are my comments not showing upp ?
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