Confounding Pencil Tool Behavior

[benm68839332]

Hi folks,

I have been using illustrator for years and struggle every day, constantly, with the rules of the pencil tool. Basically, when I draw a shape with the pencil tool and I want to go back and refine one of the edges with the pencil tool I never know how it's going to behave. Say I drew the profile of a face, and wanted to go back and make the nose a little more or little less pronounced, depending on a million factors and some rules that I don't understand, I might be able to adjust it the first time, or it might take a dozen times of redrawing that new contour with it never sticking. Sometimes I am drawing an entirely new stroke, sometimes I create some awful overlapping lines that adds the new contour on top of the old one, producing some negative cutout, then I have to go figuring out which anchor points to delete to marry my new edge with what I liked about the old edge.

This problem is causing me to have to draw something perfectly several times over hoping it will do what I want it to. My other options are to create a new shape with the edge I want and then use the pathfinder to subtract the new shape from the old shape to get what I want. The things that seem to affect this are of course pencil tool options, and a lot of other things that I can't figure out the rhyme or reason of. Things that affect my success seem to be like how close to an existing anchor point I begin to redraw the line, and whether I am on the inside or outside of a closed or mostly closed shape when I start the redraw.

This problem is not so prevalent with simpler closed shapes, but if I wanted to redraw some blades of grass on the silhouette of a ground plane, it is practically impossible to do with creating some overlapping from all of these anchor points that chose not to be removed, producing the awful negative cutout pieces.

This problem is really difficult to describe and seems to depend on a lot of factors, so I am not surprised that I can't find any help on this, but I am certain other people who use illustrator for vector art are dealing with this constantly as well. The prospect of redrawing a part of a shape instead of the entire shape is just too hard to resist so I will always try to do this first, but I would really love to be able to predict what it's going to do, because like I said, I waste a LOT of time redrawing those edges trying to get it right.

Thanks for reading.

[jane-e]

Double-click the Pencil tool to bring up the Pencil tool options dialog. Read each setting and change the ones that do not work for you.

[jdanek]

You might be asking too much from the Pencil tool.  I agree it can be frustrating.  Try to think about modifying the path you drew the first time.  Sometimes it is better to use multiple tools to achieve the same thing.  For instance, incorporating the Pen tool along with whatever you are doing with the Pencil tool.  You will become a master at anchor point manipulations before you know it ( if you aren't already ).  Also incorporate duplicating a few items to make a lot of items.  Dump the mouse and get a tablet.

[rcraighead]

The Pencil tool works fine in CS5. I can even have more than one stroke active and adjust them all without losing the selection. What a concept!!

[jdanek]

Sounds like what I am using.  Was not aware they ( the programmers ) reworked the Pencil tool, too.

[rcraighead]

Hi, jdanek,

Yes, I am a fan of CS5 and the Pencil Tool is a big reason. The feel of the tool has changed drastically in later versions. The inability to select several paths and rework them without losing the selection is my biggest complaint. I can no longer use the tool the way I've been doing for years.

[Carlos Garro]

The pencil tool is so frustrating... Take a look at DynamicSketch from Astute Graphics. DynamicSketch - Astute Graphics

It's an intuitive draw tool who keep small (and smart) amount of anchor points and keep your path editable.

[benm68839332]

Thank you so much for turning me on to Astute's products. These plugins are going to change my life! Now I will have even more reason to work exclusively in Illustrator.

[Carlos Garro]

Try it and wait for next Monday!

There will be a surprise...

[Mike_Gondek]

Sounds like your main struggle is with edit selected paths. That option is to fine tune an existing elected path, but as you noticed this may not always work.

As you noticed primitive shapes are easy, but when you get overlapping paths or paths near each the pencil tool has a harder time understanding what you exactly need.

Lets say I want to take the first shape above and round this off closer to a perfect circle. If I am just a little off or pull to far I get the result in the second shape. I pulled a little shorter and got the desired result.

Now I could write a dozen pages, but will serve you best by saying if you do tho get what you want then

• undo and try again
• if you try more than a few times, then change your default of 6 to higher or lower.  In my example above a higher number helps.

Now if you are trying to close an open path a higher  number (default 15) works better to close the gap

If you have any more questions, for me preferably give us a screenshot and one clear example, and I think we can help you better.

[rcraighead]

That's because Adobe rewrote the Pencil tool and it no longer works as it did in CS5. It's a shame because it is half the tool it used to be. I've posted my own rants about the shortcomings of the current Pencil tool and hope to get an audience with someone at Adobe before I retire. It is NOT just you. If I need to do real work with the Pencil Tool I open CS5.