The Pencil

What you should know is, when you draw in Illustrator, it does not matter what tool, the pattern consists of lines and dots.
The lines are called “paths”, the points are called “anchor points”.
Illustrator determines where those anchors are placed, when you draw with the pencil. Number of anchor points are to be placed depends on the length and complexity of the path. These settings can be changed in the “Pencil Tool Options” dialog.
What you should know is that you can always change the shape with the pencil, at any time, from any line.

An example will make this all clear.

To draw with the pencil of course, first select the pencil and imagine a color and line thickness. Then you draw by clicking and dragging a line in the document (a).

When you release the mouse button (b), you will see that this line is filled with anchors (1).

When an anchor point is selected using the “Direct Selection” tool, two levers appear (c). We can change the shape of the line with these levers.

But I will tell you more about these levers when I discuss the “Pen” tools.

Let us first see what we can do more with the pencil and its options.

Pencil Tool Options

When you double click on the “Pencil” tool in the toolbar, it opens the “Pencil Tool Options” dialog.

The “Pencil Tool Options” dialog is divided into two sections, “Tolerances” and “Options”.

In the “Tolerances” section, we have two options. “Fidelity” and “Smoothness”.

With the “Fidelity”option, we determine the number of anchor points when you draw.

The lower this number, the more anchor points are to be added.

The percentage of “Smoothness” determines how smooth Illustrator should make your line. Thus, the higher this percentage, the less sharp corners will be drawn.

In the “Options” section, we have three boxes and a textbox.

All these boxes relate to the possibility that we have to modify existing lines with the “Pencil” tool.

By default, the boxes “Keep selected” and “Edit Selected Paths” are selected and the textbox “Within” is set to 12 pixels.

This means that the line will adjust to any changes that you make within the distance of 12 pixels of the selected line.

An example will hopefully make this clear.
I have drawn a line (1).
With this line and the pencil tool selected, I draw some extra lines in (2).
While I am within the range of 12 pixels, Illustrator will edit the existing line and change the selected path (3).

In the above example I have extended the line, but you can also change the shape of the line.

You can also change even a basic shape like a rectangle, circle or whatever.

Even though there is no line to pass but it’s just a shape, then also you can modify them with the pencil.

The only thing you need to ensure is that the changing line or shape tool AND the “Pencil” are selected.

The “Smooth” tool

Among the “Pencil” tool, we still have two other tools.
The first tool is the “Smooth”.
The “Smooth” tool deletes anchor points from the line and will thus make the line smoother.
All you have to do is to click and drag over the selected line.

The “Path Eraser” tool

The second tool is the “Path Eraser” tool.
What this does is, it removes the path or rather parts of the path where you’ll click and drag with the mouse pointer.

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