The Artistic Potential of Lines and Strokes in an Adobe Illustrator Design

Let's switch to talk about lines and see what we can do with those. I'm going to create a new file that's, again, just a wide document here for me to work in. So I'm going to choose a letter-sized page that's wide.

We'll use inches just in case we need measurements. All right, so now I've got a canvas here to work in. We've got a line tool, and there are actually these are all line tools versus shape tools.

So these create filled shapes that have fills as well as strokes, whereas our line tools are just strokes. Also, with any of these groups, if you're using the tools in here a lot, you can also break the tools off, by the way, and it creates this kind of floating toolbar. So you can do those with any of these groups.

Choose the group. You can put these anywhere you like. You can also make it a vertical little toolbar or a horizontal toolbar if you want those to have easy access, if you're switching a lot.

So I'm going to start here with my straight line segment tool. This is a drag to create a straight line, and when you let go, you're done. Drag, let go, drag, let go.

If you hold shift, by the way, you can snap to any 45 or 90 degree angle. So while you're dragging, hold shift to snap to a 45 or 90 degree angle, and I can, of course, move these later. I can use my selection tool to move these around.

Now, let's say I want to do some sort of rotation on this. I can select the path and the endpoint here, which changes the line, but if I want to kind of just rotate it in place, I can drag that, which rotates around the center point there. So I just go a little beyond the edge here, as we saw with shapes, and I can drag to rotate that, or I can grab one of those points and just move that point, and it'll move just that point and leave the other point where it is.

So if I want to leave this point where it is, I grab the other point, and I can move that around there. Now, once you have a stroke, you have the color of the stroke, and you have the thickness of the stroke. So let's say I increase this thickness here.

Now, when I change this thickness, right now it's an even thickness, and I can go into the stroke panel here by clicking on the word stroke, as opposed to going into the color here, which is choosing the color of the stroke. If I click on the word stroke, I can see more stroke options. For example, I can change the cap, which changes how round the end is.

So the default cap is a straight cap like this. The next one is a round one. This one is a protruding or projecting one.

The only difference here is where it ends. Does it end at the point, or does it end a little bit beyond that? So as it gets thicker, it goes further out, or do you want it to be rounded? Okay, we're not going to go through all of these options right now, but one option I did want to go through is the profile. So the profile right now is uniform.

That's the default stock setting, but I can choose different width profiles to have a more expressive kind of line, where it does not have to be a constant thickness. This does not have to be created as a shape. This can be created as a stroke, and we can change the width profile that now shows up here.

Once you go in and you switch it, you get easy access here that you can change it. So if I do a kind of thick-to-thin profile like that, it's rounded because I have the round cap on. If I don't want that to be rounded, I can go back into the stroke and switch that back to the square-ended cap like so.

And with that width profile going from thick to thin, if I want to reverse that, there's a flip button where I can flip it the other direction along there, like so. And so there's a bunch of different-width profiles built in just to kind of give you an idea, but you can also do your own. So let's say I go to Uniform and I go to my width tool.

The width tool is used to change the width or thickness of your strokes. So I can choose that width tool, and I can go to any place along this path, and I can either pull out to make it thicker or pull in to make it thinner. So you can have this be varied, going from thick to thin and so forth, thick to thin, and you can go in there, and you can change these and make any kind of expressive strokes that you would like.

You'll see points here where you change the thickness, and you can drag that along the stroke to change where that is applying that thickness. Normally, when you grab one side, it changes both, but you can actually go even further. If I hold the option key on the Mac or Alt on Windows, I can change one half without changing the other half.

So there's a lot that you can do with these width profiles. I'm going to delete that and zoom back out by doing a fit artboard on the window, and let's use these lines as well as variable-width strokes to create something that's kind of interesting here. I'm going to choose the arc tool because I want some curves.

Later, we'll talk about using things like the pen tools to create your own curves, but I just want these nice kind of curved lines to create a kind of graphic spiral tree. So I'm going to use my arc tool here and with the arc tool as I drag, it creates this kind of bent arc. I can control how bent it is by using my up and down arrow keys, just like I used when we learned about our shape tools.

So I can use that same up or down arrow key. So I can go bend it one way or bend it the other way, and I want something that's kind of, I don't like the kind of right angle that this creates. I'm going to use my down arrow key to create something that's a little bit more curvy like that.

I like a nice sweeping curve for this. So maybe something like that. Okay, I like that.

Now I want to make the bottom thicker. So I'm going to go to the width tool and pull out on the bottom the thickness that I think looks good. So it's kind of like the graphic stylized trunk of a tree, if you will.

And I want to create another one going up here to the left. So I'm going to use my arc tool again here. And for this one, I'm going to go; this is going to be like the main big one here.

So I'm going to start a little bit lower and go up here and something like so. And I'm going to go back to the width tool here and make this wider. So this is a bit more substantial.

Something like that, I think, looks pretty good. And I want to do, let me move this up here, somewhere around there. Looks good.

I'm going to use one more here using this tool here, and I'm going to draw another one right here. Now, notice it kept the kind of thickness of the stroke that I just did, which I don't want. So I'm going to go here and make this just one point and use my thickness here.

So use my width tool to just make this a little bit thicker. This is a much smaller branch, and I can size it by going back to my move tool here and sizing it down. I think that was a little bit too big.

If I think the thickness is a little too big, you can adjust your stroke weight here, which kind of proportionally makes everything a little thicker or a little thinner. And you can do that with any of these. You can make it kind of, that's kind of like the thickest part will be.

So if you want to make that bigger or smaller, you're increasing the maximum size that you have for that particular stroke that you have. Now I think this might be a little bit abrupt, like both of these are the same exact kind of curve, but I think that as this is bending, this one would want to bend a little differently here. So I'm going to select this, and I'm going to use my rotate option here.

So I'm going to rotate this and kind of just make that go more at the angle that I think that it would naturally be at for this particular one right here. And maybe make that just a little bit bigger. Yeah, I think that's looking good.

I'm going to make a duplicate of this. So, because I want another one right here. So I'm going to hold Option or Alt on Windows and drag a copy of that off.

And I want to flip it. So I can go over here into my properties panel, and in the transform section here, I can flip it either vertically or horizontally. I just want to flip it horizontally.

And I will put this here into this place, maybe size it down a little bit. And if I need to rotate it, I can rotate it as needed. I think that's looking pretty good.

Now, one thing about copying settings, let's say you have a stroke like this, and you'd like to copy the settings from here and put them there. We used the eyedropper to do this in a previous video. So I can go to my eyedropper, and I can click on this one.

But notice it does not copy the width profile in this case. It just copied the thickness. So here this stroke is 13 points, and so is this one.

It didn't copy the full appearance. So, actually, the eyedropper has some settings. And if you double-click on the eyedropper, notice that the entire appearance has not been checked.

I'm going to pick up and apply the entire appearance, not just some of the things. By checking on appearance, you will pick up and apply all of it. So now, when I select this shape, use the eyedropper, and then click on another thing, it picks up the entire appearance.

So sometimes you don't want it to do that. Sometimes you only want it to pick up one or two attributes. At any point, you can double-click on the eyedropper tool and choose how much or how little it will pick up or apply.

So let me delete that. And I think this is looking pretty good, but I think some spirals might add just a little bit of extra punch to it. So I'm going to use the spiral tool here.

When we're using the spiral tool, I can drag to create a spiral, and I can rotate around. So I'm kind of dragging clockwise or counterclockwise here and can create a spiral. Think about the keystrokes we learned earlier.

We use the up and down arrow keys so they can control how deep the spiral goes. And think about the star tool. We use the command or control key on the star.

So here, the kind of rate of decay, how quickly it goes in, is controlled by the command key on the Mac or the control key on Windows. So here I want it to kind of, I don't want it to be too rhythmic like this. I want it to kind of decay a little bit faster, kind of like that.

And I don't want it to be super spirally, going in too far. So I'm going to hit my down arrow to reduce that a little bit and maybe even a little bit less. I think something simple, I just want a basic kind of swirl.

I think that looks good. I can also use my width profile to make that thicker on one side. All right.

So I'm going to scale this down and notice that the width is not scaling. It's keeping the same stroke. That is because currently, my scale options, which I can find by double-clicking my scale tool, are not set to scale strokes and effects.

So I'm going to turn that on. And now, when I scale it, as I go bigger, it'll get thicker. As I go smaller, it'll get thinner, which is good.

I'm going to come put that in here, and I'm going to zoom in with command plus to zoom in on this, get a little closer. I do think the overall thickness is a little bit too much. So I'm going to tone that down just a little bit, and I'm going to give that a rotate here.

I like that. I'm going to option drag to make a copy, and I'm going to rotate this one into position like so. And let's do one more.

Option drag. And I'm going to rotate this around as well, but I need to flip it. So I'm going to come over here and flip horizontally and something like this.

Now, notice as I rotate, how it rotates around the center point of this. If you get, let's say, the endpoint properly set where you want, you can use the rotate tool. And when you use the rotate tool, normally it puts the origin at the middle, but you can click to set the origin, and then you can rotate around that origin.

So that way it doesn't move. And that could be nicer to adjust things like this. And here I've gotten a nice kind of tree graphic.