00:00:54 in order to introduce a template.
00:00:57 Now assuming that Align is set to Align to Artboard,
00:01:00 you want to click on each of the center icons,
00:01:03 Horizontal Align Center,
00:01:04 and then Vertical Align Center.
00:01:07 And next go ahead and click on the word Transform
00:01:09 right there, or click on the X, Y, W, or H,
00:01:13 and make sure your center point is selected
00:01:14 inside the reference point matrix.
00:01:16 Make sure that the link is turned on
00:01:18 and then change the Width value to 650 points, like so.
00:01:23 And if you press the Tab key,
00:01:25 that will change the Height value accordingly.
00:01:27 All right, now you can press the Escape key
00:01:29 in order to hide that panel.
00:01:30 And then finally, I figured this guy wanted to be
00:01:32 a little bit higher, so I press Shift up arrow
00:01:34 to nudge him upward 10 points.
00:01:36 All right, now go ahead and double click on an empty portion
00:01:39 of the Guides layer to bring up the Layer Options
00:01:41 dialog box, rename this layer Template,
00:01:43 and turn on the Template check box,
00:01:45 and then click Okay
00:01:47 and you've got yourself a tracing template.
00:01:49 All right, now go ahead and click on the Drawing layer,
00:01:51 and then notice this tool directly above the Pencil Tool
00:01:55 in the single column toolbox.
00:01:56 by default it's the Paintbrush Tool
00:01:59 and you would think that's the tool you want to use,
00:02:01 but we're not even going to get to that tool
00:02:02 until the Mastery course.
00:02:04 And that's because the more fundamentally useful
00:02:06 painting tool is the next tool down,
00:02:09 which is the Blob Brush.
00:02:11 And now, just to make sure you're painting with Black,
00:02:13 go ahead and tap the D key,
00:02:15 which gets you the Default Colors,
00:02:17 and that makes Black the stroke color.
00:02:19 And by default, the Blob Brush
00:02:21 works from the stroke color.
00:02:22 Nowadays it will also work from the fill color
00:02:24 if there is no stroke.
00:02:26 And now just go ahead and paint
00:02:28 along this line, if you will,
00:02:31 and things may end up looking a little bit jagged,
00:02:33 especially if you're painting with a mouse, as I am.
00:02:36 But as soon as you release,
00:02:37 Illustrator goes ahead and automatically
00:02:39 smooths that Path Outline.
00:02:41 But, not enough for my tastes,
00:02:42 so I'm going to go ahead and press Control Z,
00:02:44 or Command Z on the Mac, to undo that brush stroke,
00:02:47 and I'm going to press the Enter key
00:02:49 to bring up the Blob Brush Tool Options dialog box.
00:02:52 If you're working with a drawing tablet,
00:02:54 you may want to move this slider triangle
00:02:56 closer to Accurate.
00:02:57 In my case though, I'm going to move it
00:02:59 closer to Smooth, like so.
00:03:01 And this tends to be a perfect setting right here,
00:03:03 one tick mark over from Absolute Smooth
00:03:06 when you're painting with a mouse.
00:03:08 I also want you to turn on the
00:03:09 Keep Selected check box,
00:03:11 just so that we can see what's really going on.
00:03:13 And notice that the Size value set to 10 points, by default,
00:03:15 the Angle is zero degrees,
00:03:17 and the Roundness is 100%,
00:03:19 at which point you can go ahead and click Okay.
00:03:21 And then try painting that line once again,
00:03:25 and even if it's pretty shaky, as it is in my case,
00:03:28 it's going to smooth up considerably, like so.
00:03:33 And now notice instead of getting an
00:03:34 open path outline, as we would if we were
00:03:36 drawing with a Pencil Tool,
00:03:38 we get a closed path outline
00:03:40 filled with the stroke color, as we're seeing here.
00:03:43 All right, now I'm going to paint from this corner
00:03:45 right there, down into the left along this edge
00:03:49 and as soon as I release,
00:03:51 even though I have a very wiggly brush stroke,
00:03:53 things smooth out very nicely,
00:03:55 and Illustrator goes ahead and joins
00:03:57 those two brush strokes
00:03:59 into a single path outline.
00:04:01 Now here's a bit of advice
00:04:03 if you want to get nice, sharp corners,
00:04:05 don't just try to paint the thing
00:04:07 all the way around, like so,
00:04:09 because that will get you a soft edge
00:04:11 as we're seeing right here.
00:04:12 Instead what you want to do,
00:04:13 I'll go ahead and press Control Z,
00:04:15 or Command Z on the Mac to undo that brush stroke,
00:04:17 just paint each one of these brush strokes
00:04:20 independently of each other, and let
00:04:22 Illustrator join them into a sharper corner, like so.
00:04:27 And now I'm just going to go ahead and paint
00:04:28 up the nose, and if you're having problems,
00:04:31 just slow it down.
00:04:33 The slower you go,
00:04:34 the more likely it is that you can stay on that line,
00:04:37 and then when you release,
00:04:39 you're going to get a nice, smooth path outline,
00:04:41 as we're seeing right here.
00:04:43 All right, now I'm going to go ahead
00:04:44 and paint along the nose, like so.
00:04:47 And then I'll paint this part right here
00:04:49 in a separate brush stroke,
00:04:51 and I'll go ahead and paint the smile,
00:04:53 and I'll paint this crease and you can see
00:04:55 everything's turning out super smooth,
00:04:58 despite my sometimes awkward brush strokes.
00:05:01 Now that one wasn't so good,
00:05:02 so I'm going to press Control Z,
00:05:04 or Command Z on the Mac to undo it.
00:05:05 And I'm going to try to see if I can give this guy
00:05:07 a fuller lip, and that worked out pretty nicely.
00:05:10 And now I'm just going to go ahead
00:05:12 and paint down his chin.
00:05:14 All right, now let's just go ahead
00:05:15 and fill out the cheek over here.
00:05:17 And incidentally, if you find that
00:05:19 painting in one direction doesn't work for you,
00:05:21 as it's not really working for me,
00:05:23 then just go ahead and undo your brush stroke
00:05:26 and try painting in the other direction instead.
00:05:29 And bear in mind folks,
00:05:31 that I am left handed,
00:05:33 and so if you're a right hander
00:05:34 you might find that it's easier to paint
00:05:36 in the opposite directions you see me working right now.
00:05:39 All right, now I'll just go ahead to paint this eyelid
00:05:42 and I'll paint in this brush stroke up here
00:05:46 and you can see this is a pretty jagged stroke,
00:05:48 but it ends up reconciling nicely.
00:05:50 And now I'll just paint this little edge for his eye.
00:05:53 And now despite the fact that I have painted
00:05:55 a total of 18 successful brush strokes,
00:05:58 Illustrator has fused them into
00:06:00 a single closed path outline.
00:06:02 And that's at least the basics
00:06:04 of working with the Blob Brush
00:06:06 here inside Illustrator.