- Getting Started
- Setting Up the Document
- Using Basic Shape Tools
- Drawing the Pencil Shape
- Drawing the Piece of Stationery
- Drawing with the Rectangular Grid Tool
- Decorating the Stationery Border
- Tips for Drawing Polygons, Spirals, and Stars
- Painting the Logo
- Copying and Scaling Shapes
- Review Questions
- Review Answers
Setting Up the Document
You’ll begin the lesson by setting the ruler units to inches, displaying a grid to use as a guideline for drawing, and closing the palettes that you won’t use.
- Close all the palettes by clicking their close boxes or by holding down Shift and pressing Tab once. For now, you won’t need
to use them.
You can also hide or show the palettes by choosing their Window commands. If a palette is grouped with others, choosing the Window command hides or shows the group. (Pressing Shift+Tab switches between hiding and showing the palettes. Pressing Tab alone hides or shows the toolbox and palettes.)
- Choose View > Show Grid to display a grid that’s useful for measuring, drawing, and aligning shapes. This grid won’t print with the artwork.
- Choose View > Show Rulers to display rulers along the top and left side of the window. The ruler units are set by default
to points.
You can change ruler units for all documents or for only the current document. The ruler unit of measure applies to measuring objects, moving and transforming objects, setting grid and guide spacing, and creating ellipses and rectangles. (It does not affect the units in the Character, Paragraph, and Stroke palettes. These are controlled by the options in the Units & Undo Preferences dialog box.)
- Choose File > Document Setup to change the ruler units for only this document. In the Document Setup dialog box, for Units
choose Inches, leave the other settings unchanged, and click OK.
You can also set the default ruler units for all documents by choosing Edit > Preferences > Units & Undo (Windows) or Illustrator > Preferences > Units & Undo (Mac OS).