Using the Pen tool in illustrator
1. Copy and Paste the image of the Coca Cola Bottle onto your new Artboard in Illustrator. Go to you LAYERS palette and lower the opacity slightly. Lock this layer! Then CREATE A NEW LAYER.
2. Select the Pen Tool - We can now select our pen tool either by the selecting the icon in the tool bar or pressing the P key.
Hint: You can turn off the fill of the shape by switching the fill swatch to none.
3. Start Your Path - Considering that a bottle is an object with a lot of curves we are going to be primarily using the curved points. To add a curve, click once to start your path, then click somewhere else and hold down your mouse, dragging it to adjust the curve. To reset the pen tool back to normal, click the middle anchor point between the handles.Hint: If you place a point that you are not happy with, simply hit Crt+Z to undo it and try again.
**TO SAVE TIME, ONLY TRACE ONE HALF OF THE BOTTLE - WE WILL COPY IT TO THE OTHER SIDE LATER.
4. Adjust your curves with direct selection tool (“A” key) - The curved points also leave behind a handle on both side that you can use to adjust the roundness of the point. You can do this by selecting the Direct Selection tool by either hitting the white arrow icon on the tool bar or pressing the A key.
Hint: if you want to only control one handle hold down the Alt Key as you are moving the handle.
5. Select the entire path. - Once you completed half of the object you can select the entire path by using the Selection tool by clicking on the black arrow on the toolbar or pressing the V key. Then simply click on your line.
6. Reflect the path. - Once you have the path selected go to Object > Reflect and select either Horizontal or Vertical based on the object that you are tracing. We are going to use Vertical for our bottle and then click on Copy. This will make a copy of the second side of the bottle so that we can ensure that both sides are identical and perfectly symmetrical.
7. Line up the paths. - Now all we need to do is join the two paths, but first you need to move the new path to the right place. Move over our new path using the arrow keys, to make the movement faster hold down shift as you do it.
8. Join the paths - Select both paths by holding down SHIFT, right-click, and select JOIN. Now we have a traced outline! from here we can fill it with color, and start tracing the label.
EXPORT your work as a JPEG and add it to your website. You will be marked on this!
2. Select the Pen Tool - We can now select our pen tool either by the selecting the icon in the tool bar or pressing the P key.
Hint: You can turn off the fill of the shape by switching the fill swatch to none.
3. Start Your Path - Considering that a bottle is an object with a lot of curves we are going to be primarily using the curved points. To add a curve, click once to start your path, then click somewhere else and hold down your mouse, dragging it to adjust the curve. To reset the pen tool back to normal, click the middle anchor point between the handles.Hint: If you place a point that you are not happy with, simply hit Crt+Z to undo it and try again.
**TO SAVE TIME, ONLY TRACE ONE HALF OF THE BOTTLE - WE WILL COPY IT TO THE OTHER SIDE LATER.
4. Adjust your curves with direct selection tool (“A” key) - The curved points also leave behind a handle on both side that you can use to adjust the roundness of the point. You can do this by selecting the Direct Selection tool by either hitting the white arrow icon on the tool bar or pressing the A key.
Hint: if you want to only control one handle hold down the Alt Key as you are moving the handle.
5. Select the entire path. - Once you completed half of the object you can select the entire path by using the Selection tool by clicking on the black arrow on the toolbar or pressing the V key. Then simply click on your line.
6. Reflect the path. - Once you have the path selected go to Object > Reflect and select either Horizontal or Vertical based on the object that you are tracing. We are going to use Vertical for our bottle and then click on Copy. This will make a copy of the second side of the bottle so that we can ensure that both sides are identical and perfectly symmetrical.
7. Line up the paths. - Now all we need to do is join the two paths, but first you need to move the new path to the right place. Move over our new path using the arrow keys, to make the movement faster hold down shift as you do it.
8. Join the paths - Select both paths by holding down SHIFT, right-click, and select JOIN. Now we have a traced outline! from here we can fill it with color, and start tracing the label.
EXPORT your work as a JPEG and add it to your website. You will be marked on this!