Back To Basics

The dreaded pen tool.

The pen tool will easily be your biggest enemy when learning to draw in Illustrator but be your best friend when you have mastered how to use it.

You can of course use the pencil tool to draw in a more intuitive and direct way but doing so creates more work for yourself that needs tidying up later with spare anchor points and stray lines everywhere. Not helpful when you are trying to draw an accurate and precise flat drawing or spec sheet.

Remember that drawing in Adobe Illustrator is like putting pegs in a board and attaching string from one peg to the next. Unlike Adobe Photoshop which is more akin to traditional drawing ink on paper.

In Photoshop if you want to edit a line you may use the eraser and repaint your line in its new place.
In Illustrator if you want to edit a line you just need to more the pegs and the string follows.
Drawing in Illustrator is like placing the start and end points, Illustrator will draw the bits in between.

Comprehensive guide

What's in a drawing?

I have downloaded a flat from the WGSN Resource Library and exploded it so you can see what makes up the flat. What at first can look involved and complicated in fact is simple.