Hello. We are going to use the width tool, advanced Width tool. We're gonna combine it with our sweet new pen tool skills. We'll introduce a little bit of curvature tool for those  who haven't done much of it. And we're gonna make this, we're gonna go  from a little drawing here. Okay.

That I did. And we're going to add all of the kind  of like whips and curls and stuff  and I'll show you to make these bits at the end here. It's all very fun. Let's jump in. Okay. First up, open up the width tool exercise  from your exercise files.

And I wanted to show you how I got to this drawing here. Okay. So basically I picked a font  that I like to start with. I'm not a good type designer  but I found something I quite liked. It's called lust. If you've opened up the font,  it might say, Hey, you don't have the font.

You can sink it to have it. You can ignore that as well  because I've outlined a version of the font. This is just shapes that represent the font over here. If you did want the font. Okay, it's called lust. There it is there.

You can sink it through Adobe Fonts. Okay, so there's my font. I printed it off. I'll show you what I did to get all my curls is I printed  it off onto a sheet. Where is it? There?

It's there. I just printed it off a few times onto a sheet, laid a bit  of paper over the top, stapled it at the top  and kind of like lift the paper up,  could kind of see through it. And drew my little curls on there  and was happy enough for this exercise. I was like, eh, looks kind of cool. And we moved on. So that's how I got to this point  for those like little drawings.

Can you see? I just kinda like flipped it up and down. That's how I got here. Um, so  what we're gonna do now is draw the curls on  and get them to do the in  and naughty bit that you saw at the beginning. What I'm gonna do is I'm gonna make sure I find it easy  to use the pen tool when you're doing this custom stuff  to have the smart guides off command you on a Mac,  CTRL U on a PC turn smart guides off up to you. You can use the pen tool or the curvature tool.

I'm gonna start with the pen tool  and then switch over to the curvature tool  'cause we haven't done uh, much of  that in the advanced course yet. So we'll start with a pen tool  'cause we've been practicing that over here. I'm gonna make sure I've got a black uh,  stroke or a stroke and no fill. I don't wanna fill for this at the moment. And what I find with, when I'm trying  to connect existing vectors to new drawings,  I find it's easier not to start from the vector  'cause it wants to snap and create  anchor points on this thing. I don't want that.

So I'm gonna zoom in, grab my pen tool  and I'm gonna start with, start with an easy one. That's not the easy one. We'll start with this one. Okay? It's gonna kind of come up over here and around. Uh, so I find it's easy to start from this end.

I'm gonna click hold and drag for a kind of a corner. So I've got my little handles. Now when you're doing curves like this, I find it's easy. You want as least amount of anchor points as you can. But often you need them in all  of the like down the bottom here on the  side here at the top here. Can you see kinda like one on each of the 360  'cause I'm coming back around as a circle.

I kind of need it if I show you on a circle,  if I draw a circle and grab the white uh,  arrow, okay and click on these. Can you see to get a perfect circle, the minimum  to get a perfect circle is four. And I kind of use that when I'm doing these things as well  as kind of need four of them to get the shape right. You can try with three and you get mostly there  and there's just something awkward about it. Okay, I'm gonna undo that  'cause I'm gonna show you another trick. So pen tool, um, I'm gonna click out and drag this one.

What I find useful, um,  and this is like a bonus extra pen tool trick is when I'm  clicking and dragging down here,  it's nice if this thing's completely flat not, you know,  because you can drag, you're like kind of,  that's kind of flat, it's not. So what you do is you click hold and drag. If you watch this, if I hold shift it just kinda like snaps  it into like, I don't know, 90 degree increments. So it means that I can kind of drag it out here. Okay, let go shift, click drag hold shift. Can you see it?

Snaps it into the straight up and down. I find that useful. So let go shift. Actually I think  you can hold shift the whole time. Okay? Get the top one and then down here.

Okay, I don't actually want it to attach. I'll show you why in a second. I'm gonna get it to kind of like be inside of here. I'm gonna drag it out, out, out, out. Then I'm gonna use my uh, sweet shortcut by going  to the command key on a mac control key, a pc. Click on these anchor points, okay?

Or you can go to the direct selection tool. Start dragging these out if you hold shift  while you're dragging them out, okay, they kind  of snap horizontally  and then you spend the next 30 minutes kind of going back  and forth going, is that kind of good? I might switch the direct selection tool. Now the A key, okay? And sometimes you've gotta move this around,  kind of get it looking, okay? Don't spend too long 'cause when you add the width  tool kind of changes it a bit.

So now the tricks  for the little blo end bit, that's what you came for, right? Okay, so let's grab the width tool. Okay? I'm gonna click on this once  and I'm going to click hold and drag. I want something at the end here. It's gonna click hold and drag  'cause I want some thickness here.

How much, just guess I'm beginner with. Do to the end and drag it out over here. I want some thickness at the end here as well. You are like, mine doesn't quite work. Zoom in a little bit. Okay?

What I want to do is I've got  this end one, I'll just show you again. So I clicked hold with the width tool  and dragged it out and you're like, huh? What you do is you come back just the tiny bit  and click out another one and you can see you can kind  of like say be thick but then get skinny again. Okay? So I just kind of like dragged  it here and just made it thin. And you're like, how do you get the ball at the end?

Go to your properties, go to stroke  and switch it from the butt cap. Great name to the round cap, okay? And it doesn't work. Okay? You've got to click on  slick that with the black arrow. Okay?

So click off the width tool, click on this, then go  to stroke and then go to round cap  and there's our little blob at the end. Okay? Now I gotta spend some time  with the direct selection tool. The A key, okay, direct selection tool. And I'm gonna spend a little bit of time kind of going y  I'm not trying, don't follow my pencil drawing. My pencil drawing is not symmetrical.

Forget the pencil drawing. Even if you want to turn it off in the layers panel,  turn the eyeball off, okay? So that you can come back  and go, all right, forget about that drawing. 'cause that might not be, you know, there's a lot  of sketchy pencil marks there that you don't need  to particularly follow  or that'll do. And what I probably wanna do  is I'm gonna go do the width tool. We're gonna do this a lot.

So shift W is the shortcut  for both Mac and pc. Okay? And I'm gonna go, you actually just be a bit smaller. You might, did anybody did, did anybody end up  with this like monster um, blobby bit at the end? Okay, you can just drag that down a little bit  and you might decide, actually this is a bit thinner here. Okay, do some adjustments  and then spend ages with the white direct selection tool.

Trying to make it look nice. Oh, it's too thick. Oh I'm gonna fix it up at the end. Let's keep going. I'm gonna turn back on my layer, okay? And I'm gonna go, let's do another one.

Let's do, should we do that one? No, I'll show you this one here. 'cause the rest is just step and repeat, right? Draw the exact same things. And so this one here we're gonna use some  of our earlier techniques. I wanna get rid of this.

I can't remember the name of it  or it's in my head. We're calling it the big dangly. But for the moment we're gonna grab the eraser tool, okay? Which is over here. Okay? Remember the eraser tool is kind of handy  'cause you can kind of just lower the brush size using my  square brackets, okay?

And just kind of drag it over and go, eh, how about there? Let's use the curvy tool. Okay? So we did the pen tool for that one. I'm a pen tool person 'cause I'm good at it. You might be from the essentials course  and be digging the curviture tool.

If you've never heard of it, they can get the quick demo. Basically the curvy tool works like this. And click, instead of clicking  and dragging to get a curve, you just click once. Watch this, click once. Actually I  said don't start on the object. I'm gonna start here.

Click once, click once click kind of  where I feel like the apex there is click once uh,  I'm gonna switch these around so it's a stroke with no fill  and I click once about there and then get to about there. And that didn't work. Okay? So it tries to connect. It's like, ooh, do you mean this? I'm like, nope, I'm gonna undo.

So it's still connected and I'm gonna go past there. Nope, still gonna do it. I'm gonna go up there. Don't connect. Please. I could lock the  layer, I could do lots of stuff.

I'm just going to force it out here. Go back to my direct selection tool  and now line it up and it won't snap. So I'm gonna spend a little bit of time  going see the coverage tool. I don't know you digging it, I dig it. I love showing new people it  'cause the pen tool is hard to learn. You can use the coverage tool forever.

All right, let's do one more. Ah, one of the tricks. Okay, this is a good trick. So at the moment, this stroke width here,  that is the smallest it can be. Okay? So it's uh, what is it?

Uh, stroke of one point I find,  especially if you want little pointy ends, we don't. We've got a little blobby end I find starting with a 0.25. Okay? Really thin line is just a default go-to  for all of width tool stuff. Okay? Now we can use shift W to go to the width tool.

I want this to be nice and thin here. So I'm gonna leave that end, I'm gonna find  this end, drag it out. Okay. Way too big. Dan Zoom a little bit. Okay?

And I'm gonna make this one nice and small. Then I'm gonna go to this one. Okay? I'm gonna forget. You need to select it as a path  and say fill  actually that work fine. And let's have a look.

We've got nice and thin there. It gets thick here. Sometimes the width  tool adds its own points. So back to my width tool. If I hover along, can you see there's one there. If I hover along, there's one there.

You're like I don't want to,  I can click on it, hit delete on my keyboard. Okay, so it starts there and gets thinner and thinner. I'm gonna have to get this end  and just make it a little bit bigger. Trying to match where that G came out of. I could do something cool down here  and go U okay And make it big thicker. But I dunno, I practiced this  before this video and I didn't really dig it.

One of the other little advanced tricks with the width tool  as well is say I did drag this out  but I don't want it to be equal. Okay, can you see it's equal size? So I'm gonna drag it out a little  bit and then hold down my option. Key in a Mac alt key in a pc and just drag one side. Can you see it dips the bottom side more than the top side? Okay.

Otherwise it's equal up to you. I messed around with that and I didn't really like it  so I ended up going, yep. Actually I'm gonna delete that one. Select it, delete it,  zoom out a bit, squint my eyes and go. It's kind of all right. It probably needs to be a little bit thicker,  but again, uh, we could spin ages making this nice.

We've got the idea right how to put the blobs on width tool. We kind of use the curvature tool in there  as well instead of the pen tool. I'm gonna continue on. There's gonna be no more bonuses in here. I'm just gonna do it. You can watch if you like kick back,  watch mine's a uh, Grenada Donuts.

Okay? So I'm gonna get you to do your own one in a second. So practice with me, watch me up to you  and I'm just gonna continue on. What I found as well is this drippy thing's kind of cool,  but I think I needed to when I was practicing. I'll show you. This is my practice version, okay?

That I did just before this, um, video started  and I found it looked nicer going around that way  and kind of like balancing out this side. It's still not perfect, but, um,  better than that drippy thing. So pen tool, I'm gonna remember start kind  of where I want it to go. I'm using the pen tool, this case  and I'm gonna go one, two  and then get up into here. Okay? And I'm just gonna keep talking while I do it.

Get it roughly good. Don't spend too long getting the line  good because instantly when you add the curvature  or the width stuff, everything changes. Another tip is  that often if things are looking really quirky  or weird, it's often  that these two handles are really different lengths. This one's kind of fighting a little bit,  but this one's overpowering it. So often when they're the same kind of distance, it tends  to give you a bit of curve and don't be afraid  to move the anchor point, okay? If you find the pen tool  and all this really tricky, it is, it takes ages to get good  to it and it's, there's a little bit I can kind  of pass on the techniques,  but the experience part is the stuff that you kind  of end up having to just learn by doing, doing it badly  for, for a long time.

All right? Again, remember stroke 0.25,  grab the width tool shift. WI want this bit to be nice and bulbous. Uh, I'm gonna grab that end. Go like that. This end probably needs a little bit of width on it.

Not much. Okay? And it needs to line up  and we're not gonna get like properly. Perfect. Okay? We're gonna get it to look okay, okay.

We could merge this together using the  pathfinder and start doing that. But for the moment, that is good enough. Oh, it just looks a bit weird, huh? There's a little weirdness down here. It needs to flow better, flowing better. Oh that, oh, still  Not quite right.

I show you this 'cause you are gonna do the same thing  and you're like man, this takes forever and it does. Really good example to go  and have a look at for ideas is uh, letters with flourishes,  curls, Sisco. That's what I typed into Google and I went to Google Images  and this is where I ended up. It's kind of really small. You can probably do a better search,  but I likes Scott, he kind of, I dunno,  he did all this really cool stuff early on and I copied it. I love it.

Um, so that's how I got here. Let's go back into it. Let's finish the last ones off. Um, what I want do is this one here, pen start at the end. How many does this need in terms of anchor points? Probably more than two.

Oh does it? Maybe I can just do two. I reckon three is the way to go for this one pen until only  'cause I've fought with trying to like do it with, you know,  so little of them in the past and eventually give it up  and added another one that I kind of find the happy medium. Ooh, I nailed that one. Um, could you just use a circle,  Dan you could totally use the side of a circle. Just slice it up.

Okay, I'm gonna go U 0.25. I'm gonna go with tool shift. W grab the end, tuck it in a little bit,  probably still too thick and probably just drag the in. Zoom in Dan, zoom in. Okay. Anybody still around?

You still here? Maybe there's this hidden  one over here that it added. It's kind of messing with my width. What do we think? Hmm? Um, I like as well to add like the circle tool,  which is clearly the a key for circle the circle.

Okay. And I'm gonna draw a circle at the moment. The fill and the stroke are the wrong way around. You can hit shift X. Okay. And I'll toggle them or switch them.

I'm gonna do u back to my move tool. I'm gonna say you go over there  and maybe another oh and maybe another one. So I'm holding down the option key on a Mac or in a PC  and kind of doing some sort of like  blobby splattery thing. There you go. All right. The next one, I'm probably not gonna draw it again.

I'm just gonna go copy it  and rotate it a little bit to kind of get it to  where I want it. Just the roughs. Oh come on. Rotate and go about there. Grab my direct selection tool and go. You, you  kind of want it going in there.

I find it is easier to draw it first  'cause I can be a little more fluid  and like, I don't know, I find I  ended up at a better, it's easier. I override it with the pen tool,  but I find it so much easier to draw stuff  and then scribble over the top  and might add another one of these. Oop. And then that's gonna be it. And this is what you see at the beginning with this video. Sometimes can you see with the move tool,  you can't actually get in there but zoom in and say, yep,  because I made the anchor points really big.

It's kind of working against me right now. All right, that is gonna be me. What else I wanna do, this guy's too chunky. All right, I'm gonna stop you. Uh, you don't have to watch anymore. Okay?

I'm gonna go through  and tidy this up a little bit for the intro  and just play around with making it thinner I think. And that'll be it. Um, uh, there we go. Text with a bit of flourish using the width tool. We use the pen tool and the cur tool. High five for those who hang around for the whole thing.

Watch me mumble to myself as I, uh, make a little blobs. Alright, uh, that's it. I'll see you in the next video.