Adobe Illustrator CS5 One-on-One

Why did I choose such a high radius value when it completely

rounded the stylized oarsmen in the canoe? The high radius

value works best for the outside of the canoe, and I have a trick

to square off the oarsmen to better match the original sketch,

which you’ll see in the next step.

12.

Add points to fi x the oarsmen. To square off the oarsmen, we’ll

take advantage of the way Illustrator handles spline curves. A

spline curve, as shown with its base path in Figure 3-21, fol-

lows the path and runs along the segments between points, but

curves away from the points themselves to smooth the corners.

(This differs from how Illustrator handles Bézier curves, which

we discuss in the next lesson.)

Illustrator uses spline curves to cal-

culate how to draw the round corners

effect, a fact you can exploit to your

advantage here. If you look closely at

the right side of Figure 3-21, you’ll see

that the curves are much less rounded,

due to the fact that there isn’t enough

room between the points for Illustrator

to achieve a smooth curve.

Now to put the spline curves into prac-

tice. Press the P key to switch to the

pen tool (if it isn’t still active), and

add points to the path as shown in

Figure 3-22, being careful to click near

but not on the existing points. (It helps

to zoom in; if you click an existing

point and accidentally delete it, press

Ctrl+Z or -Z) to undo. There are close

to two ...