We now have the bottom of our boat drawn — however, we still need to add a mast and a sail. We'll use two new tools to do this: the Line Segment tool to create the mast, and the Polygon tool to create the sail. Once we've created those shapes, we'll group them together to make sure all of the pieces of the boat are treated as one object.
Using the Line Segment tool to create a mast
Let's start with adding a mast to the boat using the Line Segment tool. The Line Segment tool allows us to draw simple straight lines by pressing and dragging, much like the Shape tools we’ve worked with so far. We’ll use the grid to help us determine the length of the line as we draw it.
To activate the Line Segment tool, in the Tools panel,
Click
To position the cursor where the line should start, on the artboard,
Point to the major grid line that runs through the middle of the boat, 6 grid squares up from the top of the boat
To create the line, with the Line Segment tool active,
Press & Drag down towards the boat
NOTE: To keep the line perfectly straight, press and hold the Shift key while pressing and dragging to create the line.
The boat should look similar to the following image at this point:
The line we drew for the mast looks a little too thin. Let’s make the line thicker by modifying the weight, or thickness of the line. We’ll do this using the Control panel. Once we’ve changed the weight of the line, we’ll change its color to match the boat.
To change the weight of the line, in the Stroke field of the Control panel,
Click, Click 5 pt
To work with the line's stroke color, in the Swatches panel,
Click
To change the color of the line to match the boat, in the Swatches panel,
Click the same brown swatch used for the boat's hull
The boat should now look similar to the following image:
There’s one final piece we need to create for the boat — the sail.
Creating the sail with the Polygon tool
To create the sail for the boat, we’ll use a new shape tool — the Polygon tool. The Polygon tool can be used to create a shape with any number of sides, and we'll use it to create a triangle to be used as the boat’s sail.
By default, the Polygon tool creates hexagon shapes. In order to create a triangle instead of a hexagon, we'll need to use a keyboard modifier as we create our shape — we can use the up and down arrow keys on the keyboard to change the number of sides our polygon has as we press and drag to create the shape.
Let's start making the sail. First, we’ll want to reset the fill and stroke colors to the Illustrator defaults, then we’ll create the triangle to use for the boat's sail. Afterwards, we'll resize the triangle if necessary, then change the triangle's color and move it into place.
To deselect everything on the artboard, in the Menu bar,
Click Select, Click Deselect
To reset the fill and stroke colors to the Illustrator defaults, on the keyboard, press:
D
To activate the Polygon tool, in the Tools panel,
Press & Hold, Click
To draw the triangle, in an empty space on the artboard,
Press & Drag to start creating the shape, press Down Arrow key three times
To activate the Selection tool, in the Tools panel,
Click
Select the triangle, if necessary.
To move the triangle into position,
Press & Drag the triangle so it is next to the boat's mast
To prepare to rotate the triangle, with the triangle still selected,
Point to one of the triangle’s corners until the cursor changes to
To rotate the triangle so one side is parallel to the boat mast,
Press & Drag the triangle’s corner until one side of the shape is parallel to the mast
To start the process of resizing the triangle,
Point to a corner of the triangle's bounding box until the cursor changes to
NOTE: Your resize cursor may appear at a different angle, depending on the orientation of the trangle's bounding box.
To resize the triangle, with the resize cursor visible,
Press & Drag a corner of the triangle's bounding box until it is the desired size
Verify the shape is still selected.
To change the fill color of the triangle, in the Swatches panel,
Click, Click a color swatch of your choice
Repeat step b with the stroke swatch instead of the fill swatch.
To deselect everything on the artboard, in the Menu bar,
Click Select, Click Deselect
At this point, the boat should look similar to the following image:
The triangle we're using for the sail looks more like a golf flag than a sail for a sailboat. Using the Direct Selection tool, we can change the shape of the triangle slightly by moving one of the anchor points so it more closely resembles a sail.
Let's go ahead and do that now.
To activate the Direct Selection tool, in the Tools panel,
Click
To select the point we want to move, on the triangle,
Click the point furthest from the mast, on the right side of the triangle
To move the selected anchor point,
Press & Drag the point downwards, using the grid to line it up with the bottom-most point of the triangle
Deselect everything on the artboard.
Now the boat should look similar to the following image:
Now that the boat is finished, let's group these three pieces together so they move as one object.
Grouping objects
One technique we can use to keep objects together without uniting them as we did previously is grouping. When we group shapes or pieces of artwork, Illustrator will move and resize them as one object. If we need to go back and edit just one shape in a group, we can do that without ungrouping the objects. Whenever we combine several objects that should remain in the same position relative to each other, it is best practice to group them. We can do this by using the Group command in the Object menu.
In order to group objects, we must select all of them first. Let's go ahead and select all the parts of the boat, then group them together. After the objects are grouped, we'll move the boat into place on the pond. Once that's done, we'll save our work.
To activate the Selection tool, in the Tools panel,
Click
To select the shapes that make up the boat, press and hold:
Shift key, Click the mast, boat, and sail shapes
To group the selected objects together, in the Menu bar,
Click Object, Click Group
To view the entire artboard in the document window, in the Tools panel,
Double-Click
To activate the Selection tool, in the Tools panel,
Click
To move the boat onto the pond, with the Selection tool active,
Press & Drag the boat onto the pond
To save the file, on the keyboard, press:
Control key + S
The landscape drawing should look similar to the following image at this point:
Next, we'll add a sun to the landscape drawing, and in the process we'll learn how to work with effects in Illustrator.
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