Whether you love it or hate it, the Pen Tool is necessary for everything we do in Illustrator. But the lesser know Pencil Tool – which draws much more organically like an actual pencil – offers some really great tricks and shortcuts.

In this video, I’ll sketch an entire flat without ever touching the Pen Tool.

You will learn:

• 00:39 How the Pencil Tool works different than the Pen Tool, and how to understand when it will do what
• 04:07 Why you should change your zoom level when drawing fashion flats with the Pencil Tool
• 06:28 Change the stacking order of your garment
• 06:55 How to use the Reflect Tool to copy symmetrical parts (like a sleeve)
• 07:40 Use the Pencil Tool to reshape any vector path
• 08:19 How to add shadows / highlights to your fashion flat sketches
• 09:24 Add a thick border around the edge of your illustration

Save this tutorial to Pinterest so you can find it later: