So in this lesson, we're going to be talking about that pencil, and the different icons that if this place for you, to help you as you're drawing with it, well, the first thing you should know is the pencil is not the only tool you can draw with in vector software. You can also use the pencil or the brush. But most likely, you're gonna find yourself drawing with a pencil in most applications. Also, the pencil is very easy to operate with the mouse with the digital pen. And while To be honest, I also use a lot of times. So just a little bit of practice, and super easy to use.
And also, another thing I like to say about the pen tool is that all these icons are not exactly the same for all the software, but they are kind of similar. So once you know one, you're gonna understand the rest of us. So let's see it. So to start with, I would like to talk about the different icons, this tool is going to display. While you're drawing. You have here a graphic with the five different modes, you're going to find alone within Affinity Designer, to the best of my knowledge, there is not an official name for them.
And so I put these names like active inactive close path and so forth, in order to explain what they all do, and mean. So I'm gonna pull this up, and I'm going to show you one by one what they mean. So to start with, we're going to see the first two icons, which in this list I called inactive, or start, which is a little pen tool with an X below it. And the active icon which is a naked pen tool with no symbol below it. At the moment, you can see this cursor arrow on my canvas. Now the moment I activate the pen tool, you're gonna see the first one There, and it's exactly reflected in these very first icon, which at the moment, I would call inactive, because we still have no node no points, no segments, the numbers.
The moment we start drawing, it will change it into the active. And the moment we trace or second node, it will still reflect that she just started tracing. So I'm going to show you here, I clicked in this case now, meaning we're start. Now we're active we're working on something we can click and the second click will trace a line between the two points. So I'm going to click and as you can see, we just have the start icon display in the moment I move the cursor now you will never see this icon again until you start a new segment separated completely from this one. Okay.
Well, you We're going to see it's the active mode. So there we go, active mode right now, and no trace whatsoever of the inactive or start icon. We're going to see the third one. So we keep clicking here, for example, we trace this curve, it could be also a straight line doesn't really matter. And the moment I want to close this shape, I get close to this first note, and you're gonna see the close path icon, which displays the pen icon with a little circle below it. Honestly, this is the one I really pay more attention to.
All the rest I just take for granted what I draw in is just because I'm very used to them, I don't really need these visual cues. But this one helps me very much to just know that in this case, I'm really hitting the right point to close my my shape. So I'm going to click and now I know this shape is completely closed. I'm going to show you if I fill it up with some color, it's completely gross. Now, let's come back to a drawer in here. And let's talk about the note holder or select icon, which is displayed in a pen tool with a little dash below it.
So just take a look here, as I approach this node in here, and I hover over it. You can see now the icon is telling me that I can select that very node. So I'm going to click on it. Now have it selected. Let's go Just try with another one with a small note here. Exactly the same, we get the icon with the little dash.
And that is telling me that right now I can click and select and what I can do is just manipulate it. Okay, any of them from here. See here go some creative curves, it gives me a small smooth node. Same for this one, we can manipulate it, we can change our shape. And now we're going to see the cost node, because now it is quite special because you're never gonna find it on top of any of the nodes. But most likely, you're gonna find it here over the handles, and you need to activate it by clicking out.
What this is going to do is transform your node into a cusp node. So I'm going to click on it while I press Option or Alt in my keyboard. And now I have it over the handle, I click my mouse. And as you can see, this has been transformed into a sharp node. Let's try with this one too. We click out we click on the handle.
And again we have here because we have a sharp note and the same for this one. There you go. Okay, so now that you know The meaning of these five icons that you're gonna find as you go drawing within Affinity Designer. Let's learn