[Hall of tricks]

This tutorial will show you how to create a lovely fountain pen using PI 5 or 6. The image below shows a pen and its cover. The nice part is that the nib comes from the Shape Library. The only thing you need to do in this image is a few shapes. In this tutorial, we'll learn to use the Grid feature to nicely align the points on the shapes.

To make the fountain pen, we'll need to do the pen (of course), the nib (supplied with PI), the clip on the pen cover and add some ornaments. If you want you can add your name on the pen (because it's an expensive pen, you know!)

• Create an new image 512 x 482 pixels.
• To help you in aligning the nodes, let's set a grid on which PI can snap to. Choose File/Preferences/General.
• Select Guidelines and Grid on the left and set the Horizontal and Vertical spacing to 10 then close the dialog box.
• At the bottom right of the PI screen you see a button called Unit (beside the mask tool). Click and enable the Grid then enable the Snap to Grid features.

When I use the grid feature, I often want to turn it off temporarily. You can do this by pressing Ctrl+Shift+R. It's a toggle key, pressing it again will turn the grid back on. Another helpful hint you can use is to press the Z key on the keyboard while you select a region in the image to zoom in. If you click in the image while Z is pressed you will increase the magnification, right-clicking while Z is pressed will decrease the factor. I like this feature because the point where you click will be in the center of your screen after the magnification is applied. To go back to the full view, you can press Ctrl+1.

Let's start with the body of the pen.

• Using the Path Drawing Tool, draw an ellipse. The length of the pen is not extremely important but you should make its height an even number number of grid spaces. This way, it'll be easy to find its middle. Make sure you start on a grid point and end on another one. Mine was about 40 squares wide by 4 squares high.
• On the toolbar, click on the Editing button. Four nodes are now visible on the ellipse. These nodes are used to change the shape of the object. Delicately click in the node at the far right. When you see the two handles, pull the upper one two grid points up and the bottom one two grid points down.
• The right end now looks like this. See how the grid helps in aligning point symmetrically?

At the left end of the pen we need add two new nodes, remove the existing node and make the resulting curve a straight line. Follow these steps:

• In the Edit Point section on the toolbar, click the button with the large + in it. This is the Add point command. Counting from the left edge, move to the right four grid point and delicately click where the shape intersects the grid lines. Repeat this for the bottom intersection. This is the result.

• Select the node at the far left of the pen and click on the Delete button on the toolbar.
• Once the node is removed, a curved segment appears between the two left nodes. Select the curve path and click the Convert path to line segment button in the Convert Line section of the toolbar. To see the new path clearly, press Ctrl+Shift+R. Now the image looks like this.

• Now click the Editing button again to see the path object. Press Ctrl+1 to see the full view.
• Select a color for the pen. You might want to use the Material Gallery instead to apply a texture to the pen.
• Set the Mode to 3D Round, Border to 15 and Depth to about 20.
• Click on the Light button and hover the mouse pointer toward the upper part of the pen to cast light along its edge. I discovered lately that PI 6 now supports undoing this action if you're not satisfied. Unfortunately, you cannot use the Undo command with the Light button in PI 5. You'll need to tweak with the light in the Material Box to fix it if you use PI 5.

If you want to make the light shinier, click the Material button and choose the Shading tab. Choose the Phong option and set the Strength to a value around 80. Now, it's easier to make the light shine along the pen's upper side. Let's add a nib to the pen.

• In the Easy Palette, click on Object Libraries and open the Shape Library.
• In the Pattern Shapes section, find the Nib shape and drag it in the image.
• If the Grid and Snap to Grid feature are still enabled, the next step will be easier to follow.
• Resize and rotate the nib with the Transform's Resize and Rotate Freely buttons. When you resize the nib, hold the Shift key down to keep its original proportions.
• Move the nib to the tip of the pen and using the Pick Tool and send the nib behind the pen (using Send To Back). To move it precisely, zoom very close to the tip of the pen and drag the nib. The Snap to Grid feature will help greatly in aligning the nib with the pen.
• Use the Easy Palette's Material Gallery to give a metallic look to the nib. I choose Steel 2.
• Using the Path Drawing Tool set the Mode to 3D Chisel and use a Border value of 2 or 3. Adjust the Depth to your liking.

This is what you should have at this point: (This image doesn't show the grid.)

In part 2, we'll add some ornaments to the pen and create the cover with a clip.

[ Part 2 ]