Drawing and Tracing Basics 101 Using CorelDRAW: Part 2

Video and supplemental text courtesy Bob Hagel, Eagle’s Mark

You may be fairly new to drawing and tracing with CorelDRAW.

Corel Objects – On the left of your screen is your toolbox. Notice you can draw rectangles, ellipse or circles, and polygons-which is a selection of various shapes such as stars and hearts-which I use in many recognition projects. Corel objects make it easy to draw one of the shapes, size them, and manipulate the shape to some extent. The manipulation allows you to get various-shape stars; however, they will always be a basic star shape. The reason is you cannot add or delete nodes (see below), nor change a straight line to a curve or vice versa. The same goes for rectangles and squares, ellipses and circles, etc.

Make a Perfect Square or Circle – While holding down the Ctrl key, pull out a rectangle and you will get a square. Pull out an ellipse and you will get a perfect circle.

Converting a Corel Object to a Regular Object – A regular object allows you to add or delete nodes, change curve types or turn a straight line into a curve, and use these nodes to change the shape of the object. You may want to start with a perfect circle and then add some features such as a drawing of a face with added ears. To convert the Corel object to a regular object, simply select the Corel Object, hold the Ctrl key down, and press “q” on the keyboard. It is now “converted to curves” in Corel language.

In the video above, I demonstrate the conversion of Corel objects to regular objects when you want to fully manipulate or change the object.