Adobe Illustrator - My favorite tools

Here is a little peek into my design studio. I'm creating this new tree for the shop and thought I'd share a little bit about how I create my trees. All of my designs are created in Adobe Illustrator. CS5 has some awesome new features but my favorite is the Width Tool.

Here is how I create branches:

First I create a line using the Pen Tool.

Then I select the Width Tool and then click on one of the ends and drag it outwards. It widens the line keeping both sides symmetrical.

This shows where both of those tools are on the Illustrator tool bar..

(the arrows are a new little feature of CS5 too :)

I then just continue with all of my branches. And then I start adding the leaves. I will end up adding more branches as I see fit once I have some more leaves in there.

Ta-dum! Not too hard! And there you have it. The easiest way to create branches AND a sneak peek into my newest design. And back to work I go!