In the real-design world, shapes consist of both straight and curved lines. You can use the knowledge you’ve gained up until this point to create paths that contain a mixture of both corner and smooth anchor points. Basically, you know that clicking with the Pen tool produces a corner anchor point and a straight line, and you know that dragging with the Pen tool produces a smooth anchor point and a curved line.

Try drawing a path with both types of anchor points:

1. Select the Pen tool, and make sure you don’t have an existing path selected (look for the small X icon on the Pen tool pointer). Click once to create a corner anchor point.
2. Move your pointer, and click again to create a straight line.
   You can begin a new path by creating two corner anchor points to make a straight line.

3. Move your pointer, and click and drag to create a smooth anchor point.

You now have a single path that consists of both a straight line and a curve.

You can use Illustrator’s Convert Anchor Point tool to convert a corner anchor point to a smooth anchor point, and vice versa. To do so, choose the Convert Anchor Point tool (which is grouped with the Pen tool), and apply the same concepts you’ve learned. Click an existing anchor point once to convert it to a corner anchor point, and then click and drag an existing anchor point to pull out direction handles and convert it to a smooth anchor point.