“ In particular, it can be tricky to maintain consistent curvature between adjoining segments of a path, which can lead to a ‘lumpy’ look; the following example is contrived, but in practice consistently getting smooth feeling curves with Béziers is challenging.”
It’s not that hard. I’m an artist who specializes in Illustrator, and I have some simple rules for its pen tool:
1. Drag curve handles out to 1/3 of the length of the curve segment they control.
2. Eschew s-curves between two control points.
3. Don’t turn more than about 90º between two control points.
There are people out there who have a similar set of rules but prefer to always put their control points at 12/3/6/9 o’clock; for more circular shapes this works, but it falls apart on anything interesting - try drawing an oval with its long axis at about 45° with my method and with this method, and observe how much more uneven the curve handles have to be for the 12/3/6/9 method.
It’s not that hard. I’m an artist who specializes in Illustrator, and I have some simple rules for its pen tool:
1. Drag curve handles out to 1/3 of the length of the curve segment they control.
2. Eschew s-curves between two control points.
3. Don’t turn more than about 90º between two control points.
There are people out there who have a similar set of rules but prefer to always put their control points at 12/3/6/9 o’clock; for more circular shapes this works, but it falls apart on anything interesting - try drawing an oval with its long axis at about 45° with my method and with this method, and observe how much more uneven the curve handles have to be for the 12/3/6/9 method.