New Bézier curves for vector graphics
&quot;I don&#x27;t know of a reasonable way to guess the right location.&quot;<p>1. Drag curve handles out to 1&#x2F;3 of the length of the curve segment they control.<p>2. Eschew s-curves between two control points.<p>3. Don&#x27;t turn more than about 90º between two control points.<p>I learnt this about a year into what is now a 23-year career as an Illustrator artist. It has served me well. You will note that the first interactive example on this page is asking you to violate rule 2.<p>&quot;Béziers can&#x27;t represent circles. If you try to approximate one by hand, it&#x27;ll look lopsided.&quot;<p>If you try to draw a circle by hand, it&#x27;ll look lopsided too. Any pro traditional artist will have a compass and a few circle templates in their kit. In Illustrator there&#x27;s an ellipse tool one keypress away. I&#x27;ve been drawing at a pro level for about thirty years and while I can probably pick up a pencil and draw a better circle in a couple quick arm motions than you can in a bunch of little sketchy attempts, they&#x27;re still nowhere near perfect, and they don&#x27;t <i>need</i> to be.<p>I also draw about 90% of my paths with the Pencil tool, which just abstracts worrying all of this way. Unless you are doing very geometric work, or require the absolute minimum possible number of points, I feel that using the Pen tool to draw everything is about as sensible as writing a program entirely in assembly language. And if I <i>do</i> need to work under a tight point count constraint, then I will <i>still</i> draw it with the Pencil, then pull out Astute&#x27;s Smart Point Removal tool, which does a <i>great</i> job of optimizing the heck out of my paths, much better than Adobe&#x27;s tools for this.