Okay, now that we are comfortable with our brush, let us take a look at a specific drawing tool and see what we can draw. Specifically, let's look at the pencil tool.

To use the pencil tool, simply select it from the toolbar by depressing the pencil tool icon. When you do so, you can draw on the canvas. Try it out. And don't forget to modify your brush size, roundness, angle, etc....

As you can see, the pencil tool can be very useful. However, Photoshop gives you plenty of ways to modify the pencil tool even further.

You have already seen the multitude of brush options available in the last section. Try some of the options out. The Screen, Multiply and Overlay options are particularly neat.

However, the pencil tool also has several options which are not generic modifications as well. For one, the pencil tool allows you to modify the opacity of the brush using the opacity slider in the Options palette . Opacity defines how much of the background color will show through the lines you draw with your pencil. try out a few values (you will need a different colored background to see it work).

Another useful option is the fade option which allows you to streak with the pencil tool. Try it out and notice that you can fade transparently or by using the background color