Illustrator Help with Recreating a Shape

[Tiffany]

I'm trying to recreate the black "0" violin shape below. I was able to create the "0" shape, but I am unsure how to recreate the central part on the sides that are cut out. My thinking was to copy the the "o shape that I made, shrink it down, place it where it will overlap the original to get the cut-out effect, however I am unsure of how to make the pointed side sections. If anyone would be able to tell me how to do it properly, I would greatly appreciate it.

 

[@GCarlD]

Pen tool

 

[Paul Murray]

To be honest the pen tool is probably the clunkiest way to do this. Here's what I did. Started by making this shape using an ellipse and two mirrored triangles



Then I used different passes of the pathfinder tools to cut out the shapes I needed until I had this

Then I selected the far left anchor point on the curve and used the Anchor Point Tool (Shift + C) to smooth it out by dragging far to the left. When it's how you want it, just duplicate it, flip it and align it to the opposite side.



You can then just cut the whole shape in half, duplicate the side and rejoin them. Not a perfect shape but this took me all of 2 minutes. With time you can get the scales just how you'd like them.

 

[scotty]

As Carl said.

You could just draw just the top, left hand quarter and then flip vertically (mirror) that to make the bottom, left part and join it.
This would give you the left side.
Then do the same but horizontally fit it to create the right side.
Then just line up as before and join the paths.

 

[scotty]

...or as Paul says.

There arte many ways to skin a cat in Illustrator.

 

[@GCarlD]

As Carl said.

You could just draw just the top, left hand quarter and then flip vertically (mirror) that to make the bottom, left part and join it.
This would give you the left side.
Then do the same but horizontally fit it to create the right side.
Then just line up as before and join the paths.

That is EXACTLY what I would do...

 

[Tiffany]

@Paul Murray , for this step which pathfinder tool did you use to cut the shape? I have been messing with all of them and I haven't been able to figure out how to cut out the circle this way...