The freehand tool is nice for a quick rough idea or really irregular shapes but the pen tool and drawing dot to dot while holding button down for curves is best and most accurate way to create nice smooth lines. Once you get used to the tricks of using it such as how to subtract points or add points plus the click on last point to convert a curved segment into a straight segment... it becomes really fluid and easy to work with. I used to watch my father create illustrations really quick like using the pen tool in Freehand and never thought I would get up to his speed but after years of using Illustrator... it's quite easy and quick now to use. I still have to spend time tweaking the handles sometimes to get what I want but its minimal these days. You can look in my gallery to see my latest dabbling in Illustrator if interested ;-)