Use Brush Patterns


Brush patterns are similar to pattern fills, with two major differences: brush patterns are applied to strokes instead of fills, and they are adaptive in that they change depending on the direction of the stroke path .

Illustrator comes with a nice set of brush libraries from which you can choose stroke patterns. Or you can mix up your own stroke pattern by adapting any vector image. You can use the existing set of brushes or make your own.

Apply a Brush Pattern

You can get some idea of how brush patterns work by selecting one from the Brushes palette and using it as a stroke pattern. To view the Brushes palette, choose Window Brushes. Use any of the symbols in the palette as a stroke pattern.

You can get a better idea of how a brush pattern will look by choosing Thumbnail View from the Brushes palette menu, as shown in Figure 18-15.

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Figure 18-15: Viewing brushes as thumbnails

You can apply a brush pattern to the shape tools (such as the Rectangle, Ellipse, or Star tool), the Paintbrush tool, or the drawing tools in the Line Segment tool tearoff. You can t apply a brush pattern to text or to the Symbol Sprayer tool. (Choose a pattern from the symbol library for the Symbol Sprayer.)

Tip  

The Paintbrush tool works only with a selected brush pattern.

Follow these steps to apply a brush pattern to a stroke:

  1. Click the brush pattern in the Brushes palette.

  2. Select a drawing tool, such as the Pencil or Pen tool.

  3. Draw a path or shape. The selected brush pattern will be applied to the outline, as shown in Figure 18-16.

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    Figure 18-16: Applying a brush stroke to a shape

After you have applied a brush pattern to an outline, you can change that stroke pattern by selecting the path and clicking on a different brush pattern in the Brushes palette. You can remove a brush pattern from a selected path by choosing Remove Brush Stroke from the Brushes palette menu. The selected brush will continue to be applied to new paths until you choose Remove Brush Stroke from the palette menu.

Use Brush Pattern Libraries

Illustrator comes with many sets of brush libraries. You can access these brushes by choosing Window Brush Libraries. The Brush Libraries submenu displays dozens of libraries of brush strokes.

You can apply additional brush strokes from the libraries just as you apply brush strokes from the default Brushes palette. Many of the additional brush strokes work better if you use the Stroke palette to widen the stroke to which they are applied. Figure 18-17 shows a pattern from the Sports_Neon Sports library being applied to a curve. Widening the stroke to 8 points fleshes out the basketball player s shape.


Figure 18-17: Assigning a thicker stroke to a new basketball player brush stroke

Brush strokes that you assign to your document from additional libraries are added to the Brushes palette associated with your file and are available the next time you open the file.




How to Do Everything with Illustrator CS
How to Do Everything with Adobe Illustrator CS
ISBN: 0072230924
EAN: 2147483647
Year: 2002
Pages: 175
Authors: David Karlins

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