Draw with Paintbrushes

The Paintbrush tool draws using a defined shape as the brush. Simply select the Paintbrush tool and draw as you would with the Pencil tool to create a curve. The default (plain) setting creates flowing , ribbon-like curves.

You can also use the Paintbrush tool to paint curved lines using all kinds of symbols and images. You can choose from a wide variety of brush types that come with Illustrator, or you can even create your own brush shapes .

Note  

Chapter 18 explains how to define custom brushes.

Change Brush Stroke Symbols

To choose from Illustrator s gallery of available brushes, choose Window Brushes (or press F5 on your Mac or PC keyboard) to display the Brushes palette. The Brushes palette is shown in Figure 4-12.

Figure 4-12: Viewing the Brushes palette

Scroll down the Brushes palette and click a symbol you wish to use as a brush shape. With a brush selected from the palette, you can use the Paintbrush tool to paint curves using the selected symbol.

To turn off a brush stroke (so that it won t be used when you use other drawing tools), click the Remove Brush Stroke button at the bottom of the Brushes palette (as shown in Figure 4-12). Each time you select the Paintbrush tool in the Toolbox, you ll turn the selected brush stroke back on, and it will apply to any drawing tool.

Use Additional Brush Strokes

You can add brushes to the Brushes palette by choosing Window Brush Libraries and choosing from one of the available sets of brushes. A new palette with brush symbols appears.

Clicking a symbol in the new Brush Library palette adds a symbol to your working Brushes palette, as shown in Figure 4-13.

Figure 4-13: Adding a floral brush to the Brushes palette

Once you add brush symbols to your regular Brush palette, you can use them like any other brush shape. Figure 4-14 shows a drawing using a brush loaded with a fill from the Brushes palette.

Figure 4-14: A leaf brush was used for this drawing.