Tutorial: Creating different line effects from a single brush
For: Illustrator 8, 9, 10
The tutorial uses one of the brushes from the Graphicxtras brushes sets.
http://www.graphicxtras.com for more information
The brush in the raw form. To open a brush library go to the
window (or mac equivalent) menu and use the open brush libraries command
If the brush libraries is in the presets folder for the brushes, the brush library
will appear in the brushes listbut otherwise you will have to use the browse
command to access the other libraries. Once opened, the brushes will appear
in a separate palette. Until accessed, the brushes are not part of the document
and cannot be modified, they are read only. Once you have selected or used a
brush they become part of the current open document's brushes collection and
appear in the brushes palette. The document brushes can be modified.
In its raw state the brush is just a path and you
can further tweak the path, change colors, apply
perspective as above, twist., apply filters, etc to
create 100s of different brushes from a single brush.
The path can be copied, duplicated, shrunk, rotated,
and more. Once all the changes have been made,
just drag the path into the current document brush
palette and set as pattern, artistic, or scatter brush
as well as setting tint and scale options and directions
etc. If you wish to save the brush as a more permanent
brush you will need to save the document AI file and
open the document via the brushes command
Save the top zigzag as a brush by dragging the
path into the brushes palette. As soon as the
dragged path enters the palette a dialog will appear
offering to save the brush as artistic, pattern, etc. In
this case, just select the artistic and set the width to
50%. Select the circle tool and draw a circle with the
current brush selected. The circle defines the direction
and location of the brush path. You can set the fill
to nil
The zigzag brush can be found in the complete set of brushes for Illustrator (Illustrator is registered trademark of Adobe). If you are interested in creating stunning zigzag-influenced design then
you might be interested in our plugin 'Zigzag' (vol 5). The plugin comes with a huge range of artistic and design effects and you can use the plugin to create 100s and 100s of your own unique
design brushes. Again, please check out http://www.graphicxtras.com
Select the brush path and go to the object menu and expand
appearance. You now have the brush path and the original
circular path.
Use the ungroup command (also found in the object menu)
to ungroup the brush path and original path. Moce the brush
path out of the way and select the invisible circular path and
delete (it is there.. somewhere)
You now have a basic circular zigzag path
By varying how the brushes are stored
in the palette can change the end result.
A simple act of rotating the path before
dargging the brush into the brushes
palette will change the patterns created
In the above, the zigzag was rotated by 90
degrees and saved and applied to a circle
By dragging the circular path
to the brush palette, you can now
create a new brush, but this time,
select the pattern brush. The pattern
brush has a number of different
options and by varying the scaling,
spacing, flip, stretch, etc options you
can create a different set of path
effects from the same pattern.
The above pattern applied to a line with
scaling set at 30%.
The artistic brush can be applied in a number
of directions. You can take the default or select
180 or 90CW or 90CCW directions. By changing
the direction, the generated brush stroke can
vary considering. In this case, the tint option
and black has been set. Or below, green.
By expanding the paths, you can then re-color the brush
paths or individual components of any pattern, or perhaps
de-saturate the pattern, or apply filters, or tint or apply
gradients or patterns.