Lessons

Lesson Info

How to Use Brushes in Adobe Illustrator CC

Hi there in this tutorial, we're gonna look at brushes where we take kind of ordinary lines like this and give them lovely cool artistic brushstrokes. They look hand drawn, we're gonna add wings. We're going to add a crown, We're gonna make a star. Okay, We're going to fill the star. All sorts of awesomeness in adobe illustrator. Let's go and do that now. Okay, so it's time to use brushes and yes, in between videos. If you're following along, I went back and made my flames a whole lot cooler in my arrow is a lot nicer just by redrawing them with the pencil tool. Okay, um, I couldn't help myself. So what we're gonna do is brush is first of all we need something to add the brushes to. Okay, so we're gonna grab the pencil tool and let's add kind of like wings to her. So I'm going to do them lots of little bits now. The reason I don't do them all in one big go, you could let's do one with one big go. Okay, so one really good wing. Remember smooth things on. So when I let go, it looks margi...

nally better. I'm going to add more wings on this side, but I'm going to do them as separate pieces. Okay. And I'm just gonna show you the difference. Really? I'm going to draw some circles and you can see that one there completed the circle, which is kind of cool to see how it works. Okay, We'll draw some little more half circles in here and great. So with my black arrow, I'm going to select all of these guys. It's a little bit harder now because we've got things all over the place so you might have to click one. Hold shift. Okay? And keep clicking until you've got them all. But I can kind of drag a box around all of these guys. Great. First thing I'm gonna do is stroke is going to be white and I'm gonna open up my brushes panel now before we open up brushes. It's nice, especially with the brushes if you use a smaller size to get started with, it doesn't matter. You can do it afterwards, but let's get down to 0. really thin line. Now your brushes there's lots built into illustrator. Okay, The basics are in here but there are actually lots that you can go and find online. Often they're free. Okay, so window, let's go to brush libraries and in here, Probably the most exciting ones are ones under vector packs. These two ones here, we'll look at these two plus one other. Okay, grunge brush, vector packs. We're going to do. I'm gonna move it off to the side here. I'm going to drag the bottom of it so I can see the different options. And click on the first one. Okay, And by default it's gone back to one point so don't listen to me. Okay, you can change it afterwards. Go back to something a little bit smaller now. You can see that's the smallest option for the drop down and it's kind of cool, it kind of looks quite artistic, right? But it still may be quite thick so you can actually just type in here. So 1.0.25 is kind of a hairline which is quite small but I can go to zero .05. Hit return. Okay and again quite small and click off so yeah cool, so the difference really is maybe now we're just looking for things that we like the look of, right? So I'm just going to draw a box around these guys and shift click these two to get rid of what I don't even know what that is. That was a smiley face I drew earlier. So I'm going to shift, click all of these have got them selected, I'm going to go to a white stroke. Okay I'm not gonna worry about the size yet, I'm going to pick one of these other ones and you can see let's have a look at one of these ones. Okay, there's a couple of things that we need to be aware of is that because this is such a long line it's trying to smear itself down quite a long part. Now some of the problem is the size, so I'm gonna turn it down to Um .05, like the other one. Okay and it's looking better but it finds it hard to what to do at these corners because it's it's kind of like a really detailed victor brush and kind of has to get in and out and kind of do some weird things. So ways to get around that if you've got a really long stroke and it's doing strange things at the edges, I'm going to go up to Maybe not one point but back 2.25 just to set an example because we did this earlier, remember under stroke. Okay, we've got these but caps and the corner options. So let's go to round join and it will try and kind of get around the corner and the ends of it as well, which does absolutely nothing on this brush does on different brushes. Okay, But this is kind of one of the things you can do, you can see the miter joint here is just trying too much to get around this corner, but when I get to this round to join it looks a marginally better. Okay, so you might have to play around with this depending on the brush you pick. So what I like to do when I'm using the brush tool is used these kind of like shorter strokes because they tend to have a better result selected. Let's have a look at these guys, Pick one Dan Pick one. All right, that'll do. Cool. So I've got my kind of drawing exercises those guys done. Let's draw one more and look at some of the other brushes and that'll kind of give you an idea of how to go off and find your own. Um So I'm gonna grab my pencil to again I'm going to draw she's going to be a princess. Remember I'm gonna draw them in separate strokes you can't really see them so I'm gonna undo them. So before I start drawing I'm gonna have stroke but I'm gonna crank it up to say one point so you can see what I'm drawing. So yep she is not a princess. It's more like I don't know some sort of uh maybe that's what it needs totally what it needed. Now she's a queen. Okay um let's grab the black arrow. I'm going to select all of these guys. I'm going to show you another one. So another cool one is under brush libraries victor packs And this hand drawn brushes. I'll let you explore those ones. And some of the other ones. Lots of these are really lanes are stronger but lots in the lame artistic has some really good ones though. So if we go to maybe talk charcoal pencil or ink these cold quite cold drink. I want to show you ink because these have some instead of just solid black. They have some kind of like textures to them. Can you see it's kind of they're a little bit transparent now again I'm gonna have to turn the stroke down to something a little bit more useful but where they start overlapping. They start adding kind of extra depth and um yep, the reason I want to show you this one is you're running two brushes that have this line along the top here and you be like awesome. They do weird stuff. Okay that these men to be used as just kind of like one off. So I'm gonna undo and I'm going to pick, say this one here and then I'm going to click off these guys here, if I drag them off. Okay. It means that I can for some reason, if I drag it across this image here, that kind of disappearing behind it, which is kind of weird. So I'm going to drag it up the top and that's meant to be used as elements at the top. Okay, Just as like separate things by themselves rather than following a path. Okay. And what you can do like with this guy here selected. He has lots of different options. I can right click them and go to another group. Okay? And you can keep on grouping them okay? Until you get kind of the individual parts. Takes a little while. Okay. The shortcut might be handy. Okay, we're almost there. Right, click one more time short on group. Okay, we'll start getting individual elements and I can sneak you guys and make you white awesome. And so yeah, that's how they're meant to be used. Just as like single little options. Okay, and let's look at the next part. Let's close down the ink brushes and let's look at kind of like filling in brush strokes. So let's say we're going to draw a star. I'm gonna grab the pencil tool and I'm gonna draw. What's this? If I let go, you're like where that line go? Okay, it's because I'm drawing with the pencil tool with a fill but no stroke. So the line is considered a stroke and there is no stroke, there's a fill but it doesn't need to fill. Okay, it's there. If I get my black arrow, you can kind of wave your mouse around and go, that's random line. Get rid of him. And there was this circle here we found earlier on, I don't know where he's from. So I'm gonna grab my pencil tool and just make sure you're quite purposeful when you're drawing pencil tool, pick a stroke color doesn't need to fill and I'm going to draw a kind of a starry thing, my drawing tools helping me out. Okay, so with the selected black arrow, select all of these guys. I'm going to pick a brush. Um I told you I wasn't gonna show you any other ones, but I'm going to look at one more brush libraries. I'll use hand drawn brush victor. And so I'm gonna grab him Way too strong. Let's get down to a smaller for yeah, we're getting there maybe 1.5. Cool. So I've got this shape here, right? And I want to fill it in Now. The trick is I'm going to close this down is I'm going to copy and paste it. So I've got a second option. I'm going to keep the strokes there. But this guy here these lines. Okay. What I want to make sure is I want to kind of fill in the gaps and what I should have done before I started drawing is I should have made sure they overlap perfectly. So we'll check that out and over here. I want to turn it back to a regular line. So over here it says brush and we actually know brush go up to the top and pick this first one. Okay, just a nice thin brush and they do overlap. So if you didn't do this, you're gonna have to make sure that line's overlap at least a little bit. So with a more selective we're going to go to our best friend, that shape builder tool, we're going to pick some colors for it. Okay, so I'm gonna go in here and I'm going to pick a color, I'm gonna use the color mixer and if yours is like mine and it's defaulted to just black and white, which might happen quite often. Okay with this selected, I'm going to go to this option here. Okay, and pick RGB which can't be done. So I'm gonna pick black first, then go in here and pick RGB. Cool. So I can pick from any of these colors in here and when I hover over, I'm going to say that's going to be filled with the green. I can fill in all of these guys now they fill in because they overlap. If they didn't overlap they might not fill up and I'm going to pick another color. Mm hmm. Yeah. Good. And the reason I do this is I'm going to select all of these guys now and I'm going to get rid of the stroke goodbye stroke by going new and going to know Phil these guys down here left over. Don't need you guys and I'm going to select this and put it back over the top. Okay, line it up. Cool. So it's just a nice way of kind of, I guess adding fills to kind of hand drawn rough stuff. Okay, shape builder tool is perfect for that. Just making sure that the rough lines all overlap. Now, one thing you might see or have noticed is that if I grab, let's say I've got a line and they don't quite meet up. Okay, so I'm saying I'm drawing some stuff. Here we go. So I'm drawing a square but the gap is I'm drawing with a brush. Great dan select all of these. Turn it back. Just a regular brush. Maybe this first guy here. Cool. So you can see there's a big gap here. Okay, mine was probably too big but you can also see if I zoom in There's actually a little gap in between here. Okay, so what that means is that it shouldn't fill but there is a little bit of freedom that the shape builder tool has, that's probably too big but it's going to fill in these automatically. You can kind of adjust that to say like come on, just give me a little bit more gap joining ability and you do it by double clicking on the tool. Double click on it. Okay and up here there's the gap depth. Okay, so you can go in here and go from small. Okay, through the large um custom, you can make it huge. Okay. Um so I think by default those are small. Can't remember. Okay, but double click the tool to change it and it just gives you a few different options. Like this one here is not gonna work because it's way too big. If I go in here and I say go to large, it's still not going to work, it's not going to work too far apart. Okay, But you get the idea. Alright, I'm gonna delete those zoom out marvel at my awesomeness. Okay, but you're getting the idea right? We're doing hand drawn stuff and then adding brushes to add a little bit more realism to what something is actually victor and scalable and beautiful, but can look quite customer as well. Okay, so now it's project time. Okay, so I've got an image that I want you to draw on. Ok. And I'll show you here in the exercise files there, it has appeared. Okay. And what I'd like you to do is I'm gonna set you a task. I want five separate doodles. Okay. Can all use the same stroke and kind of brush style, but I want five things. Okay. And if you're looking, if you're like, what am I going to draw, come up with a theme. Okay. This could be you could use a holidays theme. So they could be holiday stuff like sun and beach things or you might go finance. Okay. Might be dollar signs and graphs and stuff. Just to give you an idea, I guess to what to doodle and draw on this and what I want you to do is experiment both with obviously the drawing tool, but look at the brushes as well. Maybe you look at dotted or dashed. Okay. It's up to you. But I'd love to you to go off and have at least five and at the end I love as a project. Okay to take a screenshot or save it as a jpeg and send it to me as a project or in the comments. All right. I will see you in the very next video