Art Brush Tutorial

So, I searched EVERYWHERE when I was first starting out on how to make clean lines, and I didn't find any brushes in the brushes panel that I liked...I finally figured it out myself (like almost everything else).  So, to keep my readers from going through that painstaking process, I'm going to bless you all (lol) with a series of tutorials on how to create your own brushes.

My three favorite brushes to use are art brushes, pattern brushes, and scatter brushes:

In this tutorial, I will show you how to make an art brush and I am using Illustrator CS3.

STEP ONE:  I will be using the ellipse tool to create this brush, so select the Ellipse tool in the tools panel and create an oval shape.  Don't make the shape too large.

STEP TWO:  After you have created the shape you want, select the shape and go to the Brushes Panel (usually on the right side) and create a New Brush (it looks like a little notepad).

STEP THREE:  You'll have many options to choose from.  You can choose the direction the brush goes, the size, flip and colorization.  I'm going to keep all the generic options because those work best for the stroke I created.  Click OK.

STEP FOUR:  Apply the brush to the stroke by selecting the stroke, then selecting your new brush in the brush panel (you might have to scroll down to find it if you have another brush selected already).  Your image should end up looking like this:

Of course, don't limit yourself to oval or square shapes.  You can create an art brush from any type of image.

Please let me know if you have any questions and feel free to add on to this or let me know what other tutorials you would like.  Next week, I'll show you how to work Scatter Brushes.