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Artistic Painting with Illustrator: Natural Media Brushes

Artistic Painting with Illustrator: Natural Media Brushes

with Sharon Steuer

 


In this course, artist Sharon Steuer shows how to paint with the various natural media brushes inside Adobe Illustrator, one of the most overlooked sets of artistic tools in the entire Creative Cloud or Adobe Creative Suite. Along the way, she offers suggestions on how to customize these brushes to help express your creativity. Discover how to configure your workspace, adjust tool options, and set up a tablet. Then investigate the multiple styles of brushes in Illustrator—from Calligraphic, Bristle, and naturalistic Art brushes to Blob brushes and stroke profiles. Sharon also shows how to combine brushes and effects with other Illustrator features to maximize your control when drawing, painting, and adding expressive strokes in Illustrator.
Topics include:
  • Drawing and tracing with Wacom and Cintiq tablets
  • Maximizing control without a tablet
  • Demystifying Paintbrush tool preferences
  • Integrating brushes with other tools such as Smooth and Pencil
  • Adding brushes to objects and text
  • Creating naturalistic strokes with the Art brush tools
  • Picking up, storing, and applying brushes
  • Duplicating and customizing brushes
  • Creating transparent washes and watercolor with Calligraphic brushes
  • Drawing and erasing with the Blob Brush tool
  • Adding stroke profiles to lines and brushes
  • Organizing complex images with layers
  • Ideas for how to combine Illustrator brushes with Photoshop, and even with traditional media

show more

author
Sharon Steuer
subject
Design, Color, Illustration, Design Techniques, Digital Painting
software
Illustrator CS5, CS6, CC
level
Intermediate
duration
3h 2m
released
Feb 15, 2013

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Introduction
Welcome
00:00(music playing)
00:04Hi! I am Sharon Steuer. I am really thrilled.
00:07We are going to get to work with some of the most creative tools in the
00:10entire creative suite.
00:11First, what we are going to do is set up your workspace and cover some of the
00:16basics of naturalistic brushes and a couple of brush like effects.
00:18We are also going to take an in-depth look in to each of natural media tools
00:22which will include the calligraphic brushes, the bristle brushes, the
00:26naturalistic art brushes and then also a pair of effects that aren't brushes at
00:30all, Blob brush and variable stoke profiles.
00:33So let's get started using Natural Media Brushes with Illustrator.
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Using the exercise files
00:00If you are premium member, or watching this course on a DVD, you have access to
00:04the exercise files used throughout this course.
00:08You can download the files from the exercise files tab on the Course Detail pages.
00:13I have organized the folders by chapter.
00:16The chapter folder contains the files we will use in the movies.
00:19If you don't have access to the exercise files, you can just follow along
00:23using your own assets.
00:25Now let's get started.
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What you should know before watching this course
00:00The group of tools that we were calling the naturalistic brushes in Illustrator;
00:04they are both a much more intuitive way to get going in Illustrator than most of
00:10the cryptic and confusing vector tools; and also it's a powerful set of tools
00:16that every intermediate of professional Illustrator user should consider adding
00:19to you creative tool set.
00:21So if you are a beginner, welcome, and if you are more advanced, I have
00:25hopefully included enough tips and tricks and advice that this is going to be
00:30worth your watching as well.
00:32And there are some extra movies at the end about combining the tools and
00:36suggestions for how you can ramp up the complexity in another level.
00:39But wherever you are with your Illustrator tools, if you follow along, hopefully
00:44there will be enough here for you to get going, making art using naturalistic
00:48brushes in Illustrator.
00:50So there are a few things that you are going to need to know before watching
00:54this course; and that is to make sure that you are at least comfortable with the
00:58basics of using panels; of choosing colors from the Swatches panel and the
01:03Colors panel; and how you can open and close panels.
01:08You need to be able to Undo and Redo that's a given.
01:10And it's really helpful if you know how to Save and Save As, so you can have
01:18incremental versions of your work to be able to back track and see what you
01:23have done and you need to understand that you need to hover over the Command
01:27key in Illustrator, or Ctrl key in Windows, because that's how you can switch
01:32any tool that you are using.
01:34In this case, many times it will be the Paint brush tool and your Selection tool.
01:39So you will be able to pick things up.
01:41If you need help brushing up on Illustrator skills or if I touch on
01:44something that you want to go into in more depth, check out the
01:47Illustrator Essential Training Course.
01:50This course is made for both beginners and advanced users.
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Vectors vs. pixels
00:01So this is an image that integrates both Rasters and Vectors and you might think
00:07well, why not just stay in Photoshop, if I did so much of it in Photoshop;
00:11and I did the reference image that I used was a composite collage that I created out
00:17of half a dozen different photographs. I wasn't very careful about making
00:22sure that I did a good job.
00:24I was just using it as a creative tool to give me a base and to create this
00:30imaginary view point of this Goody-Goody Cafe.
00:33So I could be loose and I could be intuitive and figure out what I wanted to do
00:41and not have to worry about doing a good job because I knew I was going to be
00:45recreating it in Illustrator, giving it the focus that I wanted.
00:50Then once I was in Illustrator, there were some Photoshop elements that I ended up putting
00:55back in to give it just a little bit of details. I am going to hide and show
01:00that layer, which has Photoshop photograph placed in clipping mask there.
01:06Then again, you might be saying why bother doing this in Illustrator?
01:10That's because the level of editability of every stroke was phenomenal.
01:16So if I select this object and get my Paintbrush tool, I can use the Bracket
01:23keys not to affect a brush I am about to make, but to change a brush that already exists.
01:31I can decide that I want to change this color altogether.
01:42I could insert layers inbetween things when I didn't know I wanted to insert
01:47anything between things.
01:49Within a layer, I can select an object and act upon that.
01:53So there is a level of detail and a level of changeability that really takes the
02:02concept of what you can do with digital painting to another level.
02:07It's not that I am not going to use Photoshop anymore,
02:11but I think for painting, if I am not going to use traditional tools,
02:16I think for painting, I am going to use Illustrator.
02:18I think I am going to use Photoshop for the collaging, for the correcting
02:24but I love the infinite ability to change anything.
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Using layers for brushes
00:00There are lots of places on lynda.com where you can expand your familiarity with
00:05layers, but what I wanted to do is highlight the things about layers that will
00:10make your working with brushes a lot easier.
00:12So here we have a version of a drawing that I started of Mina the cat, without
00:21layers, just the Standard template on the bottom--and you can look up how to open
00:26an image as a template--and then this layer 1, which is the default layer name,
00:32which you can open up and you can see all the paths within it, but it's a
00:37disorganized file. And it makes it a little more difficult.
00:41Now in the early days of Illustrator we didn't have layers. So there are ways
00:45to move things in back of things. I can actually take this and move it in
00:50back or cut it or something like that, but it's much easier to be able to
00:55organize things in layers.
00:56So let's just show you a couple of really quick things to do. The first thing I
01:01would do is I would call this Cat Outline.
01:03There is never one good way to do anything, there is always a million different ways.
01:08So there aren't very many color objects on it, so I would probably at this point
01:12just make a new layer and call it Colors.
01:19I am going to just select those few objects using the Selection tool.
01:25Now when I select them, you get a selection indicator in the Layers panel.
01:30All I have to do is drag that indicator to the Colors panel.
01:34To know whether I have got them all or not, I just hide that Colors layer.
01:38I say--oh no, I missed something, so I can just grab it--and when it's hidden,
01:43I can still drag to it.
01:44I am going to Undo that.
01:46If it was locked, either locked and visible or locked and hidden, I can't drag to it.
01:53So I am going to just hide it again and unlock it, drag it to it and it looks
01:57like yeah I got all my color, so the color is there.
02:01There is still a problem of course.
02:03I want the colors to be below the cat outline in this case.
02:07So to move a layer from one position to another, because if it's above it in the
02:12Layers panel, it's on top of it on the artboard.
02:15So I want to move that below. I am just going to grab it and move it below and there you go.
02:22So here we go, this is the organized version without the template, again take
02:28the details and move from below.
02:30Now if by accident you have one of these outline lines that was moved to the
02:36wrong layer for instance, which you can see here--
02:39I actually did have one--
02:41just select them and move them to the proper layer, whether it's visible
02:45or not and there you go.
02:47So that's the first thing, you can make layers, you can reorder layers, you can
02:51move objects from layer to layer.
02:55And the more you keep objects in their proper layers, the easy it will be.
03:01Once you have started, it becomes an easy task to add to them.
03:05Now if I am using brushes, the great thing about Illustrator--and we have gone
03:11through part of this in another movie-- is when you have an object selected, you
03:16are resetting the default stroke and fill and style. So I am using this brush,
03:23the Colors layer--this particular brush, the 15 pt.
03:27Round--and this particular color, this mustardy color.
03:33So if I was to draw here that's what I would get.
03:36If I select a calligraphic black mark, it puts me on the Outline layer, selects
03:42black and changes my pen to this.
03:47Now if I wanted to draw to a different layer or a different color, there is
03:52something else you have to do.
03:53So if you select when you are switching, so right here, I have got the color
03:58details. Pretend now that I want to make this light blue. I want to add to this
04:05Colors layer in the background--this is the background colors. And if I want to
04:11draw over here, if I select it, it's on the wrong layer.
04:15I could either move it now or I am going to undo it. While it's still
04:19selected, if I just click on the layer that I want to be on, it does not change
04:26where this object is. If you notice the selection indicator is still saying, nope;
04:31by clicking on the Colors layer, I am not moving that object but what it does is
04:37it targets that layer for the next object.
04:40I am going to do it one more time.
04:42I will select some of that green from the Colors details layer and I am going to
04:47click on the Colors layer to say no I want to do it there.
04:51And I am going to put the green here. And selecting it, you can see yeah,
04:55that's where the green is.
04:56So there are couples more tricks about doing this that I want to show you.
05:01Chances are you have an option set, so if you have an object selected and you
05:06draw near it, you are not going to draw an additional object, you are going to
05:14add to or redraw the current one.
05:17So if I want to just fill in this area with this mustard color--and that's why I
05:24selected it--and I just start to draw, that's not what I wanted.
05:30So you just undo and in this case, you could either go in and turn off the
05:36option to redraw, but that's kind of overkill.
05:39All you need to do is deselect that object.
05:42I am already on the correct layer.
05:44I have the correct brush, colors, settings.
05:47If I just deselect it--which means either hold down your Cmd key on Mac or
05:52Ctrl key on Windows, and click outside of the object to deselect; or if you have
05:59a really complex document you can deselect using the command, which is
06:04Cmd+Shift+A or Ctrl+Shift+A-- and then you can continue to draw.
06:11The same thing holds if I select this object. Because this has a lot of the
06:18characteristics that I like, it's on the right layer, it has the right brush,
06:21but I want the next brush to be a different color.
06:25If I go up to change the color and I realize oh no that's not what I intended--
06:30I wanted to change the color of the next object, not this one--
06:34just undo, deselect.
06:35Select your next color and then you can paint.
06:43And the last thing I want to show you, another good reason to organize your file
06:49into layers is it makes it really easy for you to copy--or drag and drop--not only
06:56your brushes, but your entire image into another document if you want to.
07:01I am going to Select All and Copy.
07:05I am going to just start a new document--just a standard new document--and I am going to paste.
07:14In order to paste in alignment, I am going to Cmd+F, which is paste in front,
07:18which is paste aligned, and look what happened.
07:21Not only did it paste my image, but it created the layers that I needed.
07:26It left the layer 1 alone. I hadn't selected my template, so it didn't bring in
07:31the template. But it constructed all the layers for me, which is pretty
07:36miraculous. And the reason is, it had a tricky setting already set on it.
07:42I almost always have this enabled. One of the first things I do when I start up a
07:47new version of Illustrator is I enable my Paste Remembers layers.
07:51If it's off, which is off by default, this is what you get.
07:55I am going to Select All, I am going to undo to get back to where you were.
08:00It does not Undo Paste Remembers layers.
08:02That's a toggle that's application-wide and it is not undo with a document undo.
08:07This time I am going to Cmd+F to paste in front. What it does is it
08:12sandwiches all together as if you flattened out the image on to one layer,-
08:18whatever layer was targeted. In this case, it was only layer in this document.
08:22So sometimes you do want a flattened version of your image, in which case
08:27you want to toggle off Paste Remembers layers.
08:31Or if you want to paste into a particular layer, for instance, I will show you that one thing.
08:37I am going to create a second layer. With this layer, targeted layer 2,
08:41if I Cmd+F, that's where it will go.
08:43So in those specific instances, you are going to want to toggle Paste Remembers
08:48layers off. Most of the time though, you are going to want it on, so that when you do
08:53you paste, your image doesn't lose its layer structure.
08:57So there is a lot more you can learn about layers, but this should be enough to get you going.
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A little bit about the Pencil tool
00:00So if this is a brushes course, I bet you're wondering why am I talking
00:04about the Pencil tool.
00:05And that's because it works really well with brushes and there are many cases in
00:09which you're going to want to just place a solid filled object underneath your
00:14drawing or gradient filled object or all sorts of possibilities.
00:19But you're going to need to quickly create a shape that you want to be filled
00:24not stroked and therefore, the Pencil tool comes in really handy.
00:29So Pencil tool, if I move it into my artboard.
00:34If you haven't seen the previous layers lesson before this movie, please go do
00:40that because that will help you.
00:42I get that slash symbol with most of my tools if my current layer is not a viable one,
00:47it's either hidden or locked.
00:51So I'm going to click here on the layer that I've made for my Pencil white and
00:56I'm going to create a solid white object to define the outline of this white cat,
01:02so that Mina's background doesn't interfere with her fur.
01:06So if I go to draw with the Pencil tool with the default color, I want no stroke
01:14but just a white fill.
01:15I'm going to do a little circle here just as a test.
01:19And you'll see, Oh!
01:21What happened? I got no fill and no stroke.
01:24Well, that's strange, I know I selected a white fill.
01:27Well, the problem is, the default Pencil tool settings might be set for not to be filled.
01:35So in this case, I double-clicked Pencil tool Options.
01:40If you need some guidance as to what fidelity and smoothness means, then
01:46tune into the Paintbrush tool Options movie because there are the same settings there.
01:53The relevant thing here is I'm going to make sure that I allow it to Fill
01:58New Pencil Strokes.
01:59I'm also going to Keep selected paths enabled as well as Edit selected Paths and
02:04you'll see why in a minute.
02:05And again, we'll go into more details with this with the Paintbrush tool Options
02:09movie and I'm going to say OK.
02:13And now, I have Pencil white layer selected.
02:17I'm going to go get my white fill and now I'm in a draw an enclosed object
02:24which I am going to start outside of my artboard.
02:27The artboard is are going to very nicely and crisply trim that object for me at the border.
02:34So I don't have to worry about it.
02:36And I'm going to just draw Mina, an outline.
02:53And I make sure I go outside of the border and enclose the object. And there you go.
02:59Slipped in there between the other layers. Because I left Keep selected enabled,
03:05Mina is still selected. So in here I can see there is a little area that I want to
03:10adjust a little bit. And because, I also kept enabled Edit selected,
03:15I can actually make a couple of adjustments to this as selected.
03:19I can deselect her.
03:23And if there's anything I want to change again, all I have to do is select it
03:27again and I can re-edit it.
03:29So as long as pressure sensitivity isn't the issue, you can apply a Paintbrush to
03:35s any paths that you draw with the Pencil tool.
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1. Naturalistic Illustrator Brushes Overview
A quick intro to naturalistic Illustrator brushes and effects
00:00To get you started imagining what you can do with these tools, I've put together
00:04a few of my images grouped from earlier calligraphic brushes to more current
00:09pieces, in hopes that maybe this will inspire you to roll up your sleeves and
00:14get going, because this is an incredible set of tools.
00:19I really, honestly believe that one of the true great inventions of the 20th
00:24Century was Undo because, with Undo, we've become more fearless as artists.
00:30We can take that risk, make that stroke, add something to a piece that's good
00:35enough and make it even better.
00:37And I just don't mean undo once.
00:41Even Photoshop has multiple Undo's and of course Illustrator has multiple Undo's.
00:45What Illustrator has--and I'm just beginning to scratch surface of this, and so
00:50I feel like I have a lot more expressive exploration to do with brushes. Because,
00:56I'm just beginning to figure out that if I can go in and edit every single mark
01:01I make, I can change its form, color, width.
01:05I can change its opacity.
01:07I can change its order.
01:10I can remove things from within the depths of something.
01:14That's something no other artistic medium can offer.
01:19I can apply brushes to objects I've already created or you can just embellish text.
01:26In the earlier works, I might have started with the Calligraphic brush moved on
01:30to art brushes and now, I'm using Blob brush and Bristle brush and of course,
01:36most of the time, I'm combining brushes.
01:40I sometimes work for my imagination or I work from drawings, I trace photographs.
01:44Sometimes I work from images that I've assembled or collaged in Photoshop,
01:48imaginary places or situations.
01:51But the possibilities of using these brushes, literally, it's like giving me an
01:55entirely new medium to work in.
01:59And I feel like I'm just beginning to wrap my brain around what I might
02:03eventually be able to do with these amazing tools.
02:06I really hope, you take the opportunity to see what you can do with naturalistic
02:13brushes in Illustrator.
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Illustrator artwork gallery
00:00Throughout this course, you're going to be seeing plenty of examples of my work.
00:05But because, I'm also the author of the Illustrator WOW!
00:08Books, I wanted to share with you some samples from the latest Illustrator CS6 WOW!
00:12Book, so that you can see some of the range of amazing artwork that's being
00:17created using naturalistic brushes by wonderful artists around the world.
00:22So let's take a look.
00:27This is a Blob brush drawing by David Turton and he saved it in stages so that
00:32you could see how it evolved.
00:35He used a Syntec tablet and we've a demo of this Syntec tablet.
00:39And he was able to get in an excruciating detail to all the fibers of the fur.
00:48This is a wonderful Blob brush painting by artist Lance Jackson.
00:52He calls it a vegetarian Cheetah.
00:57This is a beautiful floral illustration by Lisa Jackmore.
01:02And she took a very standard vector illustration and applied custom stroke
01:07profiles in order to add warmth and texture and a more hand-drawn look to what
01:14would otherwise be crisp and little cold.
01:19This is also a wonderful example of use of stroke profiles by an artist who
01:24calls himself MCKIBILLO also Josh Mckible.
01:28And starting with the parable of the blind man and the elephant, he created this
01:33beautiful grid of images and he added his custom stroke profile.
01:38So we could add a hand-drawn look to what would otherwise be crisp.
01:42And here's another take on stroke profiles by artist Donal Jolley.
01:48And here, in his rubber ducky, you can see some stages going from very simple
01:55vector to his customized set of profiles and adding color with brushes as well.
02:02Here's another Donal Jolley and he made a sampler of a bunch of the
02:08out-of-the-box brushes that are available in the Illustrator tool sets.
02:12So he didn't make his own, these are just using the brushes that Illustrator
02:16makes available through the Brush libraries.
02:18Here is another Lisa Jackmore, lyrically drawing with a number of the different
02:24brushes--mostly calligraphic--taking advantage of pressure sensitivity in her
02:29beautiful fluid lines.
02:30In this pair of images, I love these.
02:34Because, this is a series of students that teacher Stephen Klema, who is also an
02:40artist featured in the book, gives as an assignment following the WOW! Book.
02:44So they create a series of food illustrations using a variety of brushes.
02:52And Greg Geisler, who is a master of the Bristle brushes.
02:57Greg is one of the artists who actually does max out Illustrator's ability to
03:01handle all the Bristle brushes he packs into one file.
03:04So he's had to develop a couple of ways of how to Rasterize intermediate
03:11versions of his image in order for it to print properly.
03:14But he always makes sure he keeps live versions.
03:18So any editing can be done at any point.
03:22And here is another one of Greg's pieces, also done with Bristle brushes--
03:28a completely different effect--this time using some squiggly lines and filled
03:34shapes created with the Pencil tool. We'll cover incorporating the Pencil tool
03:40into the brushes, because a lot of artists do that.
03:43And then finally, using Draw Inside, this is again a painting by Lisa Jackmore.
03:49She started with the Pencil tool, sketching out the initial artichoke here
03:56on the left, and then used Draw Inside mode to paint in depth with the Bristle Brushes.
04:04Even if you don't have a premium account, we've made a copy of this PDF excerpt
04:10of the book, including some front matter and contact information for each of
04:14these wonderful artists.
04:15So hopefully by now you're ready and excited to get out that brush and start
04:20exploring, experimenting and seeing what discoveries you can make with this
04:23wonderful set of tools.
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Applying brushes to objects with the Brushes panel
00:00Well, now we're going to get going just applying brushes to objects you already have.
00:04You could have drawn them already with the Paintbrush tool or you could have
00:09created them with any other tool in Illustrator.
00:13This is probably one of the more straightforward ways that you can do it.
00:18You just select your objects.
00:20Open your Brushes panel.
00:21All you have to do is click on a brush and you get it.
00:32If you click on the word Basic, you will remove the brush, and it will go back
00:36to being just a regular old Illustrator line.
00:40And I don't know if you noticed, but up at the top, at the Control panel, you're
00:44also changing the brushes.
00:46So right here, it says Basic, but you can also click on it, and access the same
00:51list of brushes here as well.
00:56So you can always click back to Basic, and you're back to being not a brush at all.
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Applying brushes to objects with the Eyedropper tool
00:02Another great way to get brushes into your objects that already exist, is using
00:06the Eyedropper tool.
00:07So to do that, you select your object. We're going to do this just with
00:13regular Eyedropper first without brushes to show you just the way the Eyedropper
00:17you expect it to work.
00:18With your object selected, you just click on the object whose appearance you
00:23want to grab with the Eyedropper, click, and it applies to the selected object.
00:30And you can see I can just click around and whether it's got a stroke or a fill,
00:34or color, or if it had opacity, it would be grabbing that too.
00:41So let's see what happens if you try that same easy action using brushes.
00:44So I'm going to select these two objects.
00:47And I'm going to move over to this blue brush path and pick it up, and I'm going
00:55to hide my edges so you can see what I've got here.
00:58And that's under the View menu, Hide Edges, or Cmd+H, and so it's still selected, it's just hidden.
01:05And notice it took the blue, but it didn't take the stroke.
01:09So again, if I click here, it will take the brown or the black, but it's not getting my brushstroke.
01:16And the reason is there is something you have to set in Preferences for the
01:20Eyedropper tool in order to be able to pick up your brush.
01:25So I'm going to just double-click it to access Preferences.
01:28And what's missing is you want the Eyedropper to pick up and apply the full
01:33appearance, and that will allow you to, in this case let me grab that brush,
01:37and there you go.
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Drawing and painting with brushes directly
00:00Well honestly, this is probably how you're going to use brushes most of the time.
00:05And that's to go over to the Paintbrush tool, or the B key for Brush, and select it.
00:13And then, you can open up your Brushes panel, and select a brush and paint.
00:24Select another brush and paint. So that's one way to work.
00:26This is all variations of painting directly.
00:29You can also choose a different brush from the Control panel.
00:35And I'm going to switch to the Selection tool by holding the Cmd or the Ctrl
00:40key and select and delete those.
00:43My favorite way to switch between brushes is to keep a couple of doodles of
00:50brushes on the side or off the artboard, actually.
00:53In this case, it's on the artboard, so you have it in your Exercise File.
00:58And I'm just going to select this brush, and note that that's the one I am drawing with.
01:04So I keep switching using the Cmd or Ctrl key, switching to the Selection
01:09tool, clicking on it, then moving away from it, and drawing directly.
01:14And it's very easy to switch between brushes.
01:18Again, you can select it from anywhere, it doesn't have to be off the artboard,
01:22and that is your next path.
01:24So there are lots of other things we're going to be looking at in future movies.
01:29But this is probably the quickest way, and again, you can just go up to the
01:33Control panel or to the Brushes panel at any time and choose different brushes. So stay tuned!
01:39There's a lot more to cover, but this is getting you started.
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Switching between brushes and layers easily, by selecting
00:00Not all programs do it and not even all Adobe programs do it, but I am really
00:05grateful that Illustrator does it. And I'll bet that you're wondering what it is.
00:09So what the it is, is if I select any object, let's say my blue shape with a
00:17fairly thick brush, the next object I create--so I'm going to select the
00:21Paintbrush tool--is going to be a kind of blue thick object.
00:25And the same if I select a whisker which is a thin calligraphic object, the next
00:30one will be a thin calligraphic object and so on.
00:33This is pretty amazing, and pretty cool. But wait!
00:37It gets better.
00:38I'm going to get those out of the way, and I'm going to open the Layers panel.
00:44You're going to see that not only when I select this blue object, it will switch
00:50to the blue object layer, which is Color details.
00:54So if I select another object on the Color details layer and I just make a
01:01mark, it's not only going to be that color and that brush, but on that layer.
01:10Same thing with the whiskers, I'm going to get the calligraphic brush, and it's
01:14going to be on the Outline layer.
01:18This blue eyeball on the Color details layer.
01:21So as your paintings get more complex, you'll find that this way of working
01:25quickly organizes your image.
01:27And as your images get more complex, that's going to be more and more important.
01:31So this is a great timesaver and a great way to keep organized.
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Copying and pasting or dragging and dropping art with brushes
00:00When you open a new document--and this is a brand new one, default in CS6--these
00:06are the brushes that are loaded here.
00:08Depending on your version of Illustrator, you may have a couple of different brushes here.
00:12But what if I want to get more brushes in here?
00:16One of the easy ways to get brushes into a document is to actually copy and
00:20paste objects containing those brushes into the document.
00:25You can either copy and paste or drag and drop, so we're going to try that.
00:29So for instance, I could just say what is this brush? Round Dark.
00:34So I can just copy this object, go over to my other document, and Cmd+V or
00:41Ctrl+V, and I paste, and look, voila!
00:44Round Dark appears.
00:46I can even delete that object, Backspace or Delete, and Round Dark remains.
00:52And if I save this document, whatever brushes are in that list when you save the
00:58document are going to be the ones that are available to you.
01:01But you can also do multiples at a time.
01:05So if you look at how many brushes I've got in here, I can even enlarge it so you can see.
01:12And if you Select All which is Cmd+A or Ctrl+A, and then Copy, move to the
01:20other document, and this is how many brushes I have there.
01:23And if I paste, there it is more in this list even, because I had obviously
01:28deleted some of the originals from the previous document.
01:32Now I'm just going to Delete or Backspace, and again, all those brushes are there.
01:36So I'm going to close this document.
01:40I am going to start a new one, which will have nothing special in it, and we're
01:44just going to do a drag and drop just to show you how to do that.
01:48So I've got all these selected, and I'm going to just drag them over the name
01:52of the document which will bring it to the front, and then I move into the artboard, and I drop.
01:57I can again delete it and all of those are there.
02:01Now instead of deleting it, I'm going to undo it. If instead, you move them off to the side--
02:11and you can put them wherever you want to--
02:16you can move them totally off the artboard, or change the size of your artboard.
02:19Remember, if they are there, you can then select them from here, and not have to
02:24find them in the list.
02:25So I hope this helps you to quickly get some new brushes that you've created in
02:31another document into the current one that you're working on.
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2. Brush Settings and Workspace
Setting the default Essentials workspace
00:00If you've watched any of my movies so far, you've noticed that my default screen
00:06probably doesn't look like the default screen that you started out with.
00:10That's because there are some things that I do to make it the way I like it.
00:14If you know how to do all that stuff, then don't worry about this.
00:17I'm going to cover how I set up Preferences, Workspace, change the user interface,
00:21and change my cursor view for a lot of them.
00:25So these are the things that I've done to modify my working space, so I'm happier.
00:30The first thing I do whenever I start up Illustrator after it's had a
00:35preference reset, or the first time I'm starting it up, I always go in and
00:40change the User Interface color because I really don't like it dark.
00:45Ah! I can breathe when it's lighter, so I've made it lighter here.
00:49Then this is the Essentials default workspace, which right here I've got the Application Frame on.
00:58If it's not on, then you can access workspaces through this menu under the
01:05Window menu, Workspace.
01:06I'm going to select Sharon's Brushes.
01:09And we've made them available to you if you want.
01:12On the right-hand side of the screen, watch what happens to my panels.
01:15When I select the Workspace, ah!
01:16It sets them up a little bit more the way I like them with the arrangement
01:21of panels, so that I can have multiple things from each column of panels open at the same time.
01:28So those are two of the things.
01:32Another thing I do is I set up brushes.
01:34This is the default way of seeing brushes usually in most versions of installed Illustrator.
01:40This is what they call the Thumbnail View.
01:42And I prefer the List View, which gives you these many thumbnails, and then
01:46alongside next to the thumbnails, you get the name of the brush, which you don't
01:50see in the thumbnail unless you hover over it.
01:54But it also tells you what kind of brush it is.
01:57These are the icons for the calligraphic brushes, these are the icons for the art brushes,
02:01right here is a bristle brush, and this is actually a pattern brush,
02:05which we're not going to talk about here.
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Overview of the Paintbrush tool options
00:00So all of these brushes that are within the Brushes panel--whether it's
00:03calligraphic or art brush, bristle brush, pattern brush, even scatter brushes--
00:08they're all controlled on a bigger level by the options set in the Paintbrush tool.
00:17And you set that setting, and it will last until you change that setting.
00:22And there's a number of reasons why you might want to adjust it.
00:25In order to make those adjustments, you double-click on the Paintbrush tool,
00:30and you have a set of settings, and we'll go into details later in separate movies.
00:34But just understand that all of these brushes are controlled to some extent by
00:40what options you set in Paintbrush Tool Options.
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Options close-up: Smooth or accurate strokes
00:00All of the brushes in the Brushes panel are controlled by the Paintbrush tool.
00:06And that means, the quality of the mark that you make in terms of how accurate
00:12or smooth it is, is controlled by the top two settings in the Paintbrush tool
00:17options that I will show you.
00:19So these top two settings control the quality of your mark.
00:23And I will show you what I mean. These are the default settings.
00:26And if I make a bunch of loop de loops, when I let go, this path is going to
00:33adjust based on what those Paintbrush tool settings are.
00:38So on three, I am going to let go; one, two, three.
00:42And you see that it made some adjustments.
00:44So I can change those settings, and it will change how accurate or smooth those marks are.
00:51So I am going to do what I do when I am using a tablet, which is, I put the
00:56fidelity all the way to the left.
00:58You don't have to remember which settings do what, because it's a very quick
01:04little adjustment of sliders.
01:06If it isn't what you want, you change it.
01:09So for instance, if I forget if it was all the way to the right or the left,
01:13if I want this to be the most accurate, and I make my little loop de loops,
01:18when I let go on three;
01:19one, two, three, oh!
01:20No, that wasn't the setting.
01:21So let's undo that.
01:24Double-click again.
01:25It must have been all the way to the left; one, two, three.
01:33That's pretty good.
01:34That didn't change very much.
01:35So I am going to select all and delete.
01:40And we are going to look at why might you want it smoother, and less accurate?
01:45You might think I always want it to be accurate.
01:48Well, maybe not all the way to the extreme, but let's try somewhere in the middle.
01:53Let's say you want to do something curlicue and smooth, and all you have is a
01:58mouse which I am using right now.
02:01And that's a little jaggedy and a little rough.
02:03So I want it to be smoothed out on three;
02:06one, two, three. So that may or may not be too smooth or not smooth enough.
02:12And I only have to do is play with the Fidelity, and the Smoothness, and see
02:18what happens if I do that.
02:22Is that more what I want, or what happens if I do this?
02:27Is this more what I want?
02:32I don't remember what the defaults are at anytime, all you have to do is
02:35hit the Reset button.
02:36Now you are back to just a little bit smoother than the marks you make.
02:43I am going to select all, Cmd+A or Ctrl+A and delete.
02:47And now I am going to switch to my tablet, and we are going to see why I am
02:52going to double-click my Paintbrush tool options.
02:54I am going to make it the most accurate, and the least smooth.
02:58And now you are going to see--I am going to switch to a little smaller tool
03:02maybe--and you are going to see, if I do something that's really intricate, I may
03:06not want it to be smooth at all.
03:08This isn't exactly intricate of course, it's just scribbly;
03:12on three, one, two, three, pretty accurate.
03:16You will notice that it will change a bit.
03:19The more zoomed in you are, the more accurate you can be; the less zoomed in,
03:23the smoother it can be.
03:24So these are settings that you're going to want to adjust pretty regularly
03:29depending on what you are doing, and what tool you are using.
03:32So with a mouse, you'll probably want it a little bit smoother; and with the
03:36tablet, you will probably want it a little bit more accurate.
03:39And if you ever want to reset, you just click Reset to the defaults.
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Options close-up: What does Fill New Brushstrokes do?
00:00The default style in Illustrator, if you hit the D key at anytime,
00:05is a white fill and black stroke.
00:08So if I move into the Artboard with the Paintbrush tool selected and I draw,
00:17you will notice that instantly when I let go, the fill has disappeared,
00:22and what I've got is just a black stroke.
00:28If I choose different colors here for the fill and the stroke, and then I go
00:34to my Brush tool again and I go to draw, it does not do anything with the
00:41fill except for switches it to None, and I got the correct brush color here for the stroke.
00:47So in the instance where you do want to maintain that fill, this is when you
00:53use the Paintbrush tool option, which is Fill new brush strokes.
00:56So I double-click the Paintbrush tool to enter options.
00:59And this is the strange center option, which is Fill new brush strokes.
01:04It's off by default. I am going to click it on.
01:07And now, I am going to reset my Fill color to blue, and the stroke is red.
01:15And I will choose another brush for fun.
01:19And now, I am going to make it an object.
01:22And you will see that it now is filled.
01:24So instead of zeroing out to None, it maintains the fill.
01:29It's not something you're going to use often, but when you want it, it will be useful.
01:33So now, if I go back to my default with the D key, white fill, black stroke,
01:38and I make an object, it is indeed filled.
01:41Most of the times as I said you're going to want to keep it to the default,
01:45which is disabled, and if you are not sure, you can always hit Reset.
01:51At the default, white fill, black stroke, it ignores the fill.
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Options close-up: Controlling whether you're redrawing or adding paths
00:00Double-clicking the Paintbrush tool, we get the Paintbrush tool options.
00:05And we've looked in the previous movies at the Accuracy versus Smoothness
00:10settings of Tolerances, and what 'Fill new brush strokes' does under the center option.
00:17This one is going to be looking at what the Keep Selected and Edit Selected Paths
00:21and the Within Pixels do.
00:24So the default is the Keep Selected and Edit Selected Paths.
00:29Keep Selected is off, and Edit Selected Paths is on within 12 pixels.
00:34So what that means is when I draw a mark with the Paintbrush tool, it becomes
00:41deselected instantly when I am done.
00:46But if I select a mark and I am within 12 pixels of that mark, when I draw again,
00:53I am redrawing that mark versus outside of 12 pixels drawing a new mark.
00:58So again, if I want to redraw it, I just select it, I am holding the Cmd or
01:04Ctrl key to get the Selection tool.
01:07If it's deselected, I am going to be drawing a new one, and if it's greater than
01:1312 pixels away, it is going to be drawing a new one.
01:21Why might you want Keep Selected on?
01:23Let's look at that.
01:24I am going to select all;
01:27Cmd+A, Ctrl+A and then Delete.
01:29If I am drawing a very specific mark, I am going to switch to my Graphics
01:34tablet and Pen here.
01:35You're going to have to trust me on that.
01:38And I am going to draw a very specific curve let's say.
01:42But I want to make sure I get it just right. Oops!
01:47If it ever redraws improperly,
01:49Undo, Cmd+Z, Ctrl+Z. Sometimes, it redraws properly and sometimes it just
01:55makes a mess of your work.
01:57So you've got to always have your hands hovering over the Cmd and Z at any one time.
02:06So if you want to continually redraw your curves or your marks because you want
02:13to make sure you get them right, then you want to keep selected on. However. Oops!
02:19See now that's the mess up part, undo.
02:20I just want to change that curve. There we go!
02:23Here's for instance why you don't want to keep that on all the time.
02:29If I make a mark, and then outside of those 12 pixels, I am fine.
02:34But let's say I want to make hash marks close to each other. Oops!
02:39I am redrawing them by accident.
02:40So in that case, I want to make sure that I turn off Keep Selected.
02:49You could alternatively try to adjust the range.
02:57Let's see if I can draw the hash marks. There you go!
03:00So that allowed me to draw closer together, meaning it would only redraw if I am really close.
03:08But more often than not, it's best just to Keep Selected off and Edit Selected Paths on.
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Zooming in for control and zooming out to make gestures smooth
00:01So in addition to setting your Paintbrush Tool Options for maximum accuracy or control,
00:07I've set it all the way to the left on Tolerances.
00:11And there is a previous movie that explains that for the most control.
00:14Whether that's the case or not, from this zoom level, I have some sample
00:18brushes here on the left.
00:20And if I select one, that's the one I am drawing with.
00:26And there are other movies that talk about that as well.
00:28But no matter how much I want to be accurate from this zoom level,
00:34I just am not, and I will zoom in.
00:38And there are a million ways to zoom.
00:40There is no right way, no wrong way.
00:42I am holding the spacebar key and the Cmd key or Ctrl key, and I am going to zoom in.
00:47And notice, this wasn't anywhere near accurate.
00:51So I am going to just delete it by undoing, and I am going to draw again
00:58at this zoom level.
00:59And you will see, I can be a lot more specific and accurate.
01:05And if I need to redraw it, I just select it holding down the Cmd key or
01:09Ctrl key, and redraw that mark.
01:12So in addition to the Paintbrush Tool Options, the zoom level makes a huge
01:18difference as to Smoothness or Accuracy.
01:24So if I want to be really smooth and broad,
01:34I probably want to be smoother on Paintbrush Tool Options as well.
01:40And I want to be able to draw smoothly with the brushes.
01:46So you can play with that, play with zooming in and out.
01:49Obviously, you don't have to use my template.
01:51This is Lady Liberty here.
01:53But you feel free to play with anything and play with your marks,
01:57and experiment with how adjusting Paintbrush Tool Options and zoom level
02:02also affects your accuracy versus smoothness.
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Selecting and smoothing a brushed path as you work
00:00Here we are again with the Lady Liberty file. I'm going to make sure that my
00:05Paintbrush tool is the maximum in Fidelity, and looked at that before
00:12and Edit Selected Paths is on.
00:14Make sure you go to the Paintbrush Tool Options movie if you want more
00:18details on what I just did.
00:20And I'm going to select a delicate brush and I'm going to zoom in and I am
00:27going draw some drapery.
00:30Let me go back to the brush, its maximum accuracy because we want to look right.
00:40We could be using track pad or mouse. I am just showing you typically what I'll
00:45do is if it's way off I'll do it again. If it's close I'll keep it because we
00:49can always make adjustments. I'll do one more.
00:55We have already seen how you can redraw with those settings properly, you can redraw a path.
01:01What about if it's just not quite right? You don't want to actually redraw.
01:06You just want to smooth it perhaps.
01:07So I am going to zoom in on an area that's probably too raggy.
01:13So right up here that's not quite right.
01:16And from the Paintbrush tool we know that it if you hold down the Cmd key
01:22you get the Selection tool. We can redraw with it as we just saw.
01:27But what if you want to smooth it out? What if it's too jaggy?
01:33Instead of the Cmd key or Ctrl key, if you hold down the Opt or Alt key,
01:39you can actually remove points and make it smoother.
01:42Now how much smoother it gets is determined by the Smooth tool.
01:49And the only time you're actually going to probably go and get the tool,
01:53because it's such an easy access from the Opt or Alt key,
01:56is when you want to set the parameters of the settings.
02:00So this does one thing at this setting but let's go check it out.
02:04So where is the Smooth tool, because I just don't see it in the panel?
02:08It's hiding under the Pencil tool.
02:10So I am going to grab the Smooth tool.
02:12Now I can double-click the tool to access Options. And you'll notice, if you saw
02:19the Paintbrush Tool Options movie, this is the same settings as the top Tolerances
02:24is part of the Paintbrush Tool Options.
02:27So it does the same thing, if it's similar concept.
02:33So if I swing the Tolerance settings all the way to the left and I go to Smooth it,
02:39it doesn't do a heck of a lot. It's very subtle and very incremental steps.
02:45It wants to keep accuracy for me.
02:46So instead, let's try to make it a bit smoother or let's actually overstate our case here.
02:53And this case we are going to make it quite a bit smoother and see
02:58what happens in this area. Ah!
03:01Well, that's not nearly what I want to do. So I am going to undo again.
03:05All I have to do is fiddle with these things that I have been able to decipher.
03:12I can't really tell exactly where everything is supposed to go there except for,
03:17for instance this is a case in which it seems to be smoothing in a way that I feel like
03:23I still have control, but it's actually making an impact in terms of the smoothness.
03:31If I wanted to really make this sweeping curve, see instead of doing this incrementally,
03:36I could actually see what happens if I increase the Smoothness even more.
03:42What happens if I go like this? There you go.
03:44So as I said before, when we were looking at Paintbrush Tool Options,
03:49there probably is a science to this. But I approach it as more like, is this working?
03:55Is this not working? And it's very simple just to go in and make adjustments.
03:59Make sure that it's what you want.
04:01So just remember, in order for the Smooth tool to work, the Path has to be selected first.
04:07If it's not selected first, it won't be doing anything.
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Exploring ways to scale brushstrokes
00:00Here we are with two versions of the same image that I created.
00:04I used a black Calligraphic Brush and a Gray Art brush and I just need to scale it.
00:11So I am going to scale the one on the right. I am going to select it with
00:16the Selection tool and I'm going to grab the Bounding box corner--holding
00:19down my Shift key to keep the proportion intact--and I am going to let go and what a mess.
00:27It thickened up everything, it messed up my brushes, I am not happy at all.
00:32So I am going to undo, Cmd+Z, Ctrl+Z. And in order for the brushes to scale
00:38properly, you need to set a setting. They're a bunch of different places in
00:42Illustrator that toggles this setting on and off, and it toggles it off in all
00:47of the instances when you do it in any one of these places.
00:50So the object does not have to be selected, it's an application-wide
00:56change when you make it.
00:57So I like often, making this change from this button up at the top of the Control
01:03panel on the right side that's called Transform, and it gives you a little mini
01:09version of the Transform panel.
01:10It will only be there if you have something selected because you can't transform
01:15if nothing is selected.
01:16So when I open this panel, and again this is mini version of the Transform panel,
01:22which you can get from the Window menu.
01:24You see this option, it says, Scale Strokes & Effects is disabled.
01:29In order to scale properly this needs to be enabled.
01:32So I am going to enable it and now I am going to go back, and now I am going to
01:38scale it holding down my Shift key and Voila!
01:43It works perfectly.
01:44Now there are times when you're not going to want to scale properly, and here is
01:50for instance; what if I wanted to thin down all of the strokes in this image.
01:57Well, I would make sure that things are enabled when I scale it down and then
02:03disabled when I scale it up.
02:05I could of course do it again in the Transform panel but here's one more place I can do it.
02:10Let's say if I want to by 50% reduce the thickness of my brushes.
02:14I can Scale it down by 50%, and look here's another place where we have that option.
02:20It is still enabled, because we enabled it in the Transform panel.
02:24I'm going to scale it down 50%, and now we are going to is scale it back up so
02:30it has to be 200% to restore it to the original, not 2000, and we are going to
02:35disable it, and now I have reduced the brush strokes by 50% numerically.
02:42So there are lots of different places in Illustrator where you can make
02:45that adjustment, the toggle holds. Now notice there's no Transform in the
02:51Control panel, I have to select something for it to be available and note
02:56it is deselected here.
02:58So it's a toggle that's application-wide and sometimes you will want it off and
03:03sometimes you will want it on.
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Painting and drawing with a Wacom tablet
00:00So if you are using Illustrator brushes or Photoshop brushes or actually
00:04anything in Photoshop, it's really important that you invest in a graphics tablet.
00:09And it's not just that you'll have a lot more control when you're working with a tablet,
00:14but also that you are going to access another level of power and
00:18subtlety with the Drawing tools themselves.
00:20The brushes just take advantage of the tablet.
00:23So let's take a look at that.
00:25So here is a drawing that I did in about 25-30 minutes using the tablet and
00:32Illustrator's calligraphic brush.
00:34I am going to open the layers and I'm going to show you what I did with a
00:41mouse in about a minute.
00:45So I'll do a little more mouse drawing for you.
00:48So I am going to just select a mark and I am going to show the Template,
00:56which is a shot of San Francisco's Alamo Square, and I'm going to show you just a
01:01little bit of how I would just really trace this using mouse and I am struggling,
01:09and there is the movie that we've included that will help you to
01:14maximize control, if you are using a mouse or a track pad.
01:19But it still doesn't really make up for the fact that--I can undo of course--but
01:26that I'm struggling to do it as I go.
01:31So let's hide the template for a second. I'd undo that mark.
01:36We would still hide the template, and this is what I've done with the mouse
01:41and here's the drawing.
01:42So it's a whole other level, not only of detail, but the ease of doing it.
01:49So the key is, if you are going to use a tablet, and of course I think you should use a tablet,
01:53you have to make sure that the tablet is always square to your body.
01:58It doesn't matter if you rotate relative to the monitor. If the tablet is square to your body,
02:05you are going to be oriented fine when you bring the pen to the tablet.
02:08And you're going to hover over the tablet. It's going to take a learning curve.
02:12Just bear with it, because once you get it, it will change your life.
02:17So just be patient, understand it will take a while.
02:22So for instance, I am just going to draw a little bit here, just to give you an idea
02:29as to how much more quickly I can function here.
02:37I think you can see, just relative to the mouse, it's kind of absurdly easier.
02:45I just wanted to show you a little bit about the kinds of extra power you
02:50have with the bristle brush and the blob brush.
02:54If you are drawing with the mouse, and by the way you notice that I'm still
02:58using my keyboard and I am still using the mouse even though I have the tablet.
03:02It's not that it's one or the other, it's adding the tablet into your workflow.
03:06So if I select this mark and draw with the mouse, the mark is very consistent
03:16from one end of it to the other.
03:18If I draw with the tablet, the pen gives me all this feedback as to what the
03:25cursor is going to look like if I touch down.
03:28And the bearing, tilt, pressure, rotation, of my stylus is going to change what I get as a mark.
03:39So if I press lightly and rotate and press hard and tilt and change the bearing,
03:49I can make a mark with a lot more nuance.
03:51So if you don't yet have a tablet, there's still plenty to learn from this course.
03:56I even cover tips for how to maximize control if you've a mouse or a track pad.
04:01But I really hope this has inspired you to take your work to another level,
04:05and if you don't have one yet, get yourself a tablet.
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Painting and drawing with a Cintiq tablet
00:00So we have already looked at the difference between making marks with a mouse
00:04versus a regular graphics tablet.
00:06This time what we are going to do is compare the kind of marks that you can make
00:11with this Wacom Cintiq versus a regular tablet.
00:14And to do that I'm going to show you first the drawing that I made with a
00:18regular graphics tablet using this iconic view of San Francisco's Alamo Square as a template.
00:24And so this is a gestural drawing, I wasn't trying to be exacting, I was trying to be gestural.
00:29But this is about the level of detail that I was able
00:32to easily accomplish using the tablet.
00:34And let's look at the difference between that and what I could with Cintiq.
00:41So it's a lot more control and a lot more detail.
00:44Do it again before and after, before and after.
00:50So I am going to do a little bit of drawing for you so you can see what it's like.
00:55So I am drawing directly onto a flat screen monitor, directly onto it.
01:04That way I can actually get in, I am still trying to be gestural, I'm not trying to be
01:08exacting or technical, of course I could if I wanted to.
01:11But this level of detail is just impossible to accomplish with a regular tablet.
01:18So I highly recommend it, if that's what you're trying to do.
01:22Let me just show you one more example of it.
01:25This is using the Blob brush, here is the template here, so using the Blob brush.
01:37And I can really get in there. You can use the eraser just like you can
01:48with a regular tablet by just flipping around and you can use the Bracket keys on the keyboard.
01:53I always keep a hand on the keyboard.
01:56So I've easy access to the Ctrl or Cmd key and the Opt or Alt key.
02:06You can really accomplish an amazing level of detail.
02:12Let me hide that template so you can see it.
02:19And so you can see that the Cintiq gives you an amazing amount of control,
02:24and you are able to use that control with all of your brushes.
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Setting and preserving pressure-sensitive settings
00:00When you open a new document in Illustrator you are going to have one pressure-
00:05sensitive brush or couple of them, set ready to go. Those are the bristle brushes,
00:10this is the icon for the bristle brush where it says Mop.
00:13And the amazing thing about the pressure sensitivity-- and I am using a tablet here--is that,
00:19depending on how you're holding your pen,
00:21you can vary the brush so significantly-- and how hard you press--that there is
00:29a really very little need to modify this brush, especially because Adobe
00:34will give you lots of different, additional brushes. In other movies we'll cover where
00:42to get those other brushes and such.
00:44So you'll see that all of these modifications were done to this one brush,
00:49and there is really little need for me to go in and modify it.
00:54I am going to select all and delete.
00:58However the calligraphic brushes out of the box, or installed with Illustrator
01:05are not pressure-sensitive.
01:06So I'm pressing much harder and nothing is happening here.
01:11So you will want to modify those and the artbrushes. Let's look how to do that.
01:18Let's go over into the second document. Here I have already a couple of
01:22pressure versions of brushes.
01:25So for instance here's 3 pt. Oval brush.
01:32Press it--nothing is happening--select all and delete.
01:36Let's do the 3.pt Oval with pressure, and here I am exerting more pressure, and here it's lighter.
01:44So that's a lot different, it's a lot more variability in pressure.
01:48So the way I did that is, you just would take any brush that you want add Pressure to
01:54and I duplicate it. I drag it to the New Brush icon
02:00Then you take that duplicate, move it near the other one so they group together,
02:05just for keeping things in order.
02:07And then double-click on the Brush icon. I am going to now call this Pressure
02:13There's already Pressure one, so I'll call this Pressure 2.
02:17Where it says Fixed, Random and Fixed, this is where I can modify to be Pressure,
02:23let say the angle will be the tilt of the pen.
02:28You can play with this and see which modification works for you in each circumstance.
02:35I am going to do Pressure for this. So these are all being affected by my brush now.
02:41I want the size variation to be 3 pts because if it had no variation then the
02:49Pressure wouldn't do anything.
02:50So the variation is telling it how much to vary and the tilt so let's try that. See what's happens.
03:06I can still do some modifications on-the-fly. I just change the width--thicker and thicker--
03:17with modifications of just my keyboard.
03:20We will go into that in another movie.
03:23So you still have a lot of variation within it as long as you have Pressure enabled.
03:27In a similar way, you can duplicate the Artbrushes and then go in and
03:35double-click it to modify it and set Pressure.
03:38We are going to details about that when we get into the various different brushes.
03:42But just so you know, if there is a brush that exists and you want to add pressure
03:47capabilities to it, duplicate it, group it together, double-click on the icon,
03:52make the modifications, put pressure in the name and then you are ready to go.
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Maximizing control without a tablet
00:00If you don't have a graphics tablet or you are too lazy to plug it in, there are
00:07some things you can do to make your life a little less frustrating.
00:10They used to say in the early days of the Mac that drawing with a mouse is like
00:14drawing with a bar of soap, and it kind of is.
00:17So I am going to give you a couple of tips for how to make it a little less painful.
00:22If you try to draw and you are having trouble controlling it well, one thing
00:26you can do is zoom in.
00:28I am just holding down the spacebar+Cmd or spacebar+Ctrl.
00:34And if you zoom in, if you leave your Paintbrush tool Options in the default settings--
00:42we went over Paintbrush tool Options in a previous movie--then your lack of
00:47control is a little less of a problem when you zoom in, because the smoothness
00:53can take care of the jitteriness.
01:00But you are zoomed in enough to be able to have that little extra control.
01:04And if you are way off, of course you can undo it and just redo it again.
01:10So I am drawing with my bar of soap here, I mean mouse, and it should work about
01:16the same on the Trackpad.
01:18So another thing you can do besides zooming in and zooming out, if you want
01:23something to be more flowy, you may want to keep it zoomed out, and if you want
01:30something more detailed to zoom in.
01:33The other thing you are not getting is variability of your mark.
01:37It's all kind of the same weight.
01:38So one thing you can do is increase Randomness, and because, you don't have
01:44pressure, tilt, rotation, bearing.
01:47So in order to do that you're going to want to duplicate your brush,
01:53drag it over the New Brush icon.
01:56You want to group them together--things that are similarly sized, you can find
01:59them in the future--and then double-click the icon to open the Calligraphic Brush
02:05Options or the Art Brush Options, whichever brush you duplicated.
02:10And I am going to call this variable, just so I know that's what I am doing here.
02:16And what the three means is the maximum here but, I am going to change it then
02:20to Random and I am going to make sure that variable goes to 3 point.
02:25And instead of Fixed for Angle, let's make the angle, we're going to do a little
02:33randomness but we just only want a slight amount of variation there.
02:36And for the Roundness, let's do a variation of maybe 50%, that's the whole time.
02:47And so let's see what happens if I try to make a mark with this new variable.
02:56It's little more a variable than the other one.
02:58Let's see what happens. What are the parameters that really make a difference?
03:02Let's make another duplicate of it because that might be useful.
03:05I am going to make this one at 5.1.
03:08So I am going to group it up here, we'll make it 5 point, and the Variable 5
03:14point, and we'll call this 5 point.
03:16Let's see what happens if I try to make a mark.
03:27And you can see you are starting to get just a little more variation of that mark.
03:32It doesn't look quite so uniform as this mark over here.
03:37And the same thing, we're going to go into in more detail, the different
03:41parameters and what they do. You're going to do the same thing to add randomness
03:46to the art brushes as well, to make it compensate just a little bit for not
03:51having pressure on the tablet.
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Safely experimenting: Duplicating and customizing brushes
00:01So what you see here are a bunch of different brushes and a couple of variants
00:06that I created by dragging a brush to the New Brush icon, making couple of
00:11changes and saving it like adding some pressure to it.
00:14But we've also got here some variants of a brush.
00:19So for instance, this is a round brush that's pink.
00:25Some of these brushes are the same brush with different colors, different sizes,
00:30even though they are the identical brush.
00:32So this is Stippler. I can do Stippler.
00:37I can increase the size of Stippler.
00:42I can change the color of Stippler, change the opacity.
00:50Now let's say this brush here is one that I want to save.
00:56So one option is, I can just keep it on a page or off my page and then every
01:06time I select that brush, I will be able to draw with it somewhere else.
01:09Remember, we can switch brushes easily by just selecting a particular brush.
01:18So that's easy, that's one thing I can do.
01:20Another thing I can do is to save this particular brush, which has a lot of
01:26parameters that I changed; color, opacity, size. I am not exactly sure what
01:32any of the those things are. So going in and making a brush from scratch with
01:36those parameters is a little tough.
01:39So an easy thing that I can do is go into what's called the Graphic Styles
01:43panel, and if it isn't available to you, you can find it under the Window menu.
01:49And for the Graphic Styles panel, if I hold Option when I click on New
01:54Graphic Style, I get to name it so I can call it, pink transparent thick (pink transp thick).
02:06And now, if I want to switch to that brush, I merely have to go here and I have it all ready.
02:15So again, if this is a brush I want to save, I hold Option key, click New Graphic Style, Green thick.
02:29Here is my pink, here is my green.
02:33So without having to go and figure out exactly what are the parameters that made
02:38up a brush, by a creating a new brush, I can easily save it for quick reuse.
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3. Calligraphic Brushes
Understanding the Calligraphic Brush
00:00I love Calligraphic brushes because using Calligraphic brushes I can draw and
00:05paint really intuitively and yet have incredible amount of variability compared
00:12to traditional media.
00:14I can continue to make adjustments and deletions and changes from one brush to
00:24another, change the weights and the opacity and the color, and it can look like
00:36pen and ink and wash and watercolor and there is so much to it.
00:40The bones of it, if you are familiar with Illustrator, are just plain old vectors
00:47and so you can use all your traditional vector tools if you want to.
00:50But if you don't, if you just want to deal with in an intuitive painterly
00:55graphic way, you can, and that's what's really, really wonderful and powerful
01:01about Calligraphic brushes.
01:04And I hope you'll continue to stay with me a nd see what kinds of exciting and
01:09wonderful things we can do.
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Drawing with calligraphic brushes
00:00Now it's time for you to get drawing directly with the Calligraphic brush.
00:05And there are number of ways you can do it.
00:08You can select an existing brush which I have given you a squiggle of on the
00:13left and just start drawing, or you can select a brush from the Brushes panel.
00:18Either way, just get going.
00:21I have given you this iconic view of Alamo Square in San Francisco to use as a
00:28template, but feel free to just hide it and doodle away.
00:32And the key here is for you to get used to some of the easy changes that you can
00:39make in Illustrator with Calligraphic brushes.
00:42When the brush is selected and you have the Brush tool selected, you can
00:47simply use Bracket keys up and down like you can in Photoshop to change the
00:53width of the brush.
00:55But unlike Photoshop, you can do it even after you've made the mark, and that
01:00sets the brush parameter for the next mark.
01:04So if I press the Bracket key down a couple of times, before I make the next
01:09mark--I am doing it again--it'll make it progressively smaller, whichever one I
01:13select, sets the tone for the next mark that I am going to make.
01:22Opacity, it would be nice to be able to tell you, you just can hit the number
01:27keys, to change Opacity. You cannot with the Calligraphic Brush tool.
01:31You must use manual Opacity adjustments.
01:39You can access it here in the Control panel or from the Transparency or
01:44Appearance panels, which you can get under the Window menu.
01:48And so just experiment with playing with different brushes and what happens if
01:54you select it. Adjust the Brackets, adjust the Opacity, and just get a feel
02:02for what it's like to draw and paint.
02:06I've given you my little quick Alamo Square drawing and play away and have fun.
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Creating an ink-wash effect
00:00So we've already seen how we can use the calligraphic brush to draw in very
00:05realistic ink marks.
00:06And I actually didn't draw this in black;
00:10I actually drew it in this Transparent wash.
00:15And it's very easy to do.
00:18All you need to do when you are initially painting with your brush is set an
00:25Opacity. And you can set it in a number of different places; up here in the
00:30Control panel, and the Appearance panel, and the Transparency panel.
00:36But probably easiest is to get it up here.
00:39And you can add blending modes if you wish.
00:44This is just set to Normal.
00:48And I just drew this with just a few different pressure-sensitive marks.
00:55And just by selecting, again the previous, which I keep mentioning. You just
00:59select the previous kind of brush, and that's the one that you get to use next.
01:05The nice thing is, if you use a color as a wash that is a global swatch--so
01:17this is, if you enable this option in Swatch Options, then it allows you to make
01:28changes to all appearances of that swatch.
01:33So all I have to do is click Preview.
01:37I like to experiment like this in HSB mode which is Hue, Saturation, and Brightness.
01:45You can simply just make adjustments, and without the object selected and
01:58you can get something else that you might like a lot.
02:02But notice that what I did was, I am modifying my original sepia tone.
02:09I don't want to do that. I want to have this as an option in addition.
02:13So I should have duplicated it before I came in here, but I didn't.
02:18So what I would do is to write down these values in Hue, Saturation, and
02:25Brightness. Just make notes of them, and then cancel.
02:30Now you can duplicate the original swatch, name this Indigo, and enter those swatch values.
02:41Turns out I wasn't that sure that, that was exactly what I wanted, so I am just
02:46going to mess with it.
02:47If you don't see what you want, you don't have Preview on, probably.
02:50But look, it's not doing anything. Do you know why?
02:56Because I didn't select it in this case and reassign it to the new color.
03:00So I am going to say Cancel one more time.
03:02And this time I am going to select my objects, assign it to the second swatch.
03:09Now I can keep it selected or not, doesn't matter, because it's global.
03:13Now I can go in and say Indigo, do my HSB, and make that adjustment with Preview on.
03:24So here is the thing. It's so easy to correct yourself.
03:28If you make a mistake, don't worry about memorizing, just understand that it's
03:32possible, it's doable.
03:33What was the step you missed, and go back and back-track, and make sure it's right.
03:38Now I can say OK, and now the objects do have to be selected to change from
03:42one swatch to another.
03:46But once you've set up your swatches, you can then go in and make further adjustments.
03:52And so you can see, going from just a simple ink drawing to a wash drawing is
04:03just a couple of steps.
04:04So there are all sorts of ways that you can use the calligraphic brush.
04:09Start playing and experimenting and adjust the Opacity, change the Blending
04:13mode, see what happens.
04:14And if you think wash is fun, stay tuned to the next movie where we're going to
04:19start to add more colors and create a more watercolor-like experience.
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Creating transparent washes and watercolor effects
00:01So by default, when you make a mark with a Calligraphic Brush tool, you get
00:05something that looks kind of like an ink pen. Even though it's much more
00:10editable than an ink pen, it still looks very much like an ink pen.
00:13But one of the things that I love about the Calligraphic Brush is that it can
00:19also really look like water media.
00:21The way it works is if you select a brush, the style of your next brush
00:28will be styled the same.
00:29So for instance, if I want to make a stem, it's styled the same as the previous path.
00:36But once it's created, I can modify it.
00:40I am pressing the bracket keys as long as the path is selected, or as long as
00:45your Paintbrush tool is selected,
00:47you can adjust the bracket keys to modify the current brush if it's selected,
00:54or, for instance, I am going to deselect it.
00:56I am going to thicken up that brushstroke again for the next stroke, and
01:01let's see what happens. There we go!
01:03So I thickened it for the next one. I will make it even thicker for the next one.
01:08So if you have a path selected, you are affecting that path, and if you don't
01:13have anything selected, you are affecting the next path.
01:18And what makes it water media-like is that you can layer these,
01:28and adjust the opacity, the color, add a flower.
01:40So obviously, as it becomes more complex, there is a need for you to become more organized.
01:47And if you are not comfortable and familiar with layers, you should tune into
01:51the little bit about layers lesson.
01:54But this is a really exciting and creative way for you to work with Calligraphic Brushes.
02:01And remember, unlike traditional media, it's infinitely editable.
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Creating and organizing complex transparent layers
00:00As your images become more complex, it's going to be more and more important
00:04that you create layers in order to be able to take advantage of what's most
00:10powerful about painting in Illustrator, and that's that each of these brush
00:16marks are separate individual marks that you can vary any time.
00:21So as your image develops, you're going to want to develop a layer structure to
00:26help keep it in order.
00:28So this is an early stage where I just set a plant and here's a little bit later
00:33stage where I've developed the pot and the plant is now within the pot.
00:37So there is a layer that I created at the top, and double-clicking it, I'll call it Pot.
00:46And if you're familiar with making layers just hold tight for a second, because
00:51what I'm showing you may or may not know. Then within the pot I would, for
00:56instance, create a plant layer, and so on.
01:01And so if you've got an object on a layer that you want to move to a different
01:06layer, you can either drag it--I'm going to undo that--or if you hold down your
01:12Option key or Alt key when you drag it it makes a copy of it. By doing
01:18this you're able to, not only separate out your objects, but it helps organize
01:24the image as you go.
01:25So I'm going to delete this fabricated layer on top and I'm going to show you what I mean.
01:32So for instance, if I select this object in the plant layer and I choose to make
01:37another object over here with the same common style as the selected one, it not
01:43only creates the same kind of paintbrush mark, but it also puts it
01:48automatically into the correct layer.
01:50So if I select, let's select something that's not in there, something from
01:55this unnamed layer.
01:58If I draw here it's going to be not only in the same color, but in that same layer.
02:03Likewise, if I select something from within the swirls, and to select I can
02:10just click on it here and it's selecting my swirl, so you can click on it either
02:14on the artboard or in the Layers panel. Once I do that, then this next object
02:22I make it styled identically.
02:23Now here is, for instance, I want to select that swirl, but this other object
02:27is getting in the way, so I can lock that layer and now I can easily select the
02:32swirl to make another one.
02:35So by locking, hiding and reordering layers, you can control a lot in addition to
02:43when you're actually initially painting it. You can build complexity and
02:48have more control over every stroke and every mark within this transparent
02:54building painting, something you certainly can't do in any other media; not in
03:00traditional media and not even in Photoshop. To have access to every mark is really magical.
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Overview of Calligraphic Brush options
00:00So with the calligraphic brushes you are likely to create your own brushes that
00:05incorporate pressure, if you have the pressure-sensitive tablet.
00:09So let's say this 5.5 brush, which makes this kind of mark, it's not responding
00:14to my relative pressure in any particular way.
00:18Let's make a pressure-sensitive version of it by dragging it to the new brushes icon.
00:22That makes a copy, and then I'm going to group it with the other one
00:29and I'm going to call this pressure, and double-click it.
00:38And you'll notice that by default Adobe brushes generally don't have pressure
00:44as an attribute connected with it at all.
00:48So one thing I'm going to do is I'm going to say--and you can play with all of
00:53these things and see what they do--but for instance, let's just say the angle
00:57I want to be based on the tilt of my stylus. For my pressure-sensitive tablet, the
01:02roundness will be built on the rotation, and the size we'll say, based on pressure.
01:09But in order for it to work you need to increase the variance, so I want the
01:15pressure to go from one to five points, based on how much pressure there is
01:19and tilt, I'm going to say vary it and Rotation doesn't get a variance, so let's say OK.
01:29Let's see what happen if I press lightly and then press hard and you'll
01:35see a much more control and nuance.
01:38And the shape of it is changing as I rotate and as I tilt, obviously you're not
01:46watching me right now.
01:47And if I say it's lovely, but I want even more variant than that, so you can
01:54make it duplicate of that one, We can call it, let's make it bigger one.
02:01Now remember you can vary it on the fly, but I usually give it a basic name for
02:05where it starts when you start out, let's say 9 point. We're going to put this at 9 point.
02:11So we're going to vary it a full 9 point. We're going to give it more variation here.
02:21And so this time, if I do light and then heavy, there you go.
02:28And you can see that by making these adjustments, you can create incredible variations of your brushes.
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Expanding calligraphic brushes
00:00So what happens if you make this really wonderful, stupendous and once-in-a-lifetime
00:07calligraphic mark with a calligraphic brush?
00:12You look at it and you say, oh no! That ending needs to be more pointy.
00:19Well unfortunately, because actually calligraphic brush marks are purely vector
00:26paths-- I'm just showing you an outline mode--
00:30if I try to erase the end of this path in order to just clean it up a little bit,
00:37sharpen it up; what happens? It just redraws the path and sticks that
00:41same old ending on it.
00:43So there are occasionally times when you're not going to want to leave it live,
00:48when it's live of course you can do all sorts of vector type reshaping and
00:54reediting and editing with any of your other tools and smoothing and all the
01:00other things we've covered so far.
01:02But what you can't do is actually, physically reshape part of the path, just
01:08shave of part of it. In order to do that you're going to have to turn this
01:12live calligraphic path into an expanded path. I'll show you what that is.
01:19Go to the Object menu, Expand Appearance.
01:21And now suddenly, yes, the edges of it are editable like a regular vector path.
01:28It is no longer easily changeable in the same way. I can't redraw it.
01:36I am redrawing each side of the path that has its own vector points and
01:41path associated to it.
01:42But what that does mean is that I can come in with the eraser and I can put
01:55exactly the point that I want to on it.
01:59What this means is, what you get essentially when you take a live calligraphic
02:06path and expand it, essentially once you erase it, it becomes a united path
02:15with holes within, which is called a compound path. If you want to look at
02:23more information about that, in other lynda movies you can.
02:27But let's move to the other file and I'll show you, essentially what you just saw was
02:32a live calligraphic path, and this is the same path viewed in outline mode.
02:38This is the expanded version viewed in outline mode. It's got lots of extra
02:45joints in it and those will disappear as soon as you erase into it,
02:49Then essentially what you have is you've turned a live calligraphic brush path into a
02:55blob brush path and that's where the next chapter begins is with the blob brush.
03:01So in the instances where you want to just take that calligraphic brush,
03:06expand it so that you can just take that little eraser to it to shape that path,
03:14that's the way you do it.
03:18So stay tune to the blob brush if you want to learn more about that.
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4. The Blob Brush
Comparing Calligraphic and Blob Brush tools
00:00When I first heard about the Blob brush and saw it in action, my thought was why bother?
00:05I'd rather have live calligraphic marks than expanded Blob brush.
00:11I'm going to show you a couple of things that I like about it.
00:15I use it a lot more creatively now than I did when I first found out about it,
00:19which is often the case.
00:21So if you see on the upper left-hand here this quadrant has live calligraphic brushes
00:25and just below it is the same brushes in outline view, so you can see
00:31they're just a vector path.
00:33And in the upper right quadrant of this little grid here, are the expanded views
00:40You see sort of what a mess the Calligraphic brush turns into when you expand it.
00:47And here's a similar set of marks that I created with the Blob brush.
00:52Here is the blob brush in outline mode. You can see pretty clearly that it's not
00:58only expanding the marks as you make them they look very much like a
01:03calligraphic mark. In fact, the controls are very similar.
01:07But when you do things like scribble like this the marks actually not only
01:14expand, but they unite and so you get this clean shape.
01:17You'll see that the script becomes very clean as you write it as opposed to all
01:24these overlapping marks.
01:25So in the next movies we're going to look at a couple of things that you can
01:30do with the Blob brush that make it really quite powerful and exciting, and
01:34quite more than just taking a Calligraphic brush and expanding it, because you can combine it
01:39with the Eraser tool and you can use it to unite objects that are separate.
01:46It's really quite a flexible tool and it does quite a few different things.
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Understanding the Blob Brush
00:00The silly truth is the Blob Brush isn't a brush at all. Because if it was a brush,
00:06then I would be able to access it with the Paintbrush tool and the brushes,
00:11and that's not where you get it from, actually.
00:14It has nothing to do with the paintbrush. It is its own tool.
00:18So the paintbrush is the B and the Blob Brush is the Shift+B.
00:25With the Blob Brush, I can draw directly. It's very similar to the Calligraphic Brush.
00:30I am going to undo that. I can also modify it.
00:33And notice you can actually see the results on screen in a way that you can't
00:39with most of the brushes.
00:41This is a preview of what I get, and I get this.
00:46And what's really amazing about it is that if I am using my graphics tablet and a pen,
00:51if I turn the pen around, I get the eraser, and it's automatically loaded to be the eraser for me.
01:01And with that, I can modify my path in a way that I cannot do with live vector brushes.
01:10In a way, there is something slightly more intuitive, slightly more painterly, actually.
01:22Although, the kind of editing that you're doing, it's sort of more sculptural than it is in drawing.
01:29Like suppose to some extent, you can do this with an eraser, but not often with the ink pen.
01:34So what you've got up above is a Blob Brush, a couple of shapes, which I've
01:40duplicated, and then added to, and then worked on with a combination of changing
01:49the size, and the eraser.
01:50And here are those same paths, top to bottom in outline modes.
01:55You can see what's happening.
01:56I am actually modifying the internal aspects of where these brushes overlap
02:05by using the Blob Brush.
02:07So in practice, if I select my gray shape and I go to paint with it,
02:17instead of getting a whole bunch of scribbles on top of each other, when I let go and
02:24select it, you will see it's just one outlined path, which if I use with the
02:29Eraser tool either by flipping around my stylus, or if you don't have a tablet,
02:34you can just grab the Eraser tool, and then you can modify it.
02:37Then the Eraser is also capable of being pressure-sensitive, and is also
02:44modified by the bracket keys.
02:48So this is really exciting and powerful, and it still looks like we're just scribbling.
02:55So we'll get to how you can then use it to join objects together as well as
03:02create much more complex images.
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How is the Blob Brush different from other brushes?
00:00Even though it kind of looks like a brush when you lay down the marks,
00:06the Blob brush isn't really much of a brush at all. In fact, whereas brushes are simpler
00:11than they might at first seem, I think the Blob brush is a little
00:16more complex than it at first seems.
00:18You can join objects together that have the same appearance.
00:25You can carve into them with the eraser.
00:30I just turned around my stylus to get the eraser, but you can just choose the Eraser tool.
00:36You can make holes in things using the eraser.
00:39There are all sorts of things you can do. Behind the scenes it's actually pretty complex.
00:46So even though beginners feel free to explore it, understand that you are
00:52dipping your toe into some much more complex Illustrator technology
00:59that involves compound paths and just some rules about what things join and don't join,
01:05having to do with appearance and what appearance means and all that stuff.
01:10But there is no reason why you can't just start to play and start experimenting with it.
01:15We are going to go in to some of the options in later movies, but I just wanted
01:20to sort of give you a peek as to how you can transform from this to this--
01:24I obviously hid the template here--by just scribbling. Similarly to the Paintbrush
01:33tool, you can select a previous mark and it will set the color, however it does
01:38not affect the width of your Blob brush.
01:41So when I am adjusting with the bracket keys you notice it is changing the
01:46future mark here that I'm going to make, but it does not affect the selected mark here.
01:54That's because it's no longer a vector path. It is an expanded vector path; it's not a brush.
02:00So if I select this brown mark, it has nothing to do with the size of the brush,
02:06it's just setting the brown color.
02:08In order to make the brush smaller, I have to actually make it smaller using the bracket keys.
02:17Same thing with the Eraser; I can make it larger and smaller.
02:21Now if you have nothing selected you can erase, which is very powerful, but it
02:32can be also really tricky and really scary.
02:35So make sure you tune into the Blob brush options so you can see how you can
02:41control what you erase and what you don't.
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Basic Blob Brush options
00:00So because the Blob brush is its own tool in the tool panel, it also has its own set of options.
00:08Now double-click to access Options. Later in this chapter we're going to go
00:14into using the Keep Selected and Merge Only with Selection in terms of merging
00:20objects with the Blob tool.
00:22Just like with Paintbrush Tool Options with Fidelity and Smoothness all the way
00:26to the left, you will get the most accuracy with your mark.
00:33To make it a bit smoother you can increase Fidelity and/or Smoothness.
00:38You can see the Paintbrush Tool Options movie in order to get more information on that.
00:43The really interesting thing is, the Default Brush Options part of the dialog is
00:49really not one that you need to deal with and I'll explain that too in a second.
00:53If you go in to make adjustments, they will only apply for that one moment that
01:00you're creating them.
01:02But in real life there's a much better way for you to switch between different
01:09shapes and sizes of Blob Brushes.
01:12You probably know by now that you can use the left and right bracket keys to
01:16enlarge and shrink the size of the brush.
01:20But what about switching shapes and sizes of brushes?
01:25Well, it turns out that instead of making brushes in Blob Brush Options, all you
01:30have to do is choose a calligraphic brush. It could even be pressure-sensitive
01:37and I can even select them from an existing object.
01:41Look, it even inherited an opacity reduction.
01:48And because these are the same opacity, they work like a Blob brush.
01:55All I have to do is select any calligraphic brush. I can switch colors.
02:02I'll have to reset my Opacity and it's ignoring what I have in Default Brush Options.
02:13So there is no need really, for you to mess with that at all. Just create
02:18whatever calligraphic brushes you want and you'll be able to have a full
02:23complement of brushes at your disposal for Blob Brush Options.
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Whittle while you work: Applying the Eraser and Smooth tools
00:00I actually do think that working with the Blob Brush is a little bit like sculpture
00:04or carving away at the contours of something.
00:09If you have a tablet then just flipping that stylus or pen over gives you the eraser.
00:13If you don't you can choose the Eraser tool or you can choose
00:19Shift+E for Eraser and Shift+B for the Blob Brush.
00:23So turning over my stylus, in this case I have it, I'm going to enable actually.
00:31If you enable the Merge Only with Selection, it makes it really simple. I am
00:36just going to be whittling away with the Eraser tool to the selected object.
00:40However the selection edges kind become annoying and a pain. An easier way may
00:47be to just lock the lower layer, which is where I have separated that Gray object.
00:52That's where the Gray object is. Instead, I am going to deselect Merge Only with Selection.
00:59That way the merge also affects the Eraser. What Merge means is, are you going
01:06to be affecting that Blob object.
01:08But it's not just Blob objects, actually. I am going to just stick a star in there just for the heck of it.
01:19Now I am going to go back to my Blob brush and I am just going to join those two objects.
01:25The other strange thing, and we'll look at that in a little bit, is that even
01:30though it doesn't matter whether you start with a stroke or a fill,
01:36it eventually is a fill. Notice that this is a filled object.
01:43So it is a filled object, but I'm drawing with the Stroke color.
01:48It's very confusing I think.
01:50So if you select the object later it will tell you it was a filled object.
01:54But if you drawing it from scratch, it behaves as if it's a stroked brush.
02:00I find that actually there's a lot of perplexing things about the Blob Brush tool.
02:05This is what I was talking about when I said that the Blob Brush is much more
02:09complex once you get going and looking at it than it is to begin with.
02:13Because if you are just using it you just say, okay I'm erasing it, I'm drawing on it,
02:17it's not very complex.
02:21But underneath the hood it's quite complex and perplexing.
02:29So don't get caught up in the details of it if you're a beginner. Feel free to
02:35look into it if you're a more advanced user.
02:37See how powerful it is, a very few times in Illustrator, unless you are working
02:43on a very complex path with the Pen tool on your Vector editing tools, and even
02:50so it's very hard to create things like this.
02:53So whittle away, have fun. Switch between the Eraser and the Blob Brush tool
03:02and play with different ways to isolate which objects you are affecting and
03:06which you're not, and how you merge and how you don't;
03:08a little more about that in following movies.
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Adding to and joining objects with the Blob Brush
00:00The Blob Brush--which isn't a brush but a drawing tool and a painting tool
00:07and a joining tool--it's kind of fun. You can add to objects, it's really quite amazing.
00:13But there are all of these rules about when it does and doesn't work, and scary
00:18times when it works when you don't want it to work and stuff.
00:21So I am going to just show you a few things that you can count on working and
00:25not working when you're trying to merge objects or not merge objects.
00:29So one thing is if you have a black stroke and you have two objects that are
00:38filled with black, with the default settings if I just draw anywhere on the screen
00:43you are going to join those objects. I am going to undo.
00:47So for instance if I select it, the Gray object if I draw you are going to merge
00:56the Gray objects. I am going to hide the Black for a second so you can see.
01:00So that may or may not be what you want. If you were intending to just draw and
01:04you didn't want to merge, then there are a couple of things you can do.
01:11You can lock your layer that has the objects that you don't want to merge.
01:16If I have the Gray color it's not going to merge with the black objects.
01:22Now it's separate, so that's one thing you can do.
01:25You can also change the setting, which I highly recommend, which is to Merge Only with Selection.
01:32And when you have that chosen, you won't accidentally join anything ever, unless it's selected.
01:41So if I select this object I am going to join to it. If I select these two
01:47objects, it can join them together.
01:51So I highly recommend controlling what you're merging and not merging in that way.
01:57Down below, I've got a set of objects that are all on the same layer.
02:03That becomes a little harder to do.
02:05But as long as your Merge with Selection is enabled you are not going to
02:13accidentally merge things together.
02:14So you can play with this file. See what does and doesn't work.
02:18I've got another little file in here for you in which I've written,
02:22nope, these aren't going to join; nope, these aren't going to join;
02:24yep, these are going to join. And you can look at this.
02:27So the reason why these won't join--see if you can guess--they're not on the same layer.
02:34So they do have to be on the same layer in order to merge.
02:37And the reason why these aren't going to join, any guesses?
02:40It's because this object has stroke attached and you cannot merge objects that
02:48have a stroke appearance associated with them.
02:51And if you look at the layer order, the stroked object is between the other two
02:59objects in stacking order and preventing the merging between them.
03:05That's a little complicated but I'll give you this file so you can play with it.
03:09If you reorder the stacking order-- so I'm going to move the stroke object
03:15below--now if I select these two objects, I am going to be able to connect them.
03:23And these are just a set of objects with no parameters set that are going to
03:28prevent you from joining away.
03:32So I am going to give you these two files plus this little onem which will explain to you
03:35again, before and after joining. You can play away, experiment.
03:41At least you have some resources for, if things aren't working, you are
03:45going to be able to backtrack and figure out maybe what the problem might be
03:49so you can fix it.
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Example of Blob Brush artwork
00:00So I thought it might be fun to show you one of the images that I've created
00:05using the Blob Brush. I've opted to show you my Layers panel when I'm not
00:12being organized along the way.
00:14So I usually do name layers so they're meaningful along the way, I didn't in this case.
00:19So you can go ahead and name them for me if you want.
00:22This is a Blob Brush illustration that I created.
00:25It was a photograph--which I left for you-- which I liked a lot but it wasn't a
00:30great photograph, so it didn't quite capture what I wanted out of it.
00:38So I was able to bring out the part of it that I liked the best, which is
00:43what of course art always let's you do is pick and choose what you want to concentrate on.
00:48So I created this image using the Blob brush and a bunch of different colors.
00:53I was able to merge things as I went.
00:55And because, unlike working with brushes when you can literally pick a part what I did,
01:00you can't do that.
01:02And so what I've done as I've saved the file in stages for you. You can go
01:08ahead and zoom in on them and look at them and see how I built the image.
01:13There is a little bit of how I built it from start to finish.
01:18I've given you the file to play with.
01:19So it just gives you another quality of line, and I wouldn't say its equivalent
01:24to a traditional line. I would say that it's its own exciting and powerful new
01:31medium that you can work with.
01:33So I hope you have fun. Enjoy picking a part mine and creating your own masterpieces.
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5. Bristle Brushes
The basics of using bristle brushes
00:00So this is a painting created in Illustrator using only two Bristle brushes.
00:07I created all of these marks, which were pulled out from variants that
00:12I created on the fly from these two brushes.
00:16I think you may not need to create your own brushes, you can just get going
00:21on the fly and start creating work.
00:24You are going to want to use a graphics tablet.
00:27You really, really are, because you get both more control and more nuance with your marks.
00:34The Bristle Brush builds up, if you keep going over and over it.
00:42It does not build up if you scribble on top of itself, but if I keep scribbling
00:47on it, it will build up in color.
00:49You can of course combine colors, combine textures.
00:53You can adjust the brushes on the fly for Size, for Opacity.
01:00It's very intuitive, powerful and we're going to just cover some of the details,
01:07breaking it apart for you.
01:09But I hope you're inspired to just get that tablet out and start painting.
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Adjusting brushstrokes with modifier keys
00:00So here is a painting that I created using only two brushes, modifying
00:04the brushes on the fly.
00:06Even though I gave you a bunch more brushes to play with if you have the file.
00:11Feel free to hide my image and just be able to work on your own or keep mine
00:18to be able to see what kind of modifications you're able to accomplish.
00:22The way it works is a little bit like Photoshop, but then in some ways it's even
00:26more powerful than Photoshop.
00:27So if I select a mark, this is very Illustrator like, whatever mark you select,
00:33the next one will be the identical mark.
00:36Like Photoshop I can use the Bracket keys, the Right bracket key to enlarge my brush
00:41and the Left bracket key to reduce my brush.
00:46Also because of the particular parameters set for this brush, I am just
00:50changing the angle and rotation of my stylus on my tablet to be able to change
00:57the shape of this brush.
00:59You can see how powerful that would be and therefore doesn't necessarily
01:03require me to make lots of different brushes, if I can make all of these different marks with one.
01:11You can also adjust the Opacity, like Photoshop, 1-9.
01:15One is the most transparent. I'll do 1 and I'll do 9.
01:21Zero is the maximum Opacity and it means you will lose the Bristle brushiness of it,
01:28so I don't recommend going to 0. So use 1-9 to adjust it.
01:32But here is where it's a little more powerful than Photoshop.
01:37Is that if I after the fact say, ooh,
01:39that mark was too subtle.
01:42I want to bring up the Opacity.
01:44Maybe I want to make it a little smaller.
01:47On the fly I'm doing this, I want to reduce the Opacity again maybe midwa.
01:52Or how about if we make it larger, smaller. I can use all of my vector editing tools if I know how.
02:00And I can hold down my Option key or Alt key to get the Smooth tool, so you can
02:06actually smooth it as you go without having to go through major editing.
02:12Just smooth it a little bit and then keep going.
02:16Again, the Paintbrush options are set globally for all brushes at once in
02:27Paintbrush Tool Options.
02:35And I gave you lots of different brushes to play with.
02:37It's hard to imagine that you're going to get through them all.
02:40So take some time, play with both before the fact, adjusting your brush with the
02:48Bracket keys and with the Opacity, and then selecting it.
02:54You can of course completely change it, use your Eyedropper.
02:58Pick up another color or completely other brush, so right here I'm changing it.
03:08For this to work, Appearance has to be enabled in Eyedropper, we went through
03:13that in a previous movie.
03:14So just play with what you can do. Feel free to hide my image and get started
03:21on your own, that's with this file is.
03:23So enjoy, have fun, play, experiment and see how powerful this is.
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Accessing bristle brushes
00:00So whenever you start a new document in the Illustrator, you are going to have
00:05the default set of brushes automatically loaded for you.
00:09And in my version of Illustrator CS6, this is the default set.
00:14And in this default set there is a bunch of calligraphic brushes; there is the
00:18basic stroke which removes the brushes; a couple of Art brushes; a Pattern brush
00:23and one little Mop brush, that's a Bristle brush.
00:27And it's very cool of course, you get the Brush tool the Mop brush. There is
00:33a lot of variance, if you saw the previous movies for how you can make this one
00:38brush act like many by just modifying it on the fly.
00:43But what if you actually want to access more brushes?
00:48Well there are two ways to do it.
00:50One you can go to a file that has brushes. If you have access to the lynda files,
00:56I've given you this one where I've loaded a bunch.
00:58If you copy--I'm going to copy this and move over to other document and paste them--
01:03of course the brushes will be pasted in for you.
01:07But the other thing you can do--and there are many other ways to load brushes--
01:12but here is a very straightforward and direct way to do it, is you load the
01:16Brush Libraries that Illustrator comes with. Actually Adobe has created a bunch of brushes.
01:23There are a number of different places where you can access it. I find
01:27the easiest one is from the pop-up menu, Brush Libraries menu. If you
01:31click on it, there is a bunch of different brushes. One category is called Bristle Brushes.
01:35If you select the Bristle Brush Library, it will open for you.
01:39You can also access it from the Window menu, Brush Libraries>Bristle Brush and so on.
01:47But for now, it's open.
01:51So there are a number of things so you can do.
01:54Every time you just select a brush in the Bristle Brush Library,
01:58notice it's in a separate panel.
01:59But if you select one, keep one of your eyes on this Main Brushes panel when I
02:03select that 4.5 Round Bristle brush.
02:06Look, it automatically loads in here for you.
02:09So that's one way to get them in there.
02:12Another way is you can select the first one, scroll down, hold down the Shift key,
02:18select the last one and drag them in.
02:22Then you can close this library and they're in your file when you save your file.
02:26Whatever brushes are in your file are going to be saved there for you.
02:32There are lots of different ways so you can manage importing libraries, but this
02:36is probably one of the most direct ones.
02:38If you decide that, after you've created a bunch of different marks and brushes,
02:49that this is the set that you're going to want to keep with you,
02:59and all of those other brushes are just in your way, one thing that you can do is
03:08to select all the unused brushes and delete them.
03:13And then what you're left with then is a panel of brushes that has only the
03:17brushes that you want access to and none of the others.
03:20Whatever state a file is in when you save it is the number of brushes that
03:25you have when you reopen the file.
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Creating complex artwork with brushes
00:01As you start working in Illustrator with brushes, you're going to find your
00:04image gets pretty complex, pretty quickly. Being able to organize your file
00:09by layers is going to be essential.
00:12Make sure you see the movies elsewhere in this chapter about how to work with
00:17layers to make your organization optimal. There's also something else about
00:22working complexly in Illustrator.
00:25That is that after just a few lines, you'll find that when you go to save
00:33will generate this error. It's kind of a scary warning.
00:39Basically what it says is you've got too many objects and you're not going
00:43to be able to save this with preview, so click OK at your risk.
00:48You can also choose to not show this again while working on the file in this session.
00:52When you save make sure you check that, so that you don't have to be
00:56frightened every time you go to save. Because you should save frequently,
00:59 I'm going to cancel now.
01:00So what this means is most of the time it's not going to be an issue.
01:06The images that I'm going to show you that I created with bristle brushes,
01:10I have never had a problem printing or saving. It's not been an issue. I also
01:14created the Illustrator Wow Book and there are lot of other wonderful artists who
01:19contribute to the book.
01:20Occasionally some of their work is too complex to print without handling
01:24the issues of transparency, which is what the issue is in Illustrator with
01:29bristle brushes. Is that transparency requires at some point that the image is
01:37rasterized, and it's either at the time of printing or handling it in a couple of other ways.
01:42So if that makes your head blow off just hearing me say that, don't concern
01:46yourself, unless you really do have a problem, and then consider this a learning
01:51moment. Take the time out to learn a little bit more about what's underneath
01:57the hood with working with Illustrator and transparencies. You can look up
02:02Illustrator Insider Training:
02:03Seeing Through Transparency by Mordy Golding and it'll explain some of that to you.
02:08Chances are this isn't going to come up. You're going to be able to just say
02:12go away dialog box, don't bother me anymore. You're going to be able to work just fine.
02:17So just in case it's a problem, you know where to look.
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Overview of Bristle Brush options
00:00So as you saw, if I just modify strokes along the way and brushes along the way,
00:06I have a wide variety of parameters within each brush that exists.
00:13I can always load host of others from the brush libraries menu like we have here.
00:18So chances are you're not going to need to modify your own brushes.
00:25Just in case you want to, here are a couple suggestions, then I'm going to take you on a quick
00:29tour of the bristle brush options menu.
00:31So in order to modify a brush, let's say this is the Mop brush,
00:35the first thing I want to do is find the brush that's closest to what I like,
00:41and then to modify it, let's do the Mop.
00:43I'm going to drag it to the New Brush icon to duplicate it.
00:47Then I personally like to organize similar brushes together and I'm just
00:52going to call this a variant.
00:56And now with my stroke selected, I'm going to double-click it in order to play
01:01with the different options. You can spend a lot of time in here.
01:05I'm just going to run through it quickly. You can choose different shapes.
01:08Now obviously I started by saying this is the shape that I kind of like, so I'm
01:13not going to choose one of those other options, but if you're making a brush
01:17from scratch, you have all of these initial shapes to start with.
01:20So that's a lot of options right there.
01:23Then the Size parameter is something that you can change on the fly using the
01:28bracket keys, so no need to really play with that.
01:32The bristle length--you'll find that longer bristles are more of visible and
01:37shorter are more sort of tucked in there. I'm going to do long on that.
01:42The density--there is going to be a less space between each bristle in the
01:46higher density, and more space between each bristle, which gives you more sort of
01:50white space. But again, varying how they interact with each other is going to
01:55vary what this definition actually means in terms of this brush.
01:58The thickness in general will add a heavier appearance to the brush. The stiffness--
02:04the more rigid the more visible strokes you're actually going to see as opposed
02:08to them smoother and less articulated.
02:11But again how these work in relationship to each other is going to change what
02:16each of these parameters actually does.
02:18So I'm going to say OK for this one. This time I'm going to say Leave
02:24Strokes, because I realize I didn't remember that I had this selected when I
02:29went in here-- pretend that's the case-- and so I want to say Leave Strokes.
02:34What that did was it left the brush as it was when I entered it, but it did make
02:39the variant for me, which is selected currently.
02:41So if I draw here with a variant, I've got both the original and the variant.
02:48So what happens if you choose the other option?
02:51Let's make another variant and see what that means. So dragging it over the new
02:54brushes icon, putting it up with the other mops, and we'll call this 2.
02:59Now notice if it's the same name it's going to turn red to warn me that I
03:04already have the brush by this name, so we do 2 and we're okay.
03:08My brush mark is selected. I'm going to double-click to go in. I'm going to
03:14make a very different brush, it's very different brush. I'm going to say OK.
03:23This time I'm going to say Apply to Strokes, You'll see that Mop variant2
03:28was applied to the stroke that existed and was selected when I went in.
03:34So feel free, remember just changing your little angle and your pressure and
03:39your rotation of a brush gives you a lot of different variant, so don't be too
03:44anxious to go in and make those changes yourself, but feel free as long as you
03:48make the copies, go ahead and play away. See what you can come up with.
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6. Naturalistic Art Brushes
The basics of naturalistic art brushes
00:00There are lots of different kinds of art brushes. They're all made similarly, but
00:06there are different functions for different kinds of art brushes.
00:08For instance this is an image I created with mostly art brushes. I'll show you
00:14what it looks like in Outline mode.
00:16You can see that all of these areas where it's just very simple path, and
00:23when I put it back into Preview mode what you're looking at is a fully formed
00:28set of objects, those are art brushes.
00:31So for instance, if I take the Paint Brush tool this is an art brush; this one
00:39stem of grass is an art brush; the trunk was an art brush; the texture for the
00:45trunk is an art brush.
00:48So we're not going to be looking at these here.
00:52I just showed them to show you that we're not going to talking about them.
00:56They're made similarly, but they're also made similarly to the way lots
01:01of other funky things that you can access from the brush libraries, or you can
01:08download from the net. A lot of them are made to be frames and they're fun and funky.
01:16And as I said they're made similarly, but they also rely on some of the options
01:21and features that we don't need to go into for the naturalistic brushes.
01:26So let's look at some of the naturalistic brushes.
01:29There are a lots of them available. There is a movie on opening libraries for you,
01:34and also how to thin out the libraries if you have too many.
01:38The key is all art brushes are made the same way. It's a little cryptic, here is a bunch of them.
01:45So the key is, all art brushes are actually made up of simply Illustrator paths
01:52or group of Illustrator paths.
01:54There are some rules as to what can or can't be art brushes, but these are
01:59all art brushes applied to paths.
02:02If I select one, for instance let's say this one, that's the dark ink wash.
02:09If I want to see how that brush is constructed you can pull it our, it is purely a vector object.
02:14You can see somebody has just taken the time to make what
02:20they think one mark would look like if it was made with this dark ink wash.
02:27What they have simply done is dragged it into the Brushes panel, and
02:33you're presented with a series of options that allow you to make an art brush.
02:38You can choose with options you need in order to apply them.
02:42So some of those options are relevant to this kind of art brush and some aren't.
02:46I just wanted to give you a clue as to what's underneath the hood when you
02:50select the art brushes.
02:52Obviously you can make your own. There are so many to choose from,
02:56both from within Adobe's brush libraries and from the net, that you probably can just
03:02spend a lot of time playing and experimenting before you even think about making your own.
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Accessing art brushes
00:00So when you start a new document in Illustrator, you get a bunch of brushes to
00:05start with, mostly calligraphic; the basic is just a non-brush, it resets to just
00:11a regular stroke and not a brush.
00:13The one after basic--and this is in Illustrator CS6, depending on your version you
00:17may have different brushes loaded.
00:19This Charcoal-Feather brush is the kind of naturalistic art brush that we're
00:24talking about here, so I'll apply that here.
00:27The other ones--the Divider, is the non- naturalistic art brush; Mop is bristle;
00:33and Cut Here is a pattern brush--so you really only have one naturalistic art
00:38brush to play with here.
00:40So that doesn't give you a lot of power. So easiest thing to do for me is
00:46to load more brushes.
00:47So before I bother to make my own, I always want to see with somebody else is
00:52providing me. Well it depends on what you want to spend your time doing, right?
00:56So from the lower left-hand corner of the panel in the Brush Libraries menu,
01:01click it, and you can access, under Artistic, you have bunches of different art
01:09brushes. So the calligraphic or the calligraphic brushes, I don't why they are
01:13clustered together with the other art brushes, but they are. Here are lots
01:18of different sets of brushes to choose from. I've actually loaded a file for you
01:23with all of them in it, but let's just open this to show you how to do it.
01:27So for instance, all of these brushes are available to everybody who has
01:32Illustrator. How do you get them into your working document?
01:36Well all you have to do is select a brush and it'll pop up for you, but if you
01:41want them all and you can just hold down the Shift key, select the whole bunch
01:45of them and just drag them in.
01:47Now you no longer have just one lone, little naturalistic art brush, you have many.
01:54So you can just go around and select them and apply them and see what they do
02:03and experiment to your hearts content.
02:12Of course these are modifiable.
02:15I wish I could tell you that you could use your bracket keys left and right to
02:20change the size of the art brush, but what you can do is increase the stroke
02:26weight or decrease the stroke weight.
02:29The same thing with opacity, you can manually adjust the opacity.
02:35I have given you a second file here that has different brushes loaded in.
02:42So if you have access to the file, you can just open the file and you have
02:47access to these where everybody can find them from the artistic library.
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Applying naturalistic art brushes to type and objects
00:00It's really quite straightforward to start applying Art brushes to your objects.
00:07The key is when you first open a file you're not going to have very many art
00:11brushes available to you.
00:12So I am going to first show you just what you're going be doing, and then I'll
00:16show you how to get the brushes in there really quick.
00:19So you just select Objects and if those brushes are already loaded in your panel
00:27you just click on them. It just couldn't be easier, I think.
00:33You can take something, which is just the standard basic stroke,
00:44and add a lot of character and texture in warmth with just a few clicks.
00:50In the more advance movie we look at how to do this to type as well.
00:54But for right now just understand it's quite easy to do it. I sometimes draw
00:59over the naturalistic art brushes, but most of the time I just experiment with
01:03what happens if you apply them later.
01:05For instance, here's a calligraphic brush-drawn painting Mina, the blue and green-eyed cat
01:12that we did in an earlier movie.
01:15This time I just want to see what happens if I start adding texture to it,
01:19but I just don't have art brushes to play with really.
01:23So what I am going to do is load some. There's lots to load. We've got
01:27another move on it, but let's just get the Artistic_ChalkCharcoalPencils in there.
01:34I am just going to drag them in.
01:40I'll select a color, and maybe say select same Appearance.
01:47It's not getting enough them,
01:48so I am going to select same Stroke color. There we go, that's all of that
01:56sort of mustardy color stuff. Then I can just start playing.
01:59What happens if I start adding this texture or that, or this or that?
02:08There are lots more brushes to choose from, these are just some.
02:12And again same thing, I'll say a select same Stroke Color.
02:17You'll notice that I wasn't sure exactly how I wanted to select them.
02:21It's really to change your mind and so on.
02:26If I want to select all the black outlines together, I just click on the icon
02:31next to the layer that has all of the black outlines.
02:35And again I can just play.
02:45Sometimes, you'll get this, but there's no harm done, because you can always
02:51change your mind. This is the image that I ended up with.
02:55As you see it just didn't take long to transform an image that already exists
03:01into something that had a lot more warmth and character to it.
03:05So feel free to load bunches of the brushes and experiment away.
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Drawing and painting with naturalistic art brushes
00:01So using the naturalistic art brushes to draw is just a little different
00:05strategy for me, than using for instance, the Bristle brush tool.
00:15And the reason is it's so easy to change brush types that I tend to go for the
00:19color I like more than the brush type I like as a starting point.
00:23So let's say I want to just draw. I have to get the Brush tool, which is the B key.
00:30Let's say I wanted to start drawing.
00:33So it's very easy for me afterwards to hide the Templates so it's not my way,
00:42and play with different brushes.
00:43Show the template, and then keep going.
00:51So just paint away, have fun, get the drawing so it's approximately what you want.
00:57It's not going to be nearly as accurate as some of the other brushes,
01:01but it can be a lot of fun.
01:03Once you get your Basic objects feel free to undo as you are going.
01:09Again, I tend to gravitate toward shapes, basic sizes and color more than I do this
01:15specifics of a particular brush, because you can just play with different options.
01:22If you're not happy with the options you can always get more. This last set
01:31are all artbrushes that you can choose from.
01:34So use the B key to get the Paintbrush. You use the Command key to select your Path,
01:42Cmd or Ctrl key. With your Path selected, you can use your Option or Alt key
01:47to smooth a mark if you wish.
01:54The character of your line is determined from the Paintbrush Tool Options,
02:00so make sure you see that movie if you need help with that.
02:03Be aware that, although you can't use the bracket keys if you're going left and right
02:08to increase or decrease the size of your brush the way you can with the Bristle Brush tool,
02:14there is a way for you to enlarge it, and that's using Stroke Weight.
02:24It's pretty cool. Of course you can also reduce the Opacity.
02:29Now in this case I'm not seeing the Opacity in the Control panel.
02:33So if you want to adjust Opacity and you're not seeing it in the control panel,
02:40there are couple of other places where you can find it, including the
02:43Transparency panel, which you can adjust here and you can try applying different
02:51blending modes for different layering effects.
02:58So have fun, play away, feel free to use the Template or draw on your own.
03:03Experiment with loading additional brushes to see what you can come up with.
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Overview of naturalistic art brush options
00:01So if you were to make your own art brushes by dragging them into the Brushes panel
00:07or you wanted to modify a brush you will be presented with the
00:12Art brush Options dialog.
00:14So I want to modify this charcoal brush. I am going to start, because this is
00:18best practice, to duplicate the one that exists.
00:22I can either double-click the icon itself or at the little symbol that tells
00:27you it's an art brush,. I am going to call this Pressure.
00:32There are a bunch of options here that are really geared more toward the
00:36other kind of Artbrush, the kind that can auto generate objects like I showed
00:41in the initial movie where you can make grasses or leaves or arrows or frames
00:46and stuff like that.
00:47So we are just going to look at a couple of the options that you may find useful
00:51if you're working with the naturalistic art brushes.
00:55One is to take advantage of Pressure, obviously.
00:58There are a number of different parameters you can do you at this point with these settings.
01:03These are the options with my Tablet.
01:05I am going to choose Pressure. Currently the values are from 100% to 100% and
01:11if you anything about math, that actually leaves you with a 0% Pressure affect.
01:18So in order to get the Pressure effect we have to those change values
01:22either by numerically changing them or moving the sliders. I am going to give it
01:28somewhat of a generic guesstimate as to what I want it to do.
01:32For now, I'm going to say OK.
01:35Let's get the art brush and let's do the original. I am just going to make a little loop.
01:43I am going to do the Pressure one and I am going to try it be very subtle as to--
01:47oh!, wow, that's too big.
01:50So if you do it too big, because this is not scientific, I'm going to
01:54double-click and then I can make an adjustment. I am going to say OK that's too much.
01:59How about that. If this brush is applied, you can do Preview.
02:06It is, so I can actually get feedback.
02:10Say okay, that's what I had in mind. All right.
02:15That's a better adjustment. So let's say OK. And yes, I want to apply it to strokes.
02:26As opposed to--so again, you can make those adjustments.
02:33You can just double-click the brush.
02:35If it's selected--let's try it with its selected this time--let's see
02:46the range can make it all thinner or all thicker.
02:52Notice you can see some of it in Preview regardless of whether I've selected the object.
02:58Some of it previews well, some of it doesn't.
03:03Obviously it's better if it is selected.
03:10So we are going to say OK.
03:14So let's look at another one of the parameters that can make a difference
03:17in some cases, although a subtle difference with this kind of naturalistic art brush.
03:22Again these are parameters that you are going to want to explore in more depth
03:26when you have object-related art brushes instead of just the natural media art brushes.
03:31These are very subtle changes for this kind of art brush.
03:35What I have done here is, I have taken the dark ink wash and I have made three
03:41different adjustments to it; Ink Wash 2, Ink Wash 3, and Ink Wash 4.
03:47And you can see there is a very subtle difference between the way this brush
03:53is applied along the path.
03:56I haven't done it with Pressure, I've done it with another one of the parameters.
04:00And this is the parameter that's going to be really useful and really
04:03significant in the other kind of art brush.
04:07But is a little less significant, in this case, for the naturalistic art brushes,
04:16but let's go look at it.
04:18And that's the Stretch to Fit Stroke Length versus the other options.
04:25If choose Scale Proportionately in this particular object, it's going to render
04:30it not useful for this application.
04:33Again if you've got an object artbrush this might be useful.
04:36This one however, stretched between guides, can be useful. What that means is
04:42you can decide which area of your art brush is going to stretch
04:47and which is not going to stretch.
04:48So what I've done for these other three variations is adjust which parts of
04:55the brush are going to vary.
04:58So if you can watch live on the left as I am making these adjustments
05:05you can actually determine that the tip of the brush, you don't want to distort that much.
05:12It's actually useful in this case, because if it all distorts you
05:17actually lose all of the detail in the end of the brush.
05:21So it can be quite useful.
05:26But it's not a definitive adjustment. It's something that you will have to
05:31adjust by eye for each object. That means you probably want to make a
05:36duplicate for each time that you want to make this adjustment unless you know
05:41for sure that you do not want your objects to lose its detail
05:48in the beginning or the end, for instance.
05:49So many of these are parameters might or might not make a difference for your
05:53particular object. Many of them don't actually affect the naturalistic art brush as much at all.
06:01The Tints Method of colorization is what allows you to change the color of your stroke
06:05and have it be reflected in the art brush.
06:09So you are going to want to keep it at Tints for these.
06:12There are other methods depending on what kinds of objects you have made into the art brush.
06:18Obviously the Flipping can make a difference for particular brushes as well.
06:25So feel free to play an experiment, but most of these are parameters that
06:30you're not going to find that useful, except for maybe with the particular object
06:34if you need to make a certain kind of adjustment.
06:37When you move on to the object kind of art brushes as opposed to the
06:40naturalistic art brush, these are going to be very important parameters for you.
06:46Most of the art brushes that you'll be loading from the Brush Libraries menu
06:50will already have the Tints Method available to you.
06:56That means that you're going to able to change the color and the stroke will be affected by the color.
07:03If you're making brushes on your own, it's always best to make a duplicate of the original,
07:08if you are going to be experimenting.
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7. Stroke Profiles
Overview of the stroke profiles in the Stroke panel
00:00So there's another kind of brush-like thing that you can do in Illustrator,
00:07that isn't a brush.
00:08So we have already looked at the Blob brush that isn't a brush. This is even
00:12less of a brush because it doesn't even have its own icon in the tools panel.
00:17Even though it probably looks like I've applied brushes to this, I have not.
00:22What I've done is chosen Stroke Profiles and this is the mini version of it,
00:31but let's look at it in a Stroke panel first.
00:34If this is what you see when you open the Stroke panel, you want to
00:38enlarge the Stroke panel.
00:39Right here, at the bottom you will see Profile.
00:43So if I return this to Uniform, you will see indeed it is just a plain old stroke.
00:50This is a thick stroke and you can apply profiles to any old stroke,
00:55but it will be more visible if you apply it to a thicker one.
00:58So you can go ahead and experiment with what happens. It's pretty easy and
01:09pretty powerful to develop objects that have some character, some warmth that
01:14are not quite your classic, hard-edged vectors that they have some nuance to them.
01:21That's a very simple thing to do.
01:23So there are of course ways for you to customize your own profiles and create
01:29your own and save your own, but if you're a beginner Illustrator user, they're
01:33definitely going to be a bit over your head.
01:36If you're an advanced Illustrator user and you want to learn how to do it,
01:40you are going to want to find out more about the Width tool, that's this tool,
01:47which allows you to customize the vectors, the paths and the Bezier curves.
01:53There are a number of movies in lynda.com by various authors on using the Width tool
01:58and customizing your stroke paths.
02:02But for now, go ahead and experiment, go ahead and play. Don't delete any of
02:06these profiles because you will actually be deleting them from the application itself,
02:10not just from the document. This is a very strange difference between
02:15working with brushes and working with profiles.
02:17So go ahead and experiment away with what is here. If you want to take this
02:24opportunity to learn more about how to work with Beziers and vectors and
02:29customize your own paths, then please go learn more about using the Width tool.
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Applying stroke profiles
00:00So in the previous movie we covered most of the basics of applying profiles to strokes.
00:06But let's just go into a couple of more tips for working with stroke profiles.
00:11One thing is you might want to hide your edges from the View menu, Cmd+H or Ctrl+H.
00:19In that way your selection edges aren't interfering with what you're
00:23seeing when you're changing profiles.
00:25Now most of the time, instead of going to the Stroke panel, you are probably
00:30just going to want to take a look at what strokes are available in the Control
00:35panel, which is usually there all the time.
00:37So they're calling up the Variable Width Profile, which is strangely different
00:44from just calling it profile.
00:46So don't be confused. From here it's the same set of pop-ups that you get
00:53from the bottom of the actual Stroke Profile.
00:56As I mentioned before, you don't really see a lot of change unless your stroke
01:03is a bit larger in scale.
01:06So I am just going to increase the stroke here.
01:09Of course you can also change your stroke color from the Color pop-up.
01:16If you hold down the Shift key, you get the pop-up for the Color Mixer
01:21instead of the Swatches. You can use the Eyedropper tool to pick up other
01:28stroke profiles as well.
01:29So that's just a few more tips and tricks for working with profiles, they are pretty easy.
01:36The main thing is you do not, not, not want to delete the profiles, because they
01:43will delete them from the entire application.
01:45Do not click Delete, don't have to ever use it, but don't click Delete.
01:50Notice how different, by the way, the profiles look at different sizes.
01:57One last tip, when you hide edges, they will stay hidden until you unhide them.
02:03Unlike Photoshop, where they will show up again as soon as you drop that
02:08selection and start again, not true.
02:11So if I go over here to select objects, they are still hidden and it can confuse you.
02:17And even more confusing is that preference of having the edges hidden will be saved with your file.
02:26It will completely perplex you if you open a file and there are no edges available.
02:31So make sure when you are done, you restore the toggle, which is Show Edges
02:36or Cmd+H or Ctrl+H. Stay-tuned to the next movie where you will see that you
02:42can apply Variable Stroke Profiles to brushed paths.
02:46So you can combine a brushed path with the stroke profile.
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Applying stroke profiles to brushed paths
00:00So this set of objects actually do you have art brushes applied to them,
00:05all the set except for the first one, this is the basic path.
00:09Each one of these has a different brush. You can see as I select it,
00:13a different brush is going to be highlighted in the Brushes panel.
00:16So one of the cool things about stroke profiles is that you can apply them to
00:22even objects that have brushes applied to them.
00:26You are not going to see a difference with most brushes, but you do actually see
00:30a difference with many of the art brushes.
00:32I am going to actually select this whole set, which includes the one on the left,
00:38which does not have a brush applied, it just has a thicker stroke.
00:43I am going to again hide edges, which is View>Hide Edges, or Cmd+H, Ctrl+H,
00:49so they don't get in the way.
00:52Let's close the Brushes panel and open the Strokes panel and you can access the profiles
00:58from up here at the Control panel, where it says Variable Width Profile.
01:04Down in the actual Stroke Profile where it actually does calls it Profile
01:09in the Stroke panel, which actually just says Profile, oddly enough, the same thing
01:13and different names.
01:14So from here, you can actually just experiment with what happens to the
01:19character of a brush and a brushed path if you change.
01:25It may or may not be useful for you, but depending on the exact object
01:30you're working with, it may actually come in handy.
01:35So feel free to apply, feel free to play and if you feel up to the experimental
01:42task of trying to customize your own, you can try.
01:47First of all, make sure you toggle off the Hide Edges, so that Show Edges
01:52or Cmd+H, Ctrl+H. In order to try to customize a path with the Width tool,
01:59in CS5 I think it's called the Variable Width tool, you select the object.
02:04Now I am going to move into the object and I'm going to hover over the object.
02:08I am going to look for one of these nodes that's sticking out.
02:13It's a little hard to see. I am going to grab it and really gently I am going to
02:18pull a little bit, just to make a little bit of a variant.
02:21If you hold the Option key, you only are pulling half of it.
02:28Let's say that it's just the cat's meow and I want to save it.
02:31So if you go up to either this pop-up in the Control panel or in the Stroke panel,
02:38you'll see if you have varied it enough, you should see either this icon show up
02:44or if you are in CS5 you will get a little floppy disk icon if you understand what that means.
02:50And you click it and you say, you will save it. So you can call it, let's say Bump.
02:57Now my little Bump is showing up as well.
03:00The key is that, I am going to go back to my Selection tool.
03:04I can apply Bump to any object I want.
03:11So it's not that hard to add things, it's a little hard to get control of it.
03:15If you do need help, please look up the other movies about using the Width tool.
03:19It could be called the Width tool or the Variable Width tool because it's
03:23changed for one version of Illustrator to the other, but hopefully this has
03:27piqued your interest to try to figure out a little more about working with vectors.
03:31Make sure whatever you do, don't delete any of the profiles,
03:38because they will be deleted from your application.
03:41So when I have added this profile, let's see, it should show up in my new file as well.
03:54So do experiment with applying the different profiles and may be try
03:59a couple of width variations on your own.
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8. Expanding Your Toolset
Overview
00:00So far we've been looking at the different brushes separately.
00:03But in practice, you are probably going to end up more likely than not
00:08combining brushes within the same document. Just be aware you will get more complex if you are using just a few bristle brushes,
00:16you are going to get a warning about that.
00:19So make sure you check the Bristle Brush chapter on the warning.
00:25You will notice that in this file, there are quite a few different brushes loaded.
00:28Not all of them are being used in this file.
00:32But the more complex your image gets, the more you are going to want to make
00:36sure you do use layers. I keep saying it again and again, but make sure that
00:42you're comfortable with layers.
00:43There are some movies in this course about using layers and there are lots
00:46of movies that you can watch other places in lynda.com about using Illustrator layers.
00:51Really important for starting to organize things, for instance
00:56I've separated out the bristle brush colors from the non-bristle brush colors
01:01unto different layers.
01:04Another wonderful thing is if you need to find a path within a Layers panel
01:09and you can't find it and you don't want to go opening and searching,
01:13there is a little icon that appeared in Illustrator CS6 called Locate Object.
01:20It's also up here in the panel and it actually has been there for awhile.
01:24So if you have an earlier version, you probably have Locate Object.
01:27But I love this little icon, it will actually open up the Layers panel for you
01:31and find that exact path, so you can then act upon it.
01:35So with the Selection tool, I can obviously change the size of a stroke
01:42and I can affect the vectors, I can smooth it and all sorts of other things,
01:47but I can't do things like thicken the path.
01:49I am going to make this a darker color so you can see what's going on here.
01:54If instead I choose the Paintbrush tool or the B key, I can then use my
02:00bracket keys to make that brush larger or smaller, or of course change the opacity.
02:08All of these things we've covered in previous lessons.
02:12You are going to be able to pull it all together and start creating complex works on your own.
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Using Draw Inside with brushes
00:00So now we are going to look at a cool feature called Draw Inside.
00:05It's actually a simplification of how to create draw within masks in Illustrator.
00:11It's a little complicated, but that's why this is in the section of the course.
00:16So what I am going to do is I am just going to draw a really basic, not very good teapot.
00:25I'm going to then set the Fill Color to some sort of blue.
00:30Now I am going to move to the actual teapot that I drew, which is here.
00:36I drew this with the Pencil tool.
00:38And I properly kept ahead of myself and renamed the layer Pencil Outline, which
00:45you can just name a layer by double-clicking.
00:48From here, what I did was, I worked on doing a better job with this
00:55by selecting it, holding the Command key and selecting it. Then taking the Blob
00:59Brush tool and working it, working it, working it, fixing it, smoothing it,
01:07gradually smoothing it, getting a better job. Using the Eraser tool, I am
01:13turning around my stylus.
01:15If you don't have a pen and tablet, you can grab the Eraser tool or do Shift+E.
01:25I am making a hole for the handle and so on and so forth,
01:32going back to the Blob Brush tool.
01:34This is like a cooking show, I am going to skip ahead to taking it out of the oven.
01:39There is my improved teapot.
01:41I've renamed the layer Blob because it's no longer just a pencil.
01:46Now what we are going to do is we are going to use this path to draw inside.
01:52What does that mean?
01:53So if I actually just made another layer and drew Bristle brushes into it,
02:01I would have to be concerned or worry about how things touch on the edge.
02:07Let me just actually show you that for a second.
02:10So if I went and got my Bristle brushes-- let's choose a color. I am going to
02:20hit the slash key which will make the fill none because I want it to pay
02:24attention to the stroke.
02:27And if I just start painting to make a shape, trying to sculpt with paint, I am
02:37having trouble keeping it within the confines of the teapot, especially with
02:42bristle brushes because they're a little harder to be exacting in terms of where
02:47the confines of the stroke is.
02:54It's really more of a very gestural kind of brush.
03:00So in order to confine it to the teapot itself, instead I'm going to use this
03:06draw inside mode and that is the right down here.
03:10We are in the Draw Normal mode and you can shift between these using Shift+D key.
03:16If you are viewing your tools panel in a single row, this is going to be
03:22available from a pop-up.
03:24And the second one is Draw Behind. If I do that, whatever I draw is going to be
03:31behind whatever object I have selected. That's not what I want.
03:35This third icon is called Draw Inside.
03:39Automatically, when you select an object to be able to draw inside it,
03:43it will set the default appearance fill and stroke to whatever the object was.
03:49So in this case, it's blue.
03:50Now my instinct is to change my brush color to what I want to paint with.
03:58So if I go and choose blue, look at what's going to happen on my teapot, that's
04:03not what I intended.
04:04So I am going to undo that.
04:06This is really counterintuitive.
04:08So you are going to have to deselect this object in order to actually paint
04:14inside of it, it's not the selection that's determining that you are painting
04:18inside of it, it's this weird little dotted line border that you get.
04:23So I am going to hold down my Cmd key or Ctrl key and click outside, just once.
04:30Now I can choose whatever color I want.
04:33Now when I go to Paint, even though it looks like I'm starting to paint, even if
04:42I am way outside of it, you will notice its being confined to the pot.
04:48So to get out of it, you just want to switch back to Draw Normal and there you go.
04:56Now if I make a stroke, it's going to be not constrained by the path.
05:00So, as in the cooking show, we are going to switch to the next phase.
05:05And here we go, this is my Draw Inside, I will zoom in a little bit.
05:10So this is the next phase of it.
05:12So this is just using a couple bristle brushes to get it going. I am creating layers
05:18to try to keep things organized, trying to behave myself, so that you can
05:25follow along when you open the files.
05:28And we are going to cooking show to the next one.
05:31So I actually created an overlay layer, which as you can see is not
05:39constrained by the Draw Inside.
05:40I also have another version of the teapot, which I created by just selecting the path.
05:48If you just click on the little target icon next to an object in the Layers panel, you select it.
05:56And I am going to create another layer and if you hold down your Opt or Alt key
06:01and drag that little selection icon to another layer, you then create a copy of it.
06:12So that's how I created this other copy and then applied various brushes to the
06:19outline itself, and then was willing to paint outside of it in order to developing new effects.
06:29Ultimately, this is the version I ended up with. It incorporates art brushes,
06:40incorporates a number of different bristle brushes,
06:45even some calligraphic brushes in here.
06:48And I have given you this file to play with. You will see that I did organize it fairly well.
06:53Feel free to experiment and play.
Collapse this transcript
Applying brush and brush-like graphic styles to type
00:00Okay, my confession: I am not a typographer. I know I'm really messing up this type here.
00:07It's really nasty.
00:07If you are a typographer, you can probably use these techniques to do something beautiful
00:13and wonderful or grunge type or whatever.
00:16But I know you'll do a better job than me.
00:18I am just going to show you the principles of how to do it.
00:23So it's tricky and I'm going to show you two ways. The first is the easy way
00:27if you are more of a beginner and you just want to be able to do it and you don't
00:32want to have to understand what's behind it.
00:34Then for those who want to stick around, I'll show you sort of a little bit
00:38about where to find out more information about how to do it and the basics of what I'm doing here.
00:43So on the left, I have got a couple of pieces of graphic and just some type
00:51that says, brilliantly enough, type.
00:53I am going to Hide Edges, which is Cmd+H or Ctrl+H. I'm going to go over
01:00to the Brushes panel, which is what you would think you would do and you click a brush,
01:05let's say the charcoal feather. What happens?
01:08It's applying absolutely perfectly to the objects, which we've done in the previous lesson,
01:14and it's doing absolutely nothing to the type.
01:17I am going to undo that, and this is the easy way for those of you who don't
01:24want to know what you're doing, but you just want to quickly get some graphics
01:28into type. Hiding the edges again. The easiest way to do it is to open up the
01:33Graphic Styles panel, which may be in a different location on your screen.
01:38I've moved it so you can open it at the same time as the Brushes panel.
01:43Graphic Styles, you can also find it from here if you're not sure.
01:48If there are any graphic styles loaded, you can just click on them and it
01:54will apply it to anything you have got.
01:56Now notice it zeroed out the colors that I had with the box.
02:00So I am going to undo back. When you hover over it, you see it says
02:07Opt+click to add existing style, Ctrl+click for larger preview.
02:11Ctrl+click on it gives me this larger preview of what it would look like
02:15if applied to my selected object. That's pretty cool, pretty cool, right?
02:22The other option was of course if I hover over, it says Opt+click to add to existing style.
02:31Notice it didn't wipe out the appearance of the fills and it just added that grunge type to it.
02:38Now if I keep that Option key held, it will add the next one onto it, which is
02:43smaller so you are not going to see it.
02:45But technically, you can keep adding them on top of each other.
02:48But let's undo this, and look at how, if you want to get into the details,
02:55how you might apply your own brush to type.
02:58So I am going to close the Graphic Styles panel. I am going to select my type.
03:03I'm actually going to remove all styling from it. I am going to make it no fill and no stroke.
03:10The shortcut is the Slash key, which puts none into the stroke or the fill,
03:17whichever is the focus, the one in the front here. Then I hit the X key, which
03:22brings the opposite swatch into focus, either the stroke or the fill, by the X
03:28key. It keeps toggling that back and forth. Then the slash key again,
03:33so I've no fill and no stroke.
03:35So right now I have no type. I have type with no fill and no stroke. There is
03:41actually type there, but you can't see it.
03:42It must be selected with your Selection tool at this point and you want to
03:47open the Appearance panel. Again, available from the Window menu, if you don't see it,
03:51where it's this little funky dot.
03:54Then you are going to do something which is to add a stroke to it.
03:58So strokes notoriously adding to type will deform the type. So we will show you
04:04how to make that slightly less offensive if you want to.
04:08But remember, brushes are only added to strokes, so you have to add it to the stroke.
04:13So what I am going to do here is I'm going to say now that you have added the
04:18stroke in the Appearance panel, I am going to be able to add that Charcoal.
04:24I don't know that I can explain to you why you can only do it in this way.
04:29I'll go ahead and zoom in on it a little bit to make it even more offensive to you.
04:34If you want that effect to be in the background of a non-deformed type
04:40character, you can also add another fill.
04:45So with your type selected, I am going to give it a brown fill.
04:50Now you have still got your deformed type.
04:52So now I'm going to, in the same way that you would drag layers in the layers panel,
04:57I am going to drag the fill above the stroke.
05:01Now I can just increase the size of the stroke and you have non-deformed type with a grunge behind it.
05:11So with this appearance selected, if I now open the Graphic Styles, I should be
05:18able to Opt+click or Alt+click to save it as brown grunge . If I want to
05:30apply the brown grunge to say this type instead, there it is.
05:37If you want to learn more about how to work with the Appearance panel and adding
05:42multiple strokes and fills in a way that may be more beautiful than what I have
05:46shown you here, check out Mordy Golding's Deconstructing Appearance's chapter
05:50in the Illustrator Insider Training: Rethinking the Essentials course.
05:53Good luck! Feel free to just experiment with the Graphic Styles.
05:58Please do a more beautiful job than I did.
Collapse this transcript
More ways to add brushes
00:00So because this is a fairly straightforward set of tasks that I am going to be showing you,
00:05I am going to give those of you who are tuning in a bonus,
00:09which is a secret way of getting the eyedropper to pick up colors from your screen.
00:15I'm going to try to use the eyedropper to pick up color from my picture and
00:20notice that it's picking up nothing.
00:22So here is a tip: hold down the Shift key and you are picking up colors from your image.
00:32So aren't you glad you tuned in?
00:34So now I am going to also just show you a little bit about how to get
00:39more brushes into your file.
00:40So here we have not many brushes. These are the brushes that are loaded with
00:46Illustrator CS6, the version that I had, maybe different in your version.
00:50There just aren't a lot of anything, a bunch of calligraphic, one bristle
00:56brush, one art brush, there might be a couple more.
00:59I might have deleted the ones that are not relevant to naturalistic art brushes.
01:03But let's say I want more calligraphic, I would just go into Artistic_Calligraphic.
01:10Here you go, and I believe we have showed you on one of the other movies
01:14but I will just go through it again.
01:16As I click on the left you watch what happens on the right in the Brushes panel.
01:20As I click it, it appends.
01:22Notice, it groups the calligraphic brushes together and this is the
01:27basic path, which is basic. It's not a brush that returns back to just a regular old stroke.
01:33If you want them all in here and it will not add duplicates, so feel free to
01:38select the first, scroll down and hold down the Shift key, select the last and
01:43you can drag them in.
01:44Notice it didn't bring in additional versions of the ones that I had already dragged in.
01:50If you want to modify a brush, I would normally recommend that you first drag it
01:55to the new Brushes panel to duplicate it, and to modify the duplicate.
01:59I am going to undo that.
02:00But what if you forget? I have set this to Pressure, Random, Tilt.
02:09I am working way and I realize oh, no I want the original flat and I've messed it up.
02:16Well in this case, you can go to the 1 pt.
02:18Flat and it will add it again.
02:20So if you highlight a brush that's already in the Brushes panel, like the 3 pt.
02:27it will scroll to that brush in your Brushes panel.
02:31If it's not in the brushes panel when you highlight it, it will add it to it.
02:37So what I have done for you, if you get the files, I have created a series of
02:42documents in which I have already pre-loaded a bunch of stuff for you.
02:45If you don't get the files you can do this yourself manually.
02:48So for instance with my color selected I am just going to start drawing.
02:56You can see that I've added brushes.
03:00So I am going to move to the other files just to show you I have pre-loaded
03:04if you have access to them.
03:06In this one lots of calligraphy, lots of bristle brushes and lots of art brushes.
03:14I just loaded lots of art brushes, just looking at the art brushes that are
03:18in the natural media art brushes.
03:21So this one is really cool it has pencils. If they're art brushes you can't use
03:26the bracket keys, but you can use the stroke weight.
03:32Again, hold down Shift key with the eyedropper if you want to bring in the color.
03:37So feel free to make your own documents that have whatever brushes you want in them.
03:43When you save the document, the brushes will be saved with that file.
03:49Now there are going to be occasions when you have just too many brushes to find
03:54the one you want, so tune into the next movie if you want help trying to figure
03:58out how to narrow down your choices or even delete the ones you don't want.
Collapse this transcript
Hiding and deleting brushes
00:00We've gone over how to get brushes into your document, but as you can
00:06probably see, finding the brush you want could be a little difficult if you have too many.
00:12If you get the exercise files, then you'll have this document that's called lots
00:17of brushes. Indeed it has lots of brushes. It's not nearly all the brushes
00:21that you could have loaded from the Adobe toolset. These are all available
00:25from the Brush library.
00:27You could create your own document that has too many brushes in it yourself.
00:31So there is two things to do.
00:32One is you can temporarily make it easier to view only one kind of brush. That's
00:39one thing you can do, so let's look at that.
00:41By default from Brushes panel menu, I am showing all kinds of brushes.
00:46Now I don't have any pattern or scattered brushes and that's why those are
00:50grayed out. I've deleted those from the file.
00:53But what I am showing is calligraphic art and bristle brushes.
00:57So if deselect a type of brush, now all I have are the calligraphic brushes.
01:05They are still in the file, they will still be saved with the file,
01:09but they're not in your way visually if you're trying to just identify the
01:13calligraphic brushes.
01:15The more things that are in your file however, the bigger the file is going to be.
01:20These days we are all dealing with huge files. If you're working with Photoshop then,
01:26brushes aren't going to add a significant amount of heft to your file size.
01:33But, if you're passing off a file to clients its sometimes really good just to
01:40leave those things that are being used within your document.
01:45One thing you can do is let's say, make sure I am not on my template layer in
01:51order to be able to draw because my template layer it was locked.
01:55So I had to make sure, I activated a live layer.
02:02Let's say I have a document and these are the brushes that I'm using.
02:09I do not want any other brushes to be saved with the document.
02:18So what I can do, and I've restored the view of all the different brushes.
02:25No, actually I'll add a Spotter for just good measure and a Cat's Tongue.
02:32Okay, it's a two step process.
02:35You say Select All Unused, it will highlight all of the brushes that I'm not
02:41currently using in this document.
02:44If at this point I want to change my mind I can deselect and I've done no harm.
02:50But if you click on Delete Brush, all those brushes are going to be deleted.
02:55It says do you want to delete the selection last chance and you say, Yes.
02:59Well it's not actually the last chance because you can still undo this.
03:04So you can redo it and undo it.
03:05And sometimes you will notice that there will be an occasional brush that you
03:10didn't use that's still available in the Brushes panel. It's because it
03:16probably was being used by something else in your system for instance a graphic style
03:21might have contained a particular brush.
03:24So you can manually delete the style if you're not using it and then, delete the
03:31brush that you don't want in your document but that still remains.
03:34So if you know you want to remove the brushes from your document before you save
03:39the smallest file you can or simplify the file when you are going to work on it
03:45next time or want to pass off a clean document to your client, then you want to
03:49Select All Unused and then delete those brushes.
03:52But if you just want to temporarily hide the ones that are in the way
03:55you can choose to deselect the fact that it's being shown in the panel.
Collapse this transcript
Using vector editing tools
00:00Of course, every brush stroke is an Illustrator path at its core.
00:04So I just wanted to show you a little bit about how you can go back and then do
00:09those edits when you want.
00:10This is not a photograph, actually.
00:12This is a composite collage that I created in Photoshop of about six different photos,
00:17different perspectives to create an imaginary viewpoint that I could use
00:23as a template to create an Illustrator painting.
00:27I wasn't really careful in the collage because I knew I was going to just use it as a resource.
00:32So that's what I used as a template.
00:34So let's hide the template and show you where we ended up.
00:39This layer here--I will make it a little bigger--says hidden lines, is one of
00:45those typical reasons why I love Illustrator.
00:49These lines were in my base layer. One at a time, as I thought there were too
00:57many lines involved, I would drop them into a hidden layer. I am going to do
01:04that again for you just so you can see what I mean.
01:07This is my hidden lines layer.
01:08So I'm going to lock everything but the hidden lines layer so I can select easily.
01:12If that was a line I didn't think I needed any longer, instead of
01:16deleting it I could just hide it.
01:19So I just, one at a time, pick the lines that I didn't want.
01:23I am simulating this for you.
01:28There were just some extra details that I thought I didn't want.
01:30I ended up with this, which is a lot more spare.
01:37And then, another set of edits that I couldn't do, if this wasn't vector.
01:43This for instance to these words, which are fairly scribbly and gestural,
01:53made with the calligraphic brush.
01:56But I could easily select the paths. I could use any editing tools on them
02:05or I could even just make adjustments.
02:08Now remember everything in Illustrator can be sized to any size. Even if it
02:14looks like it's paint, it can be scaled to postage stamp size, it could be
02:19scaled to billboard size unlike Photoshop. Not the A; I was missing one of
02:24those lines when I picked it u. So I just undo back to that, make sure I get that line.
02:29Now I could group it and now I could scale it, move it, do whatever I want to.
02:38If I feel like I want to use an Editing tool on one of them, I select it with
02:42a Direct Selection tool, I can obviously smooth and all that stuff we have gone into that.
02:47If I want to really pick apart this object and edit it with my editing tools I absolutely can.
02:55Now obviously if you are a beginner and you want more help with how to edit
03:00with these tools, you are going to want to go check out Illustrator Essential Training.
03:04You can use any of your traditional vector editing tools.
03:08So this is without the base, this is just with the bristle brushes, and this is
03:14with the calligraphic brush overlay.
03:16There is an amazing amount of flexibility that you are going to have when
03:21you create a painting with vector tools that is really unavailable in any other medium.
03:28So remember, before you start editing, save versions and save often.
Collapse this transcript
Combining brushes in artwork
00:01So to try to get your creative juices going I just wanted to show you a couple
00:05of samples of how I've been combining brushes.
00:09Starting in the earlier days of Illustrator brushes, just combining the
00:14calligraphic and art brushes just to do drawings that include calligraphic ink
00:19and art brush washes.
00:22Then more recently when the bristle brush first came out, I sort of dipped my toe into it,
00:26adding this pastel color to a calligraphic drawing.
00:34Once, I started doing that, I realized that, there were a whole bunch of other
00:39ways that I could combine things.
00:42In this image I was playing almost everything together, almost all the brushes,
00:46Blob brush adding to a pencil tool outline, using calligraphic brushes and
00:50bristle brushes drawn inside to the blob brush and I even used a little pattern
00:55brush in there, combining with other kinds of tools in Illustrator.
00:59So I am beginning to feel like the brushes are becoming integrated into all the
01:06other ways that I work with Illustrator, but it's not just that.
01:09In this image, which is created entirely with bristle brushes to start with, I had
01:14then printed it out in archival media, attached it to a board and actually
01:19worked into it with traditional watercolor pencil.
01:22So now, I am combining these digital tools with traditional tools.
01:28I hope your mind is bubbling with so many ideas for how you can incorporate
01:32Illustrator brushes into your own artwork.
01:35Like I have said, there are countless possibilities.
01:37So I hope you take these techniques as a starting point and then apply them
01:42to your own projects.
Collapse this transcript
Conclusion
Next steps
00:00So thank you for tuning in.
00:02If you want more technical details about Illustrator, make sure to tune into
00:06Illustrator Insider Training: Rethinking the Essentials with Mordy Golding.
00:10There's lots of information for you there;
00:12how to expand your toolset and take advantage of a lot of things that
00:16we just touched on briefly here.
00:18I am also thrilled to be able to offer you a discount code in case you want to
00:22pick up my Illustrator Wow book, which goes in much more depth and intricacy
00:28to a lot of the tools.
00:29And we've included a free excerpt of the book which includes a bunch of the
00:33pages from the brushes chapter for you to look at.
00:36So thank you so much, I hope you've learned a ton and I hope this starts you off
00:42in a whole new creative direction.
Collapse this transcript


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