1Creating a Brush in Illustrator

Creating a Brush in IllustratorYou can create new calligraphic, scatter, art, and pattern brushes based on your own set-tings. For scatter, art, and pattern brushes, you must first create the artwork you want to use.

Follow these guidelines when creating artwork for brushes:• The artwork cannot contain gradients, blends, other brush strokes, mesh objects, images, graphs, placed files, or masks.• For art and pattern brushes, the artwork cannot contain type. To achieve a brush-stroke effect with type, create an outline of the type and then create a brush with the outline.• For pattern brushes, create a pattern tile (see page 2), and add the tile to the brushes palette.

1. For scatter and art brushes, select the artwork you want to use. For pattern brushes, you can select the artwork for the side tile, but it isn’t necessary.

2. Click the New Brush button in the Brushes panel. Alternatively, drag the selected artwork to the Brushes panel.

3. Select the type of brush you want to create, and click OK.

4. In the Brush Options dialog box, enter a name for the brush, set brush options, and click OK.

2Creating a Brush in Illustrator

How to create a tile for a Pattern Brush

Example zipper teeth

1. Draw the one tooth shape.

2. Copy that shape and turn it 180 degrees and place it next to the first tooth

3. Copy the two teeth and place them next to the original teeth.

4. Draw a rectangle (fill & stroke set to none). Make sure this rectangle sits on top of where the teeth repeat

5. Select this rectangle and send it to the back. (behind the zipper teeth) OBJECT > ARRANGE > SEND TO BACK• This tells the brush palette where to repeat the tile

6. Select the teeth and the rectangle and drag into the brushes palette