Drawing and editing brushed paths

The Brushes palette in Illustrator contains four brush types--Calligraphic, Scatter, Art, and Pattern brushes--to use in adding art to paths. You can choose from the brush effects that have been preloaded into the Brushes palette. You can also modify these brushes, create brushes, or import a brush from the Brush Libraries to the Brushes palette.

Brushes that you create and store in the Brushes palette are associated only with the current file. Each Illustrator file can have a different set of brushes in its Brushes palette.

You can achieve the following effects using the four brush types:

• Calligraphic brushes create strokes that resemble strokes drawn with the angled point of a calligraphic pen, drawn along the center of the path.
• Scatter brushes disperse copies of an object (such as a ladybug or a leaf) along the path.
• Art brushes stretch an object or artwork (such as an arrow or dog bone) evenly along the length of the path.
• Pattern brushes paint a pattern--made of individual tiles--that repeats along the path. Pattern brushes can include up to five tiles, for the sides, inner corner, outer corner, beginning, and end of the pattern.

Sample brushes A. Calligraphic brush B. Scatter brush C. Art brush D. Pattern brush

Related Subtopics:

Drawing a brushed path with the paintbrush tool
Creating a brushed path with a drawing tool
Modifying brushed paths