Adobe Illustrator – Creating Art Brushes

Art brushes stretch to the length of any path to which they are applied. Normally you create your own art brush, and then bend it, stretch it, or squeeze it onto any path. The same art brush can be applied to a long or short stroke.

Art Brush No-No’s: You can create an art brush from artwork, including compound paths. But don’t try to use a gradient fill, a mask, or a mesh.

To create a new art brush, follow these steps:

  1. Create some artwork.

    Note: Instead of creating your own artwork, you may prefer to use artwork from any Illustrator symbol palette. You’ll learn how at the end of this section.

  2. Drag the artwork onto the Brushes palette. The New Brush dialog appears. Select the New Art Brush options button and click OK. Using Symbols as Art Brushes: One useful and easy technique is to use symbols as art brushes. First, open a symbol library (Window > Symbol Libraries) and choose a library. The Symbol library opens as a palette. Drag a symbol onto the artboard. Then, drag the symbol object from the artboard onto the Brushes palette. The New Brush dialog opens. Choose the New Art Brush option button in the dialog, and click OK. Define options for the new art brush the way you would any other art brush. You can now apply any symbol, such as an arrow, along any path.

  3. The Art Brush Options dialog opens, with the brush design selected in the preview window of the dialog box. Enter a name in the Name area of the dialog.
  4. In the Direction area, select the arrow that starts from the bottom and points to the top. This will make the pattern appear in an intuitive, right-side-up manner as you draw a path up with a drawing tool. Note: Other Direction areas provide other options for how the art brush will move along as you draw a stroke. You might want to define two separate art brushes from the same artwork, so the artwork can be applied to strokes facing up (or down), or right (or left), depending on how you draw a path.
  5. Enter a Width value in the Size area to define how large the symbol will display relative to the stroke path. Normally, you’ll want to select the Proportional checkbox to keep the height-to-width ratio unchanged as you rescale the object to which the art brush is applied.
  6. After you define the art brush options, click OK.
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