Illustrator: Creating a calligraphic brush

Creating brushes

You can create each of the four types of brushes in the Brushes palette. All brushes must be made up of simple open and closed path vectors. Brushes cannot have gradients, blends, other brush strokes, mesh objects, bitmap images, graphs, placed files, or masks.

• Art brushes and pattern brushes cannot include type. However, to achieve a brush stroke effect with type, create an outline of the type and then create a brush with the outline.

Creating a calligraphic brush

You can change the angle, roundness, and diameter of strokes painted with calligraphic brushes.

To create a calligraphic brush:

1 Click the New Brush button in the Brushes palette, or choose New Brush from the palette menu. Select New Calligraphic Brush and click OK.

2 In the Name text box, enter a name for the brush (up to 30 characters).

3 Specify values for the angle, roundness, and diameter of the brush (the preview in the dialog box reflects your settings):

• To set the ellipse angle of rotation, drag the arrowhead in the preview, or enter a value in the Angle text box.

• To set the roundness, drag a black dot in the preview away from or toward the center, or enter a value in the Roundness text box. The higher the value, the greater the roundness.

• To set the diameter, use the Diameter slider, or enter a value in the Diameter text box.

4 From each pop-up menu, choose the way in which you want to control variations in the angle, roundness, and diameter:

• Choose Fixed to use the value in the associated text box. For example, when the Diameter value is 20, Fixed always uses 20 for the brush diameter.

• Choose Random to use a random value within a specified range. When you choose Random, you also need to enter a value in the Variation text box, or use the Variation slider, to specify the range by which the brush characteristic can vary. For each stroke, Random uses any value between that in the text box for the brush characteristic plus or minus the Variation value. For example, when the Diameter value is 15 and the Variation value is 5, the diameter can be 10, or 20, or any value in between.

• Choose Pressure (if you will use the brush with a graphics tablet) to use a value determined by the pressure of your stylus. When you choose Pressure, you also need to enter a value in the Variation text box, or use the Variation slider. Pressure uses the value in the text box for the brush characteristic minus the Variation value for the lightest tablet pressure. It uses the value in the text box for the brush characteristic plus the Variation value for the heaviest pressure. For example, when the Roundness value is 75% and the Variation value is 25%, the lightest stroke is 50% and the heaviest stroke is 100%. The lighter the pressure, the more angular the brush stroke.

5 Click OK.

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Note: see the images at the end of this tutorial.............