Adobe Illustrator Brush Tool

[Emerson Mata]

Ihad the exact same problem. What i did was select the lines you would like to edit with the Width Tool and in the Brushes panel select the "Remove Brush Stroke" toggle, it looks like the Paintbrush tool toggle with a line through it. Then go ahead and edit with the Width tool.

And be aware, when editing the pattern brush, width edits will be lost on all paths using that pattern. You'll need to SAVE your custom width profiles and re-assign them after editing the brush. This is NOT a good thing. Hope it is corrected in future updates.

This was the first thing I tried when I installed the software. Took 30mins tracing some custom script. Then chose the Width Tool to edit and then BAM 20mins of looking it up to make sure there wasn't some workaround to make it happen.

On behalf of illustrator users around the world... let me ask, We need a way to edit the width of lines.. no matter what tool they were drawn in. At least give us a way to convert brush paths to fixed width lines... This is one of those situations where a tool is not completely baked... and while being able to edit the width of some lines is better than nothing, still very frustrating.

I've been using Illustrator since 2016 and have always had this issue no matter what version of Illustrator I use. I've ignored it until now and would opt for the blob brush instead or just Pen tool it, but for this project, I unfortunately need the paintbrush tool and maybe its time to finally figure out what this issue is for once and for all. I'll try to be as descriptive as possible.

I select the Paintbrush Tool, set my brush profile to "Uniform" and select "Basic" from the Brush Library. With my Wacom pen, I draw a stroke and the line changes to the "Denim Seams" preset. I attempt the same with my mouse and the stroke, again, swaps to "Denim Seams". I can change the stroke to "Basic" like intended, but its pretty annoying to do this throughout the project. All I want is to simply draw a Basic line with the Paintbrush tool.

I am thinking that somewhere along the lines perhaps you set up a preference that told the basic brush to use the denim seams. Then when you update to a new version, you say you want to import the preferences? So maybe you need to reset the preferences. That is the only possibility I can think that may cause this.

It's possible you have to definitevely select another brush; either the profiles at the top, or the alternatives to the denim one at the bottom. I did that and my brush tool stays at whatever I used last (color, style, weight) when I close my document and make a new one, and also when I quit and restart Illustrator. Maybe just a passing bug for you?

Illustrator's Paintbrush Tool (B) and Brush Panel are some of its most powerful tools. With the Paintbrush Tool (B) and Brush Panel, you can dress up your vector paths into compelling flourishes, patterns, tapered edges, and more.

The difference is that Illustrator's Paintbrush Tool (B) applies predefined vector art to the paths you create. This might seem like a simple distinction, but using brushes will greatly improve your Illustrator productivity and helps you create artwork you never thought possible. There are five Illustrator brush options:

The Scatter Brush in Illustrator will define paintbrush vector art as a brush. The Scatter Brush will then scatter copies of the art across a path when applied to a path.

Illustrator already has several preset Calligraphic Brushes, but you can use the following steps to create a new Calligraphic Brush. Unless you are working with a tablet, don't change the settings for the variations from the dropdown menus.

Roundness: Entering a lower number than 100% will produce a flatter brush. Setting the Variation to Random with a high value will create more variation in the roundness of the brush.

Size: Use the slider to define a Fixed or Random size for the scatter brush elements in relation to the original shape. If you want to define a random size, select Random from the drop-down menu. Use the two variation sliders to specify the range within which the brush size will vary.

Spacing: Use the slider to define a Fixed or Random amount of spacing between instances. If you want to define a random amount of space, select Random from the drop-down menu. Use the two variation sliders to specify the range within which the spacing between instances will vary.

Hue Shift: Set a key color for the brush. By default, the most prominent color in the brush is set to be the key color. To change the key color, click the eyedropper icon, and click the color that you want to be set as the key color from the brush preview in the Brush Options window. The sections from the brush that use the key color will be replaced with the stroke color. Other colors in the brush artwork become colors related to the stroke color. Black, white, and gray do not change.

Brush Scale Options: Set the scale settings for an art brush. With the Stretch Between Guides setting, you can use the two guides in the brush preview window to set the portion of the brush that should stretch when you apply the brush on a path.

Direction: This setting sets the orientation of the brush in relation to the path to which the brush is applied. Select one of the four arrows to change this option. The blue arrow that appears in the preview window allows you to see how the art will be drawn on a path.

Pattern brushes are arguably the most difficult to master. A Pattern Brush can consist of up to five different pattern swatches. You can use different artwork for the start, finish, side (center), inside corner, and outside corner. Creating a Pattern Brush with five pattern swatches requires you to create some pattern tiles. First, you will learn how to create a simple Pattern Brush, and then you'll learn how to create a Pattern Brush with multiple pattern swatches.

Illustrator doesn't auto-generate tiles for the Start Tile and the End Tile, so let's create them. Gradients and Effects cannot be used when creating a Pattern Brush.

To open your saved brushes, click the Brush Libraries Menu and go to User Defined. In this same menu, you can access all the built-in brushes that come with Illustrator. Alternatively, you can open the dropdown menu and go to Open Brush Library > User Defined.

If you need to edit an instance of a brush, use the Option of Selected Object button from the Brushes panel. You can make changes to a certain brush stroke without affecting the other strokes.

You cannot use gradients in brushes, but you can use blends. You can create a blend that looks like a gradient and create a brush out of it. Check out this tutorial if you want to learn more about how you can use blends to create complex pattern brushes: How to Create a Light Bulb Text Effect in Adobe Illustrator.

Now that you know how to get different brushes in Illustrator, feel free to create your own collection of brushes. You can find some great sources of inspiration at Envato Elements, with plenty of Illustrator brush options.

Is it possible to continue a previously drawn vector brush curve in Affinity Designer? If I start a curve using the vector brush tool and lift my pen off my screen, and later want to continue the same curve, I am unable to do so. I know that with the Pen tool you can Cntrl click the curve to continue it, but this appears not to work with the vector brush. How does one do this? Thanks in advance!

AFAIK, what you want is not supported. 2 things. You can assign a vector brush stroke to a pen line, which mean the brush "nib" will continue to stretch or repeat along the vector. You can also draw a new line w. either the vector brush or the pencil, and then use the join curves command. If the added curve is close to the original, the join won't require much if any tweaking.

On Mac OS I can use the pen tool to continue on once I have selected the end node (use the Command key to temporarily switch to the Node tool in order to select the end node) then with that end node selected I can continue using the Pen tool to add to the curve by holding down the Option Key.

Anyone have useful workarounds for this workflow? I heavily use brush tool to go over an existing vector curve or to resume my brushwork to extend things with a stylus. Piling on resuming lines with pen pressure would be much more empowering than going switching to a pen tool for this, and can't imagine there's a sane way to rebuild stroke weight after switching to the pen tool to add anchor points.

I didn't see a v2 thread about this and don't know where to upvote this if this "pre-v2" is where suggestions stay suggestions forever ... Side question: is there a way to edit the pressure by interacting directly with a curve, I recall something like a "stroke width" editor tool in Illustrator for making thickness adjustments manually, which is the 2nd half of this painpoint in my workflow. Thanks for being easy on a newbie awakening an old thread.

If only I could draw a straight line (not only 45 or 90 degrees), by holding shift + clicking the desired end point of the line, LIKE IN PHOTOSHOP, I am working with the blob brush tool (the most useful tool for me) and a Wacom tablet.

Use the line tool you say, NO THANKS, I need to stay with the blob brush tool

to work intuitively, PLEASE, this is actually a major limitation, why would we only want straight lines at 45 or 90 degrees? .... PLEASE check it out out, it really is essential!

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