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Doing so will make your brush work in a more familiar fashion. Under options, I recommend unchecking “Fill new brush strokes” and “Keep selected”. This setting is entirely based on your style of drawing. Accurate will yield more anchor points while smooth delivers less. This is determined based on a slider ranging from “accurate” to “smooth”. In the Paintbrush Tool Options dialog box, you can alter the Fidelity and Options.įidelity controls the distance that you have to move your pen to add new anchor points to a path. You can modify the Tool Options by double tapping on the Paintbrush tool in the toolbox. Pressing the pen lightly to the tablet produces a thin stroke, while pressing the pen harder to the tablet produces a wider stroke.Īnother consideration is the behavior of the Paintbrush Tool itself. Now, drawing with the Paintbrush tool and your Wacom pen should yield a more true-to-form brush stroke. In doing this, you set a smaller brush size based on the lightest touch of your pen to the tablet and a larger brush size based on a heavier touch.
Next, increase the variation slider to 5. Change the size parameter from the default “Fixed” to “Pressure” from the dropdown menu. Doing so will reveal the Calligraphic Brush Options for that brush. To vary the width of a brush stroke, double tap on the first Calligraphic brush in the Brush Panel (the first brush in the top row of the Brush Panel). Using your Wacom tablet’s pressure-sensitive pen, you can vary the width of the brush stroke based on how hard you physically put your pen to the tablet. Meaning, the stroke maintains the same width from the beginning to the end. That is because there isn’t any variation to your brush stroke. The results will likely look “ho-hum” boring. Next, simply press your pen to the tablet and draw a stroke across your document. (There are five brush types in all, including: Scatter, Art, Bristle and Pattern.) Not to worry though, the default Calligraphic brush is the most common brush type for drawing. If you are familiar with brushes in Photoshop, this panel may look a bit sparse. Select the tool from the toolbox, and then chose a brush from the Brush Panel. This method offers a more familiar drawing experience, particularly with a Wacom tablet. When you use the Paintbrush Tool however, you simultaneously apply a brush stroke as you draw. You create these paths using any number of tools, such as the aforementioned Rectangle Tool, Line Tool, etc. In most instances, drawing in Illustrator involves creating vector paths and then applying various brushes to those paths to achieve a desired appearance. Both possess unique behaviors, which are beneficial for different approaches to drawing. There are two different brush tools in Illustrator: The Paintbrush Tool and the “Blob Brush Tool”.