Transcript:
Hello, I’m Cristina. From Elan Creative Co. And in this tutorial, I will show you how to create a pattern brush in Illustrator. These are the four brushes that we are going to make. As you can see, the first one is a simple star brush and we are going to start by drawing a star. I’m going to use the Star tool for that. So just draw your star and then select it. Now go to Window > Brushes to open the Brushes men. From this menu, you can create new brushes or use existing an brush. If you want to delete these brushes, just select them and drag them to the trashcan icon. So select your star and then drag it to the Brushes panel. Now select Pattern Brush from the menu and press, OK? This will open up the Pattern. Brush Menu. So let’s rename it, I’m going to call it. Stars and I also want to change the scale to 40%, just to make it a bit smaller. And then I will increase the spacing to 10%. Under spacing, there are a few options. So this one here, the side style will be your main pattern. Illustrator also has options for the corner tiles and for the start and end tiles. As you can see, it also generates corner tiles, But a little bit later. I will show you how to also create custom corner tiles. Now, from the Fit menu you can select. Stretch to fit. Add space to fit or Approximate path. I like to use Approximate Path because it doesn’t stretch the stars. And if you want to change the color of the brush, you will have to choose Hue Shift from the Colorization Method. Just press ok to save it. As you can see, our new pattern, brush now appears in the brushe’s panel. So I’m going to test it now. I’ll change the stroke color to black and then use the Curvature Tool to our draw, a curved path. Now I’m going to select it and then I’ll click on the Star’s brush. This looks great. Let’s also test it with the Ellipse tool. Hold down the Shift key. If you want to draw a perfect circle and then click on the Star’s pattern. Brush, You can see the stars are perfectly aligned in a circle. I’m going to delete this and I’m also going to use it with the Rectangle tool. Now here, we have a small problem because the auto generated corners do not look very nice. But we can create our own custom corners to just select the star and then go to Object >. Pattern > Make. This still will open up the pattern making tool, but we won’t be creating the pattern, so just press. Done to save it. Now double click on your Star’s pattern brush and then from the Outer Corner Tile menu. Select your new pattern. Also go to the Inner Corner Tile menu and select the new pattern. As you can see, the corners already look better, so press OK to save them and then press. Apply to Stroke. As you can see here, the corners are not perfectly aligned, but they look much better than the auto-generated ones. So I’m going to delete this now. And then we can create the second pattern. Brush lLet’s take a look at our second pattern brush. So this one has a dot and a star. So let’s draw a dot. I’m going to use the Ellipse tool and I will hold down the Shift key while I draw to create a perfect circle. Let’s change the fill color to black. I’m going to select both of them and I will hold down the Alt key or option key on Mac and just drag both of these shapes to duplicate them. So this will be our new pattern. So I’m going to select all of them and then drag them to the Brushes panel. So just select Pattern. Brush and press, okay. So just like before. I’m going to rename this pattern brush. Let’s call it Stars and Dots. I’ll make the size a bit smaller and also increase the spacing. Now I’m also going to choose an inner corner tile and then that set Fit to Approximate Path. I will also change the Colorization Method to Hue Shift and then press OK to save the new brush. Now let’s test our second brush. So I’m going to select this first path and I will hold down the Alt key and drag the path to duplicate it. Now, with the new path selected just to go to the Brushes panel and select the second brush. As you can see, this one looks great, too. Let’s also test it with a circle. So if you want to maybe make it smaller, you can change the stroke size. So let’s see. Now, if you use it with the Rectangle tool, you will have to again create custom corners because the corners are not great. But you can do that with the method I showed you before. Now let’s delete this and create another brush. So let’s take a look at our first pattern brush. So this one is basically our second pattern brush but with a line on top. So I’m going to group these items and then I will use the line tool to draw a straight line on top. Change the stroke color to black. And I’m also going to change the stroke. You ten points! I will hold down the Shift key while I draw. So the line has to be just a bit bigger than our group of items. So I’m going to select all of them and just like before. Drag them to the Brushes panel. Now select Pattern, Brush and press, Ok? So let’s call is just Stars 3 I’m going to make the scale smaller again, but this time I won’t increase the spacing because I want to have a seamless pattern. So I’m just going to change the inner corner to auto centered and the Fit to Approximate Path. If you want to change the colors later, just change the Colorization Method to Hue Shift. And then press, OK? So let’s test our new pattern brush. I’m just going to duplicate this path and then click on the pattern brush to test it. This one looks great too, and we have a seamless pattern just like we wanted. So let’s also test it with the Ellipse tool Again. If you use the Rectangle tool, the corners are not perfect, so we will have to create custom corners if you want to create pattern brushes for sharp corners. Now let’s take a look at our last pattern brush. So this one has a pattern. A star’s and dots pattern on top. So to do that, we just have to duplicate these items. So select them all, and I’m just going to drag them down here. I’m just going to hold down the Alt key and then move them over here. I’m just going to Ungroup these items because I want to change the stroke. Let’s also make it a bit thicker, so change it to four points. Now I’m going to select all the items and again drag them to the Brushes panel Select Pattern. Brush again and then call this Star’s 4. I’m going to make them smaller and just like before. I won’t change the spacing. Now I’m going to add an auto centered inner corner tile, Change the Fit to Approximate Path and the Colorization Method to Hue Shift Press. OK to save them. Now I’m just going to delete this because I won’t need them anymore. So let’s duplicate our path and see how our last pattern brush looks. Just select it and there you have it. Maybe some of the stars are a bit stretched, but if we make it smaller, they all will look better. Now, let’s also try to see how it looks on an ellipse. I’m going to make it smaller again and let’s zoom in to see it. So these pattern brushes are actually perfect for curved lines and circles, And you can create a lot of different borders and wreaths using them. Thank you so much for watching. I hope you’ve enjoyed this tutorial. If you have any questions, please leave a comment and don’t forget to subscribe because more tutorials are coming soon Goodbye.