Using Custom Brushes in Adobe Illustrator

Art Brushes

An Art Brush takes your selected artwork and stretches it along a path or shape. You can draw different length strokes and the artwork will be stretched to fit.

Here I have drawn a simple shape and dragged it onto the Brushes Panel. I then selected Art Brush, and in the settings box, selected Stretch to Fit Stroke Length. Now when I draw strokes at random lengths the shape is stretched to the path, making it easy to draw hair strokes around this little monster!

Scatter Brushes

A Scatter brush uses your artwork and scatters it along a path or shape, you can rotate, scale, space out and randomise the shape over the path.

Here I have drawn a simple shape and dragged it to the Brushes Panel, selected scatter brush and applied it to a circle shape to form a spiky effect, this is good if you don’t have the time to spend drawing each stroke and just want a quick effect.

Pattern Brushes

A pattern brush takes a shape or multiple shapes and repeats it along a stroke to form a pattern.

I have used one shape to for a repeating pattern around this circle. Simply select pattern brush when you drag your shape to the Brushes Panel.

Download the brush examples here: brush-examples.ai