Create a Pattern brush
Learn how to create a Pattern Brush, a new feature in Illustrator. This video shows you how to paint a pattern—made of individual tiles—that repeats along the path.
Published
>> Pattern Brushes utilize pattern swatches to create the pattern that appears in the brush.
In this version of Illustrator however, this process has gotten easier then ever, with the new feature called Automatic Corner Generation.
Let's explore how this works.
I'm beginning this video with the pattern.ai file already open on my computer.
And you can see we've already created some pattern brushes that have been applied to this artwork.
And I've left these here so you can see examples of what they look like.
Now let's first explore the traditional method of creating these pattern brushes.
So the first step was it we had to take a piece of existing artwork and make it a pattern swatch.
So I go to the Object menu, go to Pattern and choose Make.
You can see that I get a dialogue box telling me the pattern has been added to the swatches panel.
So I'm go ahead and click okay, and I'm gonna call this "LBV Side" because this is the side of the pattern that I'm creating.
And we'll leave the Tile Type set to Grid, that's fine.
And then, we can go ahead and get out of here, just back out of that.
If you're look in your Swatches panel now, I'm gonna go ahead and view these as a Large Thumbnail, just make a little bit easier to see.
You can see the pattern has been applied.
Now typically the pattern is used to fill an object, right?
So if I choose this object and apply a pattern, it fills it with its repeat pattern.
Now that's not what I want to do here, so I'm gonna Undo that.
And then the other portion of this is you also had to create patterns for how the corners were gonna be created.
So what I'm gonna do just very quickly is using my Rectangle Tool, I'm going to set my filter black and my Stroke to None.
And I'm just gonna draw a square that is about the same width as this pattern.
And with this selected, I'm gonna go to Object, Pattern, Make, and I'll go ahead and give this a name of "LBV Corner", there we go.
And then I can just go ahead and double click to exit out of that and now we have, it's hard to see here but this is our LBV Corner and there's our LBV Side.
So how do we make a pattern brush out of that?
Well, it's pretty simple.
We open up our Brushes panel and either from the Panel menu, choose New Brush, or simply click the New Brush button down here at the bottom.
And in the New Brush dialogue box, I'm gonna choose to create a Pattern Brush.
And I'll go ahead and click okay.
Now, I'm gonna call this my "LBV Pattern Brush Manual".
Since I created this manually, and here is where is choose the patterns that are found in my Swatches panel to create the brush.
So for example, for my outer corner tile, I'm gonna scrub down and I'm gonna choose the LBV Corner and then for the side tile, I'm gonna scroll down and choose the LBV Side.
And you can see as I start adding these, it starts giving me a preview what the brush is gonna look like.
So for my inside corner, I'm gonna choose that same LBV Corner.
And then if I wanted to, I could also create a starting and ending tile.
So if you wanted to create a certain eye corner or certain pattern for an open path, you could certainly do that.
We've a whole bunch of options here we can flip the pattern along the path or we can flip it across the path as you see here, not much of a difference for this particular pattern.
And then we can also control how the pattern is applied to the path.
So as this example, it's stretching to fit or we can have it Add space to make it fit.
'Cause remember, those patterns are not gonna match up perfect for every particular line segment that we draw.
So and then you can also have it approximate the path which is another method.
You can also choose your colorization method down here.
So for this example, I'm just gonna choose Tints and Key Color is irrelevant because Hue Shift is the one we would need to use for defining a Key Color.
So we already set the Tints and then we go ahead and click okay.
And now we have our brush.
So to show you how this works, if I click on this object and I apply my brush, you can see that the brush is now being applied to this object.
And I gonna have to reduce the stroke considerably, let's make it like a quarter of a point, there we go, maybe even smaller like 0.15, there we go.
And you see how this is going to appear when it is created.
Now let's take a look at the new automatic corner generation feature.
So this way, there is a lot less work and Illustrator does a lot of the work for us.
So to create a pattern brush the new way, I'm going to select my pattern, and I'm just gonna drag and drop it into the Brushes panel.
In the New Brush dialogue, I'm gonna choose to create a Pattern Brush, and I'm gonna click okay.
Now this is where the magic happens because remember all we did was created a side tile which is the requirement and I'm gonna call this "LBV Pattern Automatic".
Go, and you can again adjust the scaling factor whether you want to use Fixed of By Pressure, Stylus Wheel, Tilt, Bearing, Rotation, I'm gonna leave mine set to Fixed and you can also tweak the spacing as well.
But the part that I really want to point out to you is that the side tile is automatically added here.
Take a look at what we have here.
If you click on the dropdown menu, you'll see a whole list of automatically generated patterns that we can choose from.
So for example, for my outer corner here, maybe I'll choose this one.
And now you can see that I didn't have to draw this or anything, it's automatically being created.
What about out inner corner, I can click on this and maybe I can choose another inner corner automatically generated tile as well.
So I'm gonna choose this one and you can see now how the pattern is been applied and it's done with the lot less work on your part.
So you can tell these are automatically generated by this little orange icon in the upper right hand corner.
I'm gonna go ahead and click okay.
And again, now I'm gonna select this object, I'm gonna change the color, let's go ahead and make this a red stroke and then I'm gonna go ahead and go back to my Brushes panel.
And I'm gonna choose the new one that we created.
And when I choose that, you can see the nice result that we get for the brush that we created.
Let's take a look at one more example, I'm gonna move here to this one.
Once again, I can select this object, drag and drop, it's easy as that.
Go to our Pattern Brush, click okay.
And again, we now have some automatically generated corner patterns that we can choose.
So maybe, I'll choose, I don't know, this one looks pretty cool that they applied to the corner.
I can even apply a different one to the inner corner, maybe I'll use say this one, that's look pretty cool.
Again, colorization method, if you wish and click okay.
And now when I apply that brush to my shape to make it a lot smaller here, maybe make it like 0.15, we can now see the brush that's been created.
And just to show you, if you want it to visually see how this brush looks, as you make the adjustments, now that you have applied to a path, double click on the brush.
And now you can make additional adjustments such as Add Space to Fit, Stretch to Fit, and if you turn on your preview, you'll be able to see this dynamically.
So Approximate Path, so on and so forth.
You can even come up here and start tweaking the spacing so we can apply like 30 percent fix spacing or you can tell it to apply based on other properties.
So I'll go ahead and click okay.
Apply that to my strokes.
Again, to change the color on this one, we can simply choose a different color for the stroke and that'll be applied to our pattern brush.
Now one final thing I would like to show you with these pattern brushes is also a new feature inside of Illustrator, is that if I moved down here into the lower right corner, I have an image that I've placed in this document.
And what I can do with an embedded image is I can drag this to my Brushes Panel, create a Pattern Brush and click okay.
And you can see that it automatically added this brush as a side panel, but take a look in here.
It has automatically generated patterns based on images for how you might want to create these corners and so for example, you know, maybe I want to use the auto in between for both the inside and the outside corner.
And you can see how now, in the latest version of Illustrator, how not only can we create a pattern brush out of an image, but we also have automatic corner generation as well.
And we also get the combination of the two.
We get automatic corner generation when creating images for pattern brushes as well.
It doesn't get much better then that and I encourage you to practice using these brushes on your own.
[This video is excerpted from the Learn by Videos Series] [Learbbyvideo.com] [AdobePress] [Peachpit]
