- In this chapter we'll take our first look
at the Blob Brush, which is the tool we'll be using
to create this project right here.
I'm going to start things off by going up to the File menu
and choosing New from Template,
or we have that keyboard shortcut
of Control Shift N,
or Command Shift N on the Mac.
Then you want to locate your Center Guides file
and click on the New button.
All right, now I'll click on the Guides layer
here inside the Layers Panel.
I don't actually need these guides,
so I'll go up to the View menu, choose Guides,
and then choose Clear Guides to get rid of them.
And now we'll introduce the tracing template,
just as we did in the previous chapter,
by going up to the File menu and choosing the Place command.
Or you can press Control Shift P,
or Command Shift P on the Mac.
Now if you have access to the Exercise Files,
then navigate to the 11_painting folder,
where among other things, you'll find a file called
Face sketch.jpg,
and then click on the Place button
in order to load your cursor.
And then click anywhere inside the document
in order to introduce a template.
Now assuming that Align is set to Align to Artboard,
you want to click on each of the center icons,
Horizontal Align Center,
and then Vertical Align Center.
And next go ahead and click on the word Transform
right there, or click on the X, Y, W, or H,
and make sure your center point is selected
inside the reference point matrix.
Make sure that the link is turned on
and then change the Width value to 650 points, like so.
And if you press the Tab key,
that will change the Height value accordingly.
All right, now you can press the Escape key
in order to hide that panel.
And then finally, I figured this guy wanted to be
a little bit higher, so I press Shift up arrow
to nudge him upward 10 points.
All right, now go ahead and double click on an empty portion
of the Guides layer to bring up the Layer Options
dialog box, rename this layer Template,
and turn on the Template check box,
and then click Okay
and you've got yourself a tracing template.
All right, now go ahead and click on the Drawing layer,
and then notice this tool directly above the Pencil Tool
in the single column toolbox.
by default it's the Paintbrush Tool
and you would think that's the tool you want to use,
but we're not even going to get to that tool
until the Mastery course.
And that's because the more fundamentally useful
painting tool is the next tool down,
which is the Blob Brush.
And now, just to make sure you're painting with Black,
go ahead and tap the D key,
which gets you the Default Colors,
and that makes Black the stroke color.
And by default, the Blob Brush
works from the stroke color.
Nowadays it will also work from the fill color
if there is no stroke.
And now just go ahead and paint
along this line, if you will,
and things may end up looking a little bit jagged,
especially if you're painting with a mouse, as I am.
But as soon as you release,
Illustrator goes ahead and automatically
smooths that Path Outline.
But, not enough for my tastes,
so I'm going to go ahead and press Control Z,
or Command Z on the Mac, to undo that brush stroke,
and I'm going to press the Enter key
to bring up the Blob Brush Tool Options dialog box.
If you're working with a drawing tablet,
you may want to move this slider triangle
closer to Accurate.
In my case though, I'm going to move it
closer to Smooth, like so.
And this tends to be a perfect setting right here,
one tick mark over from Absolute Smooth
when you're painting with a mouse.
I also want you to turn on the
Keep Selected check box,
just so that we can see what's really going on.
And notice that the Size value set to 10 points, by default,
the Angle is zero degrees,
and the Roundness is 100%,
at which point you can go ahead and click Okay.
And then try painting that line once again,
and even if it's pretty shaky, as it is in my case,
it's going to smooth up considerably, like so.
And now notice instead of getting an
open path outline, as we would if we were
drawing with a Pencil Tool,
we get a closed path outline
filled with the stroke color, as we're seeing here.
All right, now I'm going to paint from this corner
right there, down into the left along this edge
and as soon as I release,
even though I have a very wiggly brush stroke,
things smooth out very nicely,
and Illustrator goes ahead and joins
those two brush strokes
into a single path outline.
Now here's a bit of advice
if you want to get nice, sharp corners,
don't just try to paint the thing
all the way around, like so,
because that will get you a soft edge
as we're seeing right here.
Instead what you want to do,
I'll go ahead and press Control Z,
or Command Z on the Mac to undo that brush stroke,
just paint each one of these brush strokes
independently of each other, and let
Illustrator join them into a sharper corner, like so.
And now I'm just going to go ahead and paint
up the nose, and if you're having problems,
just slow it down.
The slower you go,
the more likely it is that you can stay on that line,
and then when you release,
you're going to get a nice, smooth path outline,
as we're seeing right here.
All right, now I'm going to go ahead
and paint along the nose, like so.
And then I'll paint this part right here
in a separate brush stroke,
and I'll go ahead and paint the smile,
and I'll paint this crease and you can see
everything's turning out super smooth,
despite my sometimes awkward brush strokes.
Now that one wasn't so good,
so I'm going to press Control Z,
or Command Z on the Mac to undo it.
And I'm going to try to see if I can give this guy
a fuller lip, and that worked out pretty nicely.
And now I'm just going to go ahead
and paint down his chin.
All right, now let's just go ahead
and fill out the cheek over here.
And incidentally, if you find that
painting in one direction doesn't work for you,
as it's not really working for me,
then just go ahead and undo your brush stroke
and try painting in the other direction instead.
And bear in mind folks,
that I am left handed,
and so if you're a right hander
you might find that it's easier to paint
in the opposite directions you see me working right now.
All right, now I'll just go ahead to paint this eyelid
and I'll paint in this brush stroke up here
and you can see this is a pretty jagged stroke,
but it ends up reconciling nicely.
And now I'll just paint this little edge for his eye.
And now despite the fact that I have painted
a total of 18 successful brush strokes,
Illustrator has fused them into
a single closed path outline.
And that's at least the basics
of working with the Blob Brush
here inside Illustrator.