- [Instructor] In this movie, we'll see what it looks like
to combine the Blob Brush along with the drawing tablet
and a pressure sensitive stylus.
So the first thing I'm going to do is create a new document
by going up to the File menu and choosing New from Template,
and then I'll go ahead and double-click
on that template file that I created a few chapters back.
Then I'll go up to the View menu, choose Guides,
and choose Clear Guides to get rid of them.
And now I'm going to go ahead and rename my layers.
I'll call the bottom one Colors
and then I'll call the top one Lines.
And now I'll go ahead and select the Blob Brush,
which again, these days I can get by pressing the B key.
And then I'll press the Enter key,
or the Return key on the Mac,
to bring up my Blob Brush Tool Options dialog box.
And the first thing I'm going to do is
increase the roundness value to its maximum, which is 100%,
and then I'm going to associate the Size not with Fixed,
but rather with Pressure.
And then I'll go ahead and click OK.
All right, now I'm once again working with the Wacom Cintiq,
but any tablet that supports pressure will do.
And now I'll just go ahead and paint,
and even though I'm varying the pressure,
I'm getting a uniform stroke.
And that's because I ignored a value in that dialog box
just a moment ago.
And so I'm just going to go ahead
and press the Backspace key, or the Delete key on the Mac,
to get rid of that path.
And I'll press the Enter key, or the Return key,
in order to bring up the Blob Brush options dialog box.
This is our culprit right there.
Notice that the variation is set to zero.
It should be set to something higher.
So for example, if I set the Size value to 24 points,
and then I take the Variation value
up to 24 points as well--
it can't be any bigger than the size value, by the way--
then I can vary the size of my brush
all the way down to nothing, at which point
I'll go ahead and click OK to accept that change.
And then I'll just go ahead
and enter the first letter of my last name,
and I'll add a couple of C's as well,
as you're seeing me do here.
And the real point of the matter
is not that I can spell my name weirdly,
but rather that I am varying the thickness
of my brush strokes.
And now I'll just go ahead
and add an ampersand at this point,
and a couple of additional lines as well.
And now I'll go ahead
and draw the first letter of my first name,
along with a kind of modified K,
and then a couple of E's inside of it like so.
And next I'll press Control + Shift + A,
or Command + Shift + A on the Mac,
to deselect my artwork, and I'll click on the Colors layer
to make it active, and then I'll click on the Fill swatch,
the very first swatch up here in the Control Panel,
and I'll change it to this light shade of green
which, for what it's worth, is R:140 G:198 B:63.
Then I'll press the Enter key, or the Return key on the Mac,
to accept that change.
And now I'll just go ahead and paint inside of here.
And even though I'm being pretty sloppy about it,
just because I don't want to waste too much of your time,
I do have the option of painting into the corners
if I'm a little more careful,
because I can vary that pressure on the fly.
And now I'll paint this light green, let's say,
into each of the C's.
And if you see something like that,
right there where I'm pointing my cursor,
that little cluster of anchor points shows me
that I have a hole.
And now I'll go ahead and paint down here, let's say,
and then I'm going to paint inside the E
with this light green as well.
And I'll paint right there
and right there
inside the ampersand just for fun.
And this guy needs a little bit of work,
so I'll Control + Click,
or Command + Click on him on the Mac,
and paint that in like so.
And now I'll go ahead and press Control + Shift + A,
or Command + Shift + A on the Mac,
to deselect my artwork
and I'll click on the Fill swatch again
and select this darker green, R:0 G:146 B:69.
And I'll press the Escape key
to go ahead and hide that panel.
And then I'm going to paint into this region of the E
right there like so,
and I'm going to paint into this region as well.
I kind of made a mess of that first guy.
Actually this guy's not that great either,
so I'll go ahead and paint a little more into it,
and then I'll Control + Click or Command + Click
on this first path, and I'll paint into it a little bit too.
And then I'm going to switch to the Eraser tool,
which nowadays I can get by pressing the E key.
It supports pressure as well,
so all I have to do if I want to
erase with pressure sensitivity is press the Enter key,
or the Return key on the Mac.
And then I'm going to change the Roundness value
back to 100%.
I'm going to set the Size value to,
let's say, that same value 24.
I'm going to change Fixed right here to Pressure,
and I'm going to take the Variation value
as high as it goes, which is 24 points,
the same as the Size value, and then I'll click OK.
And now I'll just go ahead and erase with pressure.
Notice the fine-tuned control
that I have here on the edge of that path outline,
and I'll do the same right here as well.
And I'm only affecting the selected shape, of course.
And now I'll press Control + Shift + A,
or Command + Shift + A on the Mac,
to deselect that path.
And I'll switch to my Blob Brush and I'll go ahead
and paint with the dark green up in this area,
and maybe I'll try to be a little more careful this time.
And then I'll paint down here as well.
And you know what?
If I want to get better results,
then it would perhaps be useful to me
to change the Fidelity setting.
So I'll press the Enter key, or the Return key on the Mac,
and I'll move the slider in the direction of Accurate,
and then I'll click OK.
And that way, I'll get less rounding out of the tool
as I paint inside of these regions right here,
including between the two letter C's, let's say.
And this is just the effect I came up with.
You will obviously want to go your way
as opposed to spelling my name, I would imagine.
And now I'll press Control + Shift + A,
or Command + Shift + A on the Mac,
to deselect my artwork.
And you can see that we have a series of
variable-weight path outlines.
And what's so great about this is
that you can go very nuts indeed.
I'm not going to paint this for you right now,
but this is something that I painted in advance
using a drawing tablet, specifically a Wacom Intuos,
along with a pressure sensitive stylus.
And you can see, if I go ahead
and turn these layers off right there,
that I started with this tracing template,
and then I've got all this brushwork up at the top here.
I have this layer of yellow elements.
So you can see I'm trying to keep my different colors
on different layers.
And then finally, this just white layer
contains a big white rectangle
in order to cover up the template in the background.
And that's how you combine
both the Blob Brush and the eraser
with a drawing tablet and a pressure sensitive stylus
in order to achieve very painterly effects
here inside Illustrator.