- In this movie we'll draw the slender, organic shapes
that will ultimately make up the purple brush.
Alright, I'm going to start things off
by turning off this palette layer,
because we're done with it for the moment.
And then I'll drop down to the little page icon
at the bottom of the Layers panel
and I'll alt or opt + click on it
to bring up the Layer Options dialog box.
And I'll call this layer brush parts,
and then I'll change the Color to let's say Violet,
and click OK.
Alright, now I'll grab the Curvature Tool.
Again, it has a keyboard shortcut of shift + ~.
And now I'm going to click at the very bottom of the brush
like so to create my first smooth point.
And now I'll click right about, let's say here,
just to the right of the vertical guide line
in order to add what looks like a straight segment so far
until I start bending it of course.
And then I'll click right about there
on that metal portion
and I'll click right here at the bottom of the bristles.
And obviously these are the wrong
fill and stroke attributes,
so because my fill is active
I'll just press the / key to change it to None.
And then I'll change the line weight value
up here to 4 points.
And as you can see I can continue to do this kind of stuff
as I work on my path outline.
Now I'll click on the right side of the bristles
and then I'll alt or option + click at the top
in order to create a nice, sharp corner point.
Alright, now I'll just try to do the same thing
down the right side of the brush here.
And I'm trying to make symmetrical choices.
Although it's kind of hard to do that
at an angle such as this.
And then finally I'll just click on that first point
in order to close the path outline.
Now obviously these aren't exactly the right points,
so I'm going to create another point right there
and drag it inward.
Now I'm going to create one on this side,
and notice that I'm working inside the hole of the palette,
and I'll drag it inward.
And there's nothing significant about that,
it's just that if you're following along
I want you to see what I'm doing.
Now I discovered that these points right here
weren't absolutely necessary
and they were actually creating problems,
so I'll go ahead and select this one
and press the backspace key, or the delete key on a Mac,
to get rid of it.
And you can see now I can modify exactly how that thing
is going to line up there
by either dragging this guy up here in the bristles
or this guy right here on the side of the handle.
And so in other words this point
serves as a kind of fulcrum,
although I might want to move it out a little bit as well.
And so I'll grab this guy,
just to make sure I'm making the same decisions,
and press the backspace key, or the delete key on a Mac,
to get rid of it.
And then I'll move this point out a little bit,
as you can see, and I'll move this one over
and down and in, that might help,
in order to maintain as smooth an effect as possible.
And this is looking pretty darn good to me.
And what's nice about it is
I didn't add any points accidentally,
which sometimes happens.
So you just have to be vigilant to make sure
that Illustrator isn't adding more points
to your path than you want.
Alright, now I'm going to zoom in on this metal area
and I'm going to surround it with a different path outline.
And so I'm going to start things off
just by clicking four times like so
in order to add a bunch of points around this region.
And then I'm going to convert them all to corner points
by double-clicking on each and every one like so.
And you might ask, well, why am I drawing them first
and then converting them?
And the reason is just this time around
I prefer to work that way.
Alright, I'm going to move these guys down
and inward like so,
and then I'm going to create a new point right here
and drag it up, so that we have this nice arc right there
at the bottom of the bristles.
And now I'll move these guys down and in as well.
And I'll go ahead and click here
to add another smooth point,
and I'll drag it up to add another arc.
And if I want it to bend a little more
then I would take these corner points down like so.
Alright, now let's tear things apart
using the Shape Builder Tool,
but I don't want to ruin these original path outlines,
so I'm going to go ahead and make a copy of this layer
by clicking on the fly out menu icon
in the upper right corner of the Layers panel,
and choosing Duplicate brush parts.
And then I'll double-click on an empty portion of that layer
to bring up the Layer Options dialog box.
And I'll go ahead and call this guy paintbrush
and I'll change its Color to Gold.
And then I'll click OK.
Alright, now I'll turn off
the brush parts layer to protect it,
and I'll select everything on this layer,
the paintbrush layer,
by clicking in its upper right corner right there,
where that little triangular wedge is,
and then I'll grab my Shape Builder Tool.
And I'll go ahead and double-click
on the central portion there,
I'll double-click on the bristles,
and I'll double-click on the handle as well,
just to make sure everything's divided up.
And then I'll press the V key
to switch to the black arrow tool.
I'll click off the path outlines to deselect them.
And I'll go ahead and click on this guy
and shift + click on this one
and press the backspace key,
or the delete key on a Mac, to get rid of them.
Alright, now I'll go ahead and click
on the bristles shape right there
and I'm going to change its fill to this shade of brown,
the one that begins R =117,
and then I'll click on the handle,
and I'll change it to the shade of purple
that begins with R 102.
Alright, now I'm going to press ctrl + 0,
or cmd + 0 on a Mac, to center my zoom.
And I'll click off the paths to deselect them.
And that my friends is how you create
some slender, organic forms
using a combination of the Curvature Tool
along with the Shape Builder
here inside Illustrator.