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Adobe Illustrator offers creators a wide range of creative possibilities, just like Photoshop does, but with difference in file format first of all. If you’re a rookie in working with Adobe Illustrator brushes particularly, it’s our pleasure to show you how things work.
How to add brushes to Illustrator? It’s easy-peasy as installing Photoshop brushes. Just let you spill the beans about the nature of Illustrator brushes, the way you can add them to your app and how to efficiently apply them to your work and make it fabulous! Depending on the type of Illustrator brushes, you can add the ready-made pattern pieces or draw the way you do on canvas.
What are Illustrator Brushes?
Illustrator brushes represent the carried out presets in .ai format, applied to the stroke of a path or shape. When there’s a bunch of such strokes collected into a set, it’s called the brush library. Here are several types of Illustrator brushes, named after the effect they produce: pattern, calligraphic, scatter, art, and bristle.
How to Add Brushes to Illustrator?
First, you unpack your downloaded Illustrator brushes library, then click Window > Brush Libraries > Other Library and browse the Illustrator brushes you want to work with. There you go, now you have all the tools in their own Brush Library Panel to switch between easily.
Here are some helpful tidbits for the smooth work:
- List View allows to view your Illustrator brushes by name;
- The Persistent feature makes the brushes load each time Illustrator is restarted.
Free Illustrator Brushes
Don’t rush into buying a set of Illustrator brushes right away! You need to get better in working with brush libraries through trial and error for a while. Then you can spend your money on some exact Adobe Illustrator brushes once you’ve come up with your favorite style and technique. Here’s a couple of free Illustrator brushes to start with.
Pack of 24 Marker Pen Illustrator Brushes
blog.spoongraphics.co.uk
Easily apply bold hand-drawn effects to your illustrations with the free pack of Marker Pen Illustrator Brushes! Authentically sourced from real pens, these 24 Illustrator brushes provide a variety of nib styles and sizes, ranging from thin outlining strokes to thick and messy scribbles. With just a single click you can give your clean and crisp vector paths the appearance of a handmade doodle with the subtle irregularities produced by ink bleeding into the paper.
Free Spray Paint Stipple Illustrator Brushes
behance.net
The author of this pack had the idea to carry out a set of free Illustrator brushes made from the spray of a particular spray-paint cap called a “needle cap”. Scattering spray stains around the artboard helps to create the mysterious shading, add some grungy looks, and turn the image into a vintage-resembling piece of art — and it’s only with one set of Illustrator brushes! They’re great for giving some life to your vector graphics, so grad them anytime, ‘cause they’re free.
Premium Adobe Illustrator Brushes
Don’t rush into buying a set of Illustrator brushes right away! You need to get better in working with brush libraries through trial and error for a while. Then you can spend your money on some exact Adobe Illustrator brushes once you’ve come up with your favorite style and technique. Here’s a couple of free Illustrator brushes to start with.
Gouache Shader Illustrator Brushes
creativemarket.com
You’re going to get 52 gouache Adobe Illustrator brushes, full of rich and genuine gouache effects. No more hours of searching for weird textures to add on top and then mask in odd angles, forget it! This set of Illustrator brushes works perfectly with a mouse or tablet, so you can enjoy the ease and flexibility of illustrator work for posters, books, and other artwork that must be able to scale. Use these Illustrator brushes how you want: create books, merchandise, posters, vector art, or anything else!
Marker Illustrator Brushes
elements.envato.com
This professional Illustrator brushes pack contains 25 high-quality digital marker brushes, intended for professional designers, illustrators and artists. It can be a calligraphic composition of yours or a full-fledged illustration, made with marker strokes of these Illustrator brushes. You can choose the width, stroke and transparency of your brush to open the new artistic dimensions within one pack of Adobe Illustrator brushes.
Check out more Illustrator brushes our team picked for you:
Pull an artist out of yourself — it’s so much simpler if you have the very trick up your designer’s sleeve.