Black Pearl: What I learnt today about Illustrator

Shape tools

To get the dimensions you want, click on the shape you want to make, double click on the page and type in the dimensions, sides, roundness, points (so you can manipulate it)
Radius 1 – inside, radius 2 – outside

Width tool (distorting the shape via anchor points)

Distorting the whole shape

Select the shape you want to distort à effect – distort and transform
Pucker and bloat - change the % click on the preview and see what’s happening
Roughen – roughen the edge of your paths, details (amount of shards you get). Corner – sharp edges, smooth edge

Brushes

Brush libraries menu
Change the colour by turning the fill off and filling the stroke
You can apply brushes to lines or shapes you have created
Change the stroke size, the opacity and play around with the outcome
Brush option – click twice on the brush that you are using and play around with the option with the preview on.
Brush options will depend on the type of brush you are using e.g bristle brush, art brush, calligraphic, scatter brush etc.
If you have made a change to the brush e.g. scatter brush – just rename them and save brush

Altering Symbol

Drag symbol onto your page, right click, ungroup, deselect and reselect (you may have to ungroup more than once) – now you can change the colour of the symbol and turn it into a new brush
If you are not happy with the brush you created, you can play with the option until you are happy with it

Making brushes out of Type

In word, select your type box
Type – create outlines (turning the text into shapes)
You can ungroup them, scale them, scatter them, edit anchor point etc.
Turn it into an art brush or a pattern brush depends on how you are going to use it

Downloading brush and using it

Tracing image

Black Pearl