Pattern Brush Anatomy 101 in Illustrator 9 and 10, Part 4

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Slot 1

outer corner tile

Slot 1

outer corner tile

Slot 2

side tile

Slot 2

side tile

Slot 3

side tile

Slot 3

side tile

Slot 4

side tile

Slot 4

inner corner tile

Slot 5

inner corner tile

Slot 5

beginning tile

Slot 6

beginning tile

Slot 6

ending tile

Slot 7

ending tile

Slot 7

no slot 7 in Illustrator 10

Drag your original grid to the brushes palette to make a new brush; when asked, choose New Pattern Brush, name it and click OK. When the brush options open, choose Tints in the colorization dropdown list, and click OK to close the options. Your side tile will be in the brushes palette.

On the artboard, with the grid tile selected, alt+drag it and drop it an inch or so away to make a duplicate. (Don't put it in the brushes palette just yet.)

Now with the duplicate selected, click on the rotate tool in the toolbox to bring up the rotate options, and enter 45 in the degree box. Click OK. Alt+Drag the rotated grid to the outer corner slot (slot 1 on on Illustrator 9 and 10), and another copy to the inner corner slot (Slot 5 on Illustrator 9, and Slot 4 on Illustrator 10). Click OK both times when you get the brush options, and when you've done both the corner tiles will be in the appropriate places in the brushes palette. In Illustrator 10, it looks like the one on the right.

Try out the new brush on different shapes.

A light blue hexagon makes a snowflake

A rectangle makes an interesting geometric shape.

Applying the brush to a star.

And to an open path...

If we alt+drag the 45° copy to the beginning tile and ending tile slots, our open path has a nice start and end. Don't worry, adding these tiles won't affect any path that doesn't need them. The brush will apply only the tiles needed for the shape.

Try making a brush from only the rotated tile, and try it on different shapes.

On an ellipse

On a square

On a hexagon

Open paths

To save brushes and reuse them, remember you can do it two ways:

Save the document and close it. When working on another document, you can load the brushes from it by going to Window > Brush Libraries > Other Libraries, and navigating to the folder the document is saved in. The brushes will be loaded for use in the current document.

If you want to be able to share them, or save them as brushes only, follow these steps.

1. Make sure all of the brushes you want to save have been used in the present document.
2. Open the brushes options flyout by clicking on the options triangle on the right side of the brushes palette.
3. Choose "Select all unused"
4. Drag the selected brushes to the trash can, and say OK when it asks if you want to delete them.
5. Repeat the process for the swatches, symbols, and styles.
6. Type Cntl+A or go to Edit > Select All, then delete the selection. Everything disappears from the document.
7. Go to Edit > Save As... and give it a name you will remember so you can load the brushes as we did in the first method above.

This ought to give you a lot of ideas and a better understanding of the way the pattern brush works. Now go create something fantastic!