I am doing some work for when I am teaching woodwork for the coming term. I have to draw some units showing how to join some planks of wood together to get a wide board. Did a search and came up with some Illustrator tutorials which looked promising using Wrap, Plucker, Twirl & Bloat. Rather than use Illy and since version 11 introduced these tools I thought what the heck I'll give it a twirl. You can see what I achieve in the drawings below using various tools along with the ones mentioned. One was done using the blend tool with various line thickness while others were done using the Contour Tool then using the Slice and Cut Shapes.
Having only really played with Wrap, Plucker, Twirl & Bloat before I found these tools quite powerful and dead easy to use. I've got to be truthful here and state that Illy's control of these tools is much more precise in its application but here that precision its not what is required as it is a more random effect to get a realistic wood grain.
If anyone wants more info on how I achieve the wood grain I will happily supply the info.
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