@Frances,

Your wish is certainly a step forward, but please let me point out that a brush that produces a closed and filled path 1.) doesn’t advance the building block of vector graphics—the path—at all, and 2.) I think a lot of people would be obliged to invest in at least $100 worth of hardware—a digitizing tablet—to take advantage of any added elegance to the Shape Builder tool.

Me, I either use a perfectly decent Logitech mouse, or a physical pen and pencil (that I draw with and then scan); because a shape created using the Shape Builder tool is a “set piece”—it has no dynamic editability such as paths and QuickShapes do, you have to be precise with the stroke, or Undo and try again (unless you use a stylus and tablet).

I’d much prefer that if any more automated routines are added for producing shapes, that they are designed around what Illustrator and CorelDRAW do (and Expression)— that a “core” or “skeleton” is produced when you make a stroke, and this path influences the overall shape of what you’ve drawn when you then modify control points. The Shape Builder produces control points around the path which is produced, and as this goes, there is no hierarchical control to edit the overall shape of the shape once it’s been created.

I’d be happier with more features for paths, and you might be happier with LiveBrush; there’s a $10 and a free version I think. Here’s some examples of elegant strokes.

Click image for larger version.  Name: livebrush.jpg  Views: 179  Size: 43.5 KB  ID: 92491

My Best,

Gary