Vector line art brushes

A reworked collection of line art brushes with a few new additions!

You get 16 brushes that are set to change colour as you change the line colour and the vector definition objects. Each brush has been carefully constructed and tested to ensure that they will result in vector output.

Cool. How do I use these? And are they free?

Like any brushes in the brushes forum they are free. I decided to donate these to TG because I wanted people to see what can be done :)

They are just the same as any artbrush just download and open the .xar file to load the brushes. When you draw with them you will get vectors you can convert line to shape and get fully editable vector shapes if you wish.

The trick to creating them is KISS keep it simple! simple flat fills, simple flat transparencies. But you can have large numbers of shapes in a single brush definition as long as they follow the "simple" rule and you can have groups! :)

I included the vector brush definition shapes and groups so you can see how they are made and/or edit them to create your own brushes.

Thank you Frances. Very generous of you.

Thanks Frances will use and also digest(not the right word). When did we have the ability to keep a line a vector shape after "converting line to shape"? I know Phil said it was going to happen and the last time I tried it still was a bitmap with handles & nodes. I take it that only happens with the new art brushes from Xara after conversion. I wish they had made more of a noise about this fix when it came out as I still use Illy for my cartoons because of this. Gee thanks for the info and I mean that will save me a bunch of time.

You are quite welcome Larry and Peter

@Peter: the ability to create vector brushes has been there for some time since early Fall I think, One thing though brushes created before the patch will still produce a bitmap. You have to recreate them, and here is another tip you can use a blend or even a contour as long as you convert them to editable shapes before creating your brush. Just keep your blended/contoured objects to the simple rule. I've attached a sample I called Big Softy the .xar file contains both the original blend and the converted editable shapes used as the brush definition. When using blends and contours I recommend keeping the original blend/contour and creating a duplicate to convert to shapes so you can easily go back and edit the blend/contour and create new variations

Edit:some of the brushes that ship with Xara will still produce bitmaps because they are made from bitmaps but a lot of them will be vector like the hair brushes.

I'm going to open a discussion in the Xara graphics chat area as I'm now wondering who else may have missed this feature!

Frances, yesterday I downloaded several of your tutorial videos. Thank you so much for them. I still have lots of questions about the new brushes, at least how you control them. Somehow you made a color swatch and used that to color another object, that part I do not understand. Your tutorials are a valuable resource. Keep up the good work.

Hi Larry, if you can tell me which tutorial you are referring to with the colour swatch we can open a new thread and I'll help you.

Thanks Frances, I don't know what it was. I vaguely recall is was some greens and you drew a leaf and colored it with the greens brush. Does that ring any bells?