Don’t get me wrong Sheff – I think the blob brush is pretty nifty.

You said in your OP that (in Xara), to create shapes and add to them, or delete shapes, you draw with lines, then convert those lines to a shape and draw another line and convert that line to a shape and then do a Boolean on the two shapes, and that you would much prefer the steps to be reduced.

Well at least you know now that you can delete and add to shapes as shown above, without all those steps. Just place your cursor on the edge of the drawing and take out a piece or add a piece in one step. Cutting out shapes from the centre takes three steps – drawing the top shape, selecting both, and pressing ctrl-2. As far as that centre shape is concerned, one would have to have just the right kind of blob brush to get the right shape. Chances are, while you’re busy selecting the brush, I would draw the centre shape by line and cut it out, then further edit as required by adding or subtracting as per video above.

The first video link you provided was this youtube:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QBapnb6KksM

which shows the blob brush in action in drawing a gorilla (from 0:39 onwards). Notice the guy creates a new layer (step 1), then double clicks the blob brush to bring up the options box (step two), increases the size of his brush (step 3), selects his color and line (or no line) (step 4), starts ‘painting’ (step 5). While ‘painting’, it takes him about 24 seconds to ‘paint’ the area of the face using the blob brush. He then adjusts nodes (step 6), and we can only guess how long that takes. He then lowers the face shape to the lower layer (step 7). This took him 1 minute and 28 seconds (from 1:00 to 2:28) but he cut out the node editing, so I will add at least another 30 secs for that, to make a total of about 2 minutes.

When I do the same thing (see this quick VIDEO), with the same gorilla face, I select the drawing tool and draw the shape for the face, which takes a mere 8 seconds (step 1), select the color (step 2), place underneath lines (step 3), and adjust nodes (step 4). Only four steps and 38 seconds. While I may not have the painterly ‘feel’, I save almost a minute and a half.

This shows newcomers here that while illustrator’s blob brush is nice, and gives you that feel you’re painting, it is sometimes more to do with how you enjoy painting, rather than really a time saver. Other times I’m sure the blob brush will be very hard to emulate quickly, which is why I think it would be a good addition to Xara.