How to Make a Texture Brush in Illustrator

Final product image — What You'll Be Creating

This tutorial is for those who want to incorporate a realistic paintbrush texture drawing technique into digital drawing in Illustrator.

If you like texture, grunge, or paintbrush textures, or if you enjoy drawing in Illustrator and would like to have a more diverse pattern brush arsenal, please stay here. In this quick tip tutorial, you will learn how to make and install a textured brush in Illustrator. I promise that it's easy, and after this tutorial you will want to create a few dozen more of them!

If you like grunge or texture Illustrator brushes but don't want to spend time making them and would just like to get some free Illustrator brushes—it's your choice!

If you would like to learn more about how to install and use a custom pattern brush, feel free to read this article about it.

What You'll Learn in This Adobe Illustrator Texture Brush Tutorial

How to create a distressed texture brush in Illustrator
How to install a distressed texture brush in Illustrator

1. How to Create a Stroke for the Illustrator Brush

Step 1

To start creating our texture brush (I assume you already created a new document), delete the stroke color and set a black fill color. Draw a tiny ellipse using the Ellipse Tool (L).

After that, draw some more ellipses that overlap each other. We are now creating the pencil stroke, so try to stay in an imaginary rectangle. Remember how a real pencil leaves its track on paper? It's actually a tiny, super narrow rectangle. This will help us create our texture brushed effect.

Step 2

Then we want to distort the ellipses a little, to make sure that the pencil stroke looks even more realistic. For this, we will need the Wrinkle Tool (this tool is hidden under the Width Tool (Shift-W) or under the Warp Tool (Shift-R)—it depends on which version of AI you have).

Double-click on the Wrinkle Tool, as we need to adjust it. A new dialogue window will pop up, called Wrinkle Tool Options. Enter the options you see in the image below, and press OK.

Step 3

Before distorting our ellipses with the Wrinkle Tool, group them together (select them, and then right-click > Group). Now take the Wrinkle Tool and click on the ellipses here and there. You will notice how the ellipses start to wrinkle, and that's exactly what we need.

how to distort the stroke from ellipses using the Wrinkle Tool

2. How to Install the Texture Brush in Adobe Illustrator

Step 1

After you are satisfied with the result or how the stroke looks, select it, and on the Pathfinder panel (Window > Pathfinder), press the Unite button. You just turned all the ellipses into one shape.

And now we are going to create a brush from this shape. Keep it selected, and on the Brushes panel (Window > Brushes), click on the icon that looks like three lines, in the top right corner. Select New Brush... In the new pop-up window, check Art Brush and press OK.

Another window will pop up. Enter the options you see below, and press OK.

how to make settings for the new illustrator brush

Step 2

So, we already created a new brush from a stroke that consists of wrinkled ellipses, but we haven't used it yet. Now we want to adjust the Paintbrush Tool (B) options to have some nice curved lines later on while using the new brush. It's as if we prepared the "paint" when we created the texture stroke, and now we need to adjust the brush.

Double-click on the Paintbrush Tool (B). In the new dialogue window, move the Fidelity slider to Smooth, check Edit Selected Paths 12 pixels, and press OK.

how to make settings for the Paintbrush Tool

Your Paintbrush Tool is already selected, so now take your "paint" on the Brushes panel: the new stroke you created from the wrinkled ellipses. And now the fun begins: draw something!

how to draw a flower using the illustrator texture brush

Your Design Is Finished!

You did it! Today, you've learned how to make a texture brush or grunge brush in Illustrator, and how to install it on your Brushes panel. Using this technique, you can create another Illustrator brush. This process can help with other effects like a texture stomp brush and more.

Trendy Textured Illustrator Brushes From Envato Elements

Envato Elements offers dozens of quality texture brush illustrator assets to choose from. Here's a list of some of the most popular paintbrush texture effects.

Paint Brush Strokes (AI, EPS, SVG, PNG)

Looking to add texture to your illustrations? Why not try these amazing handmade grunge brushes to create an organic, textured look. This grunge brush pack is made from real paintbrushes and can be used to roughen up your vector artwork within seconds.

Stroke Brushes (AI, EPS, SVG, PNG)

Help your creativity flow with these amazing grain and texture Illustrator brushes. Carefully hand crafted, they have varying degrees of density, texture, and grunginess. These AI texture brushes are perfect for some texture or noise to your vector artwork. Create a paint texture stomp brush effect. Just have some fun and play around with them!

Inky Brush Strokes Graphic Collection (AI, EPS, PNG)

This is a fun, versatile collection of modern, hand-painted, messy brushstrokes, originally created using Sumi ink and a variety of brushes and non-brush tools. Ideas for usage include unique textiles and patterns, marketing ads, visual branding, T-shirt designs, packaging, modern stationery or invites, as an image mask, for adding texture to your mood boards, social media graphics, digital collage, abstract art, and so much more.

Big Illustrator Brushes Pack (AI, EPS)

Add this big brush pack to your collection: it's a set of 56 varied illustrator brushes, including stipple brushes, chalk and pastel, ink, flourish, patterns, and more.

Scatter Texture Brushes for Adobe Illustrator (AI)

And try some scatter texture brushes! Use them for texturing—it's really fast and simple to use, and the best thing is that you can vary it in a second.

Want to Learn More?

Expand your Illustrator toolkit and take your vector art to the next level. If you like my tutorials, feel free to check out some more: