What are Illustrator brushes for?

Brushes can be used for a variety of things in Adobe Illustrator, from drawing basic shapes and lines to creating detailed textures and patterns. They can be used for both vector and raster artwork.

How do I change the brush settings in Adobe Illustrator?

The Brush Options panel allows you to adjust a variety of settings for your brush, such as its size, stroke width, opacity, and angle. You can access the Brush Options panel by double-clicking on the brush in the Brushes panel.

How much do Illustrator brushes cost?

The price of the best premium Illustrator brushes can vary, from around $10 to upwards of $50. This can depend on the type of licence needed – sometimes the price will vary depending on where you plan to use the brushes. In our list above, we've noted the starting prices at the time of writing.

The best Illustrator brushes, both premium and free

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1. Premium brushes
2. Free brushes
FAQs
How to choose
How we test

The best Illustrator brushes

White brush marks on a red background with a Japanese building in the background — (Image credit: LeoSupply.co)

1. The best premium brushes
2. The best free brushes
FAQs
How to choose
How we test

The best Illustrator brushes can open up fresh creative possibilities when using Adobe's vector graphics editor. They offer a quick, convenient way to create more textures and more varied depth and character without having to create your own brushes from scratch.

Create vintage artwork with this set of cross-hatch pen and ink Illustrator brushes from The Artifex Forge, aka designer Jeremy Child. They’re anti-stretch pattern brushes, so they seamlessly repeat a tile along the stroke – rather than stretching one image along the line – and you can draw multiple lines with just one stroke to save time. (Although you’ll find some single-line outline brushes in the pack, too.) Happily, tablet users are catered for as well – a version of the brushes with pressure sensitivity enabled is included.

This pack of 25 Illustrator brushes from True Grit Texture Supply enables you to add depth, grain, shadow and form to your artwork. Perfect for adding grainy drop shadows, blended gradients, gritty accents and subtle grain overlay effects, the brushes have been handmade from a diverse selection of authentic source-materials – including vintage paper samples, concrete, toner, ink spray and sponged paint. The pack also comes with some bonus grainy overlay textures – and if you don’t like it, you’ll get your money back.

This collection of 150 hand-drawn Illustrator brushes is suitable for use with Illustrator CS3 and later. The bundle focuses on traditional art effects, and includes brushes that mimic watercolour, paintbrushes, pencil, charcoal and markers. High-res and low-res versions are included – use the high-res versions for separate design elements, or go low-res for complex designs to keep the file size down.

Light up your digital designs with this pack of 36 vector light effect brushes, which create a realistic glowing effect using transparency and blend effects. There are three different brush styles to choose from – one comet-shaped, one with a pointed end, and a circular scatter brush for extra sparkle – and they work best on a dark background. These vector brushes are suitable for use with CS5 and up.

This handy set of floral plate-inspired free Illustrator brushes is also available as a set of EPS assets for those times when you simply want to drop in stock art into your project. The quality of the art itself is comparable to the free florals that ship with Illustrator, but there's a wider selection available here, and the fact that they're not part of Illustrator's default arsenal means you're less likely to get instant recognition of the source.

How do I create my own Illustrator brushes?

You can create your own Illustrator brushes directly in the software. Open the brushes panel and click the New Brush (“+”) button, select which type of brush you want to make (see above).

Creating a calligraphic brush is easiest because the other types require you to first create a pattern. However you can do this using an iPad or iPhone with Adobe Brush CC, and you can even create Illustrator brushes from photos. Also see our tutorial on how to create your own Calligraphic brush in Illustrator).

Remember to save all your brushes to your Creative Cloud library so that you have easy access to your entire collection no matter what device you're using.

The best Illustrator brushes for you will depend on what you're looking to create. There are five different types of brush in Illustrator and each of them has a different purpose. Art brushes stretch a brush or object shape evenly along a path. Bristle brushes: create brush strokes that look as though they were made using a natural brush with bristles. Scatter brushes disperse copies of an object (such as a butterfly or leaf) along a path. Rather than stretching art – like Art brushes – they scatter it. Pattern brushes create seamlessly repeating patterns along a path. They can be used to create the same effect as Scatter brushes, but Pattern brushes follow the path exactly, whereas Scatter brushes don’t. Finally, calligraphic brushes create strokes that look as though they were drawn with the angled point of a calligraphic pen.

When we test Illustrator brushes, we put them through their paces in digital drawing and painting tasks that artists would typically use them for. We evaluate each brush's performance in terms of stroke dynamics and responsiveness, assessing how they respond to changes in pressure, tilt and other input variables. We also scrutinise them for consistency and accuracy; to confirm that the brushes maintain uniformity and precision no matter how intricate the design. Testers also ensure that the brushes are easily accessible, and their parameters can be adjusted intuitively within Adobe Illustrator's interface.

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Rosie Hilder is Creative Bloq's Deputy Editor. After beginning her career in journalism in Argentina – where she worked as Deputy Editor of Time Out Buenos Aires – she moved back to the UK and joined Future Plc in 2016. Since then, she's worked as Operations Editor on magazines including Computer Arts, 3D World and Paint & Draw and Mac|Life. In 2018, she joined Creative Bloq, where she now assists with the daily management of the site, including growing the site's reach, getting involved in events, such as judging the Brand Impact Awards, and helping make sure our content serves the reader as best it can.

The best Illustrator brushes, both premium and free

The best premium Illustrator brushes

01. Artista Illustrator Brushes

02. Stitching

03. Inky Goodness

04. Lighthouse Liner

05. Frosted & Frozen PS and AI combo

06. The Retro Comic Book Tool Kit

07. Finest Vintage - Illustrator Brushes

08. Vector brush toolbox

09. Grain Shader Brushes For Illustrator

10. 150 Essential Vector Brushes

11. Liquid Style Brushes

12. Multicolour mixed paint

13. Artistic Illustrator brushes

14. Garage grime

15. Light effect vector brushes

16. The Dead Pen Illustrator brushes

17. Scribble and scrawl vector brushes

18. Dry Paint brush strokes brushes

The best free Illustrator brushes

19. Epic Free Illustrator brushes

20. Japan ProBrush

21. 57 free multi-coloured paint brushes

22. Free Victorian vector brushes

23. Teardrop foliage free Illustrator brushes

24. Free halftone vector brushes

25. Rodeo: free Illustrator brushes

26. Smoke style brushes

27. Free Swoosh Illustrator Brushes

28. Floral vector and brush pack

29. Free abstract brushes

FAQs