Creating roughened edges with variation with the brush tool

[MK web]

Hi there,

I'm trying to recreate the style of some illustrations and want to achieve the same kind of edges on my brush stroke as in the attached screens. I can see from the way and speed these were done that it is not done manually so to say, but just generated.

I've tried by setting an accurate fidelity and higher variation in the roundness but it doesn't really do the trick - does anybody have an idea of how this could be achieved in a smart way?

Thanks a lot,

[Monika Gause]

Roughened edges do not work well with a calligraphy brush. Or are you using the blob brush?

Should this be drawing shapes or just lines?

I would try the Roughen effect.

[MK web]

Hi Monika,

I'm using the blob brush for drawing shapes. I've tried with the roughen effect (high detail, low size, smooth points) already, but while it looks a bit more like a sharpened stone age axe head, what I'm looking for is a bit more random and smooth.

You can see what I'm able to get with the effects in comparison with the above screenshots here:

[Monika Gause]

The roughen effect is randomized. You can set it to "Smooth points". And also edit the values.

With just seeing these small parts of yoiur shapes, it's completely impossible to give any advice actually. It's more of a guesswork.

[MK web]

Hi again,

Thanks for helping out with this. As I wrote I have tried with the roughen effect and got quite close to what I wanted but not entirely. It is not really a matter of the shapes but the quality of the edges/path.
For example, if you look at the image below you'd see the result I was able to get with the roughen effect on the left and the quality I'm trying to reproduce on the right. In the close-ups from my prior reply you can see what the roughened edges look like close up and again in my original post you can see what the edges I want to reproduce looks like 🙂

If you have any suggestions on how to achieve this I'd be very grateful and if not no worries and thank you for the advice you've provided already!

Thanks,
Emmet

[Doug A Roberts]

I'm not clear on the difference between the roughen effect result and what you actually want, apart from more anchor points.

[MK web]

not it's really also a small difference - the thing is just that with the roughen effect I can't get the "waves" to be as wide and randomly spread out as it at best has more of the look of a spiky edge smoothened out.

Anyways,  I think the solution is the use the effect - expand appearance - and then manually edit the path from there 🙂

Thanks for your input both of you,

[Kurt Gold]

You may have a look and some fun with Illustrator's Warp tools (under the Width tool in the main Tools palette).

They have many options to fine-tune their behaviour (double-click on a tool to open them).

[MK web]

Thanks Kurt, will check it out!!