Paintbrush tool is not active or unable to change to other brush defination

[Masako Ku]

Dear All,

When I click my paintbrush tool for painting a leaf's stem, it is sometimes inactive-meaning I will not be able to use brush at all even my layer is not locked. So my work around is selecting a calligraphic brush then it will work. However, when I want to use "basic" brush rather than calligraphic,it will not change even I selected "basic". It means when I paint, it will just move back to calligraphic brush . I use CC version and this wasn't an issue before since I have been using it for a couple of years.

Is there any set up I did wrongly to trigger this? please kindly help me.Thanks a lot.

[Monika Gause · Accepted solution]

"Basic" is not a brush. "Basic" deletes the brush from your stroke.

The brush tool can only work when a brush is selected in the brushes panel. But "Basic" is not a brush.

You want to work without a brush, then don't use the brush tool. Use the pencil tool instead.

[Masako Ku]

Hi Monika,

Thank you so much for your reply, I have been using illustrator for a couple of years and I think I need to go back to my basic. Thanks a lot for your reply.   It confused me quite sometime.

Please kindly help me with another question, when I selected a brush to paint and later changed to another art brush , the new line(stroke) I drew keep going back to the previous brush setting, no matter how many times I reset it. Is there anything I set up wrongly in preference or other area? I always correct this everytime I drew, it is very frustrating. Thanks a lot once again!

[Monika Gause]

It's not quite clear what may be causing this, can you please show what exactly stays and how you want it to be?

I first thought it could be caused by the setting "New object has basic appearance" in the appearance panel menu. But then the new object also wouldn't have a brush applied. So it might be something else.

[Masako Ku]

Hi Monika,

Thanks for your reply, let's wait and see if someone could see this and help.

[Monika Gause]

Without knowing more details, I doubt that anyone can help.