Is there a way to imitate a pencil or pen in illustrator?
I'm working with illustrations and I realized that it's easier to draw lines in Illustrator and combine them in Photoshop with other effects and textures. The problem is that I cannot find a way to make lines in Illustrator look like a real pen or pencil. Similar to how Graphic design is written on this website. Would be grateful if somebody can help!
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1 Expert Answer
Thomas S. answered • 04/18/19
Tutor
New to Wyzant
MFA in Studio Art. BFA in painting/drawing. Thomas Saffle artist.
Hello!
Please forgive me if I write anything that seems obvious here or anything you already know. Since Illustrator is a vector program it is not as good with things like pencil/paintbrush texture effects. Your best bet is to create the textured effects in Photoshop and import into Illustrator as needed just as you described.
If you want to covert your raster Photoshop assets into vector artworks then google it! Here is the first thing I found online about this very subject. See link below. Hope this was helpful!
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Ben K.
Not entirely. When it comes to both of these tools (pen to less extent) as depressed they leave not only thinner, but also lighter trace. That can't be easily simulated in Ill. Other aspects however are more or less achievable. As for pencil/pen simulation, I'd go for calligraphic brush sensitive to pressure (I assume you've got access to pressure sensitive input device). Since this brush gives quite smooth results, you'll have 2 main possibilities to make it less "polite": 1 – scribble for it manually, 2 – after finishing your path apply "roughen" effect (you can also create "graphic style" binding brush and mentioned filter). As for pencil I'd also try to create a brush based on scanned (1200 dpi or more as a base) lines made with actual pencil. I'd trace them and pretty much used as "artistic brush" right away or after minimal initial cleaning. You could also search the web for ready brushes of such qualities. In some situations you can also "cheat" a bit (example: https://soikeo79.com/tin-tuc/ ) by using roughen/scribble duet. Here's a little example of drawing done with analog of calligraphic brush in Inkscape: http://vz79.com/?r=soikeo79com11/24/20