Default settings are a great place to start. As you practice more you can tweak a few, but you will see mine haven’t changed. Play around with the tip feel by using the customize feature. You will be looking for control of thick to thin when using pressure.

When we are drawing out thick to thin variations using your Blob Brush pay attention to these areas:

Blob or Hard to Control Line Thickness = adjust pressure up to firm.

Line Breaking at the End or Hard to Get First Part of Line = Too Firm

I have access to my keyboard and a mouse for using the Keyboard Shortcuts and my non-tablet based workflows in Adobe Illustrator. I do recommend an external or USB Keyboard if you can no longer reach your keyboard due to your tablet or workstation setup.

I have mine Disabled. I am a big believer in the Adobe Keyboard Shortcuts over the tablet Express Keys. Troubleshooting: Look for your screen moving at random. Some Express Keys or Touch strips will accidentally be hit with your wrist or your non-drawing hand.

If you are getting accidental Isolation Mode we can fix it in two ways. The first is above you will see I have the Double Click Distance set to OFF. (I use my mouse) If you don’t have a mouse you can turn off Double Click to Isolate in your Illustrator General Preferences.

These are my personal settings for my tablet. So if you want a fast way of getting started these are great starting points. You will notice that we go through all of the Main and Support Tools for your Tablet, including how to customize your Keyboard Shortcuts which can be plugged in to your Express Keys.

Our custom brushes are found in your resources folder. These brushes are designed to add on line variation to give your designs a professional feel. We will be using the Cartoon Brushes Tinted Library. To open your library, have your downloaded brushes ready. Open your brush window. At the bottom left their will be a brush libraries menu. Scroll down to the bottom to open “Other Library.” Find the location you saved your brushes to and open. The Cartoon Brushes should pop right on up.

Check where each line segment in the design ends. If you notice that one or more of the ends are floating out in space, this is a good indication that this should be tapered.

While you are checking the ends of each segment and notice that the line ends connected to another line, this is an indication that the line should get fatter.

Our anchor point guides have already been designed with the final line (which includes the brushes) in mind. If you are drawing your own design, pay attention to the length of each line segment for more control over thickness.

Open the pug color palette from our resource folder by “placing” the image on to a new layer. Open the swatch menu and drag it across so it is next to your fill and stroke Icons. Using the eyedropper select each on of the colors from the color palette and drag them into your swatches. Note there are more values than on the original color palette.