Hi, this is Anne for Graphic Design How To, and today I'm going to tell you how to repeat
any shape along a path in Illustrator.
So the first thing we're going to do is draw some shapes, and I'm going to start with these
shapes here.
Okay, so I'm going to get my rectangle tool, first & make the triangle.
I'll hit M on my keyboard, and hold Shift and drag.
There we go.
I'm going to zoom in by hitting Z and then drawing a box around this.
Now I'm going to hit V, and then E to rotate this and you can hold down shift
here too to get exactly 45 degrees.
And now let's hit P, then '-' to delete one of those anchor points.
So now we have a little triangle that I want to be a little more
tall-ish than this.
So if you hit A and then click on that one point,
you can pull it out like this.
Okay, so that's pretty much exactly what I want – a little triangle.
Now I'm going to hit Shift X to switch these and I'll have only a fill.
Now hit V and select the whole thing and hit E to rotate again, holding shift.
And now let's make it a little bit smaller, so it'll look a little bit like this.
Now to make that second shape, hit L, which is your circle
tool, and then you can hold Shift and drag until you have it.
If you have a fill like I do, all you have to do is hold Shift X and it will switch your
fill or stroke.
And so now I have pretty much exactly that circle right there.
Okay, for this little line here, I'm just going to use my P tool.
That's the pen, and I'll click once and then hold SHIFT and click once again.
And I'm going to bump that up to 2 on my stroke to get a little bit thicker.
Okay, so we have those three shapes and there's one more shape I want to make.
And that is kind of a laurel.
Click L and draw a circle holding Shift.
Hold option and then hold Shift while you're dragging.
Okay, so we have two circles overlapping.
Now, I'm going to highlight them both with the V tool.
And then we'll go down here to Pathfinder and hit Divide, which is this one down on
the bottom.
So now I have three different pieces - 1,2,3.
I'm going to click G, which is my group selection tool, it's right underneath your direct selection
tool.
And I think I actually set up this key command so it might not be available to you.
But yeah, just go under there and get it.
So I've got G selected and then hold SHIFT and click on one of the two lines in the middle
- one of these two - and then you can delete and now you're left with just that piece.
Okay, get back on your V tool.
And now I'm going to hold E again and hold Shift to rotate to 45 degrees.
Okay, and now I'm going to copy (CMD C), and paste in front (CMD F), and then I'll hit
the letter O on my Keyboard, hold option and click right on this anchor point.
And that'll give us our reflect dialog box.
From here, all you need to do is hit the vertical and say okay, and so now we have a nice little
laurel there.
So let's select both of those with the V tool and group them (CMD G).
And now we'll grab corners like this and make it a little bit smaller, all the while holding
Shift, so it does it proportionally.
And I think I want this to just be a fill, so I'm going to switch these by hitting Shift
X.
You can also click that little button right there.
So we have our four little shapes that I want to build this thing with.
So let's go ahead and get over to our brushes palette.
As you can see, I've already made these and they are these right here.
I'm going to zoom in a little closer to do that I hit Z on my keyboard, draw a box around
that.
And now I'll hit V, click this, and then just pull it over into my brushes palette.
It'll ask me what kind of brush I want to make.
And I want to make a pattern brush.
So we'll say, Okay.
And here are some options.
Okay, we've got the scale, do we want it to be fixed?
How about spacing between them?
I think I will increase the spacing a little bit.
We'll put it about like this, maybe 50%.
This is what it's going to do on a corner.
And you can tell it what you want it to do on each part of the turn.
So that's nice.
You can also tell it how to flip itself.
Do you want it to flip on that part of the angle or like this?
And you can see what it's going to do.
I think I'll flip along, instead of across.
I usually add space to fit but this is also something that you can play around with.
I don't make these a whole lot, so I haven't messed with all of these options as much as
I probably should have.
But really, I just mess around with them until they do what I want.
Okay.
So now we have our little pattern right there.
I'm going to go ahead and delete these because I think they're a little distracting.
So I'm just gonna pull them into my trash can and then Expand strokes.
So let's recreate this pattern.
I'm going to CMD -. And now I'll hit
L to get my circle tool, just hold Shift to keep it proportional, and now we have a black
circle.
I don't want a fill, I only want a stroke, so I'm going to hit X to get this color in
front.
So now I'll hit the question mark to delete it.
I'm going to hit Z to zoom in...we only have a stroke right now.
And now I can just click on my new brush and
it looks pretty much exactly like that.
A little bigger.
Now if that happens and you want to make it smaller, you can just resize the triangle
and drop it over top of this one.
So I'll do that right now I'm going to hit Z to zoom in, and I'll select this with the
V tool.
That's the move tool.
And then I'll grab some handles and hold Shift to resize.
Okay, and now I can just click and hold option and
put it right on top.
You can see when it highlights that you've done it right, so holding option, I'm going
to drop it right on top of this one.
And say okay,
and then say Apply to Stroke.
So this will change everything that you have already applied to that brush,
Apply to strokes.
And when we zoom out (CMD -), now you can see that these triangles are about the size
of these over here.
Okay, so let's try the next row in.
With my V tool, I'm going to select the so we can see what we're doing down here and
then just drag them down.
With your V tool, click on the next object, just drag it over into brushes...which is
not happening.
Make sure you're right on the edge when you drag something that's only a stroke.
And I'm just going to drop into my brushes and say Pattern Brush like before.
I don't really want these touching, so I'm going to put them probably at 75%.
Yeah, that looks good.
See what kind of changes these have.
And then I'm going to add space and say, Okay.
And now I'm going to CMD -, to go back out, get my V tool, copy this, paste in front,
(CMD F).
And then I am going to hit my C tool again, and Shift Option drag inside,
like this.
Now what it's doing is resizing that stroke or that brush, but that's okay because we
don't really want to use this again anyway, but what I'm going to do right now - I'm going
to use my eyedropper tool to click on this, so we'll have the same size instance
as the outer one.
Okay, so this has resized to this bigger shape.
And now I'm going to click on my circles.
And they are pretty big, I'm not really liking the way they look, I'm going to zoom in, Z,
hit V, and then Shift and drag a corner.
And hold Option if you want to resize from the middle, click off, and then hit V. Hold
this and then hold Option and go right over top of that and say OK, and Apply to Strokes.
CMD -, and now you can see we have much smaller circles,
which I like a lot better.
Okay, now let's try it with this next one.
Let's zoom in here, Z, and drag a box.
I want to switch to the V tool and highlight this line that I drew.
And now with my cursor right on that line, I'm going to drag it to the brushes.
Pattern brush.
This looks fine.
Now I'm going to CMD - to zoom out, and I'm going to CMD C, CMD F, and then V and then
Shift Option to drag another circle inside.
And we'll apply this last one.
I'll click on that.
And these are also a little too big!
So I'm going to go back to my original, make it a little bit smaller,
and with my V tool, and once I've started dragging and then hold option and overwrite
your other one, and say OK.
Apply to strokes.
With your spacebar, you can move over and see what it's going to do.
Doing this laurel is really not a lot different.
So let's go ahead and pull that into our brushes.
We'll make a pattern brush again.
And now this one, it's looking like, I definitely need more space in there.
So let's say 50%.
And they are not...hmmm...I'm not sure what I think about that.
But we'll say okay.
And now I'm going to click this with my V tool, copy, CMD C, CMD F for paste in front,
and then grab a handle and do shift and option.
Maybe we'll go bigger this time.
Okay.
And now I'm going to click this brush... it's not exactly behaving the way I want.
So one way you can modify brushes is just to take a brush like this, drag it and place
it onto your art board, and they will have little boxes around them.
So I'm going to hit Z and zoom in.
And if I hit CMD C, CMD Y, you can see what's happening, what's being shown and what isn't.
I think I just want this to be vertical.
So I'll use my A tool and select just that part, and then hit E and start rotating and
then hold Shift to get an absolute rotation.
And now I can come back, click on my V, and start dragging and hold option and overwrite
this part of the shape.
And that looks a lot more like what I want.
So let's go ahead and say OK, and apply to strokes.
We'll CMD -, and see that oh wow, it's a lot better right now.
Now you'll notice this is a lot bigger than this shape.
And that's because we took a pattern and we enlarged it and then we change the pattern
so it still thinks that we want it to be that size.
And to fix this, you can just use your Eyedropper Tool and click on a smaller
one.
You can test different sizes, see what these other sizes will do for you.
And I think I like maybe that one is my favorite.
I want to adjust the space on this, so I'm going to just double click on my pattern over
here in the brushes.
And we'll get that space down to maybe 25.
And then we'll apply it.
And yeah, that's a lot better, I think.
We can also replace shapes with these other shapes if we wanted to.
So let's say I didn't like this and I wanted to put this circle out here.
I can zoom in, grab this circle,
and then just overwrite this other one.
And we'll say, OK and apply.
And as you can see it updated to the circle.
It has the same spacing and everything that the
laurels had.
So you have to keep that in mind when you're replacing things.
Now I want to mention you don't only have to use this for circles, you can use the B
tool, which is the brush to draw anything.
And it will apply that brush that you created to whatever you make.
So that can be pretty cool.
Maybe you want to make some, you know, little tire tracks or something.
It's really fun to play around with.
So that's an easy way to make a brush also.
So that's a pretty easy way to add some interest to your designs.
Okay, so that is my tip for the day – how to repeat any shape along a path
in Illustrator.
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