Create brushes

Last updated on Sep 11, 2025

Learn how to create custom brushes to apply personalized strokes and textures to your artwork. 

You can use your own designs to create calligraphic, scatter, art, pattern, or bristle brushes. Prepare your artwork before creating a custom brush to ensure compatibility. Avoid unsupported elements like gradients, blends, brush strokes, mesh objects, bitmap images, graphs, placed files, and masks. When creating art or pattern brushes, convert any text to outlines.

Create the artwork you want to use for the brush. For scatter and art brushes, select the complete artwork.

Select Window > Brushes to open the Brushes panel.

Select the artwork, then select the New Brush icon in the Brushes panel.

Select the brush type you want and then select OK.

In the brush options dialog box, enter a name, set your desired brush settings, and select OK. Brushes that you create and save in the Brushes panel are associated only with the current file. Each Illustrator file has a different set of brushes in its Brushes panel.

Note

To avoid visible seams in pattern brushes, turn off Anti-aliased Artwork under Edit > Preferences > General (Windows) or Illustrator > Preferences > General (macOS).