Easily Make a Tempera Brush in Illustrator

Illustrator offers a wide variety of brushes to bring your illustrations to life, but sometimes none of them quite capture the texture you're looking for. If you want a more handcrafted and painterly effect, creating your own brush is the best option. Today, I’ll show you how easy it is to make a tempera brush in Illustrator, perfect for adding expressive strokes and a realistic painted feel to your designs. To do this, we’ll use a real tempera brushstroke as a base. To follow this tutorial, you will only need tempera paint, an old brush, paper, and a scanner.

Step 1

Pick any piece of paper and using an old brush, paint a few strokes with a dark tempera color.

Step 2

Scan the paper with the tempera strokes (a 600 dpi resolution should be fine) and open it in Illustrator.

Step 3

With the image selected, go to Window > Image Trace and apply the following settings.

Step 4

Go to Object > Image Trace > Expand.

Step 5

Go to Object > Ungroup.

Step 6

Select the stroke you want for your crayon brush with the Selection Tool (V).

Step 7

Go to Object > Compound Path > Make.

Step 8

With your stroke selected go to Window > Brushes to display the brushes panel and click on the "New Brush" icon.

Step 9

Select the "Art Brush" option in the New Brush window and click OK.

Step 10

In the Art Brush Options window, apply the following settings and click OK. You should now see your new tempera brush in the Brushes panel.

Step 11

To test our brush, draw any kind of shape or line, and with the shape selected, simply click on the tempera brush in the Brushes panel.

Step 12

To change the brush color, select the shape that you have made, and in the Swatches Panel (Window > Swatches) pick any color that you want.