Adobe Illustrator Brushes Created from Photograph Fragments

Hello Everyone,

The contemporary technologies allow selecting any photograph fragment and using it for developing new textile patterns.

We can transform a picture into an abstract drawing or “cut out” any fragment of this picture and use it as a part of a complex composition, a motif for textile print or motif for the Adobe Illustrator brush.

In this post, I will demonstrate several examples of floral brushes and floral print created from photograph fragments. I will use my photos of roses. First of all, I “cut out” several single flowers from a photograph.

Then I turn the photo fragments into vector objects and remove the unnecessary backgrounds. After that, the flower images are ready for creating Art brushes in Adobe Illustrator.

Such brushes allow painting flowers of different sizes and in different directions. The flower image is created with just one stroke of this brush. The size and direction of the flower change depending on the length and direction of the stroke.

I have added three more Art brushes for drawing leaves. Various floral prints can be created by using these brushes. The use of any additional brush, such as a stem brush or an ornamental brush, will increase the possible number of floral compositions.

We can use Art brushes and create a motif for a Pattern brush. This motif will repeat along a path many times. We need to draw any required path and apply the new Pattern brush.

Below, you can see several motif variations created with the Art brushes in Adobe Illustrator.

The motif created with Art brushes can serve as an element for complex composition or as a tile for a new Pattern brush.

Several Art brushes have been used for the floral motif below: three brushes from photos of two roses and one bud; three brushes of leaves created as vector objects.

The motif below was obtained by using the Reflect tool.

Various technologies for printing on fabrics are developing rapidly. This opens huge opportunities for creativity.

If you draft a full-scale garment production pattern in Adobe Illustrator, you can create a placement print on any garment detail. It is easy to align the placement print perfectly on the front and back garment details in Adobe Illustrator.

Below, you can see some examples of using the flower Pattern brush to decorate the hem of a 1/4 circle skirt. Seam lines are used as auxiliary lines. They help to align patterns on the front and back garment details. You should hide seam lines before printing. Notches should be left visible.

In the pictures below, the seam lines have been left so that it is clear that the Pattern Brush is positioned on a detail of the skirt pattern.

Below, you can see one more variation of the Pattern brush on the front detail of the 1/4 circle skirt.

The variety of brush options is unlimited. Everything depends on your imagination and skills.

You can learn how to create and use the various fashion brushes by reading chapters 14 and 15 of my e-textbook "The Craft of Garment Design with Adobe Illustrator".

If you want to learn how to draft a straight skirt pattern in Adobe Illustrator, read my e-book "Drafting the Skirt Pattern in Adobe Illustrator".