CorelDRAW custom artistic brush

July 26th, 2009

Every once in a while you might need to draw multiple complex shapes that look the same but folow a different curve. In many cases, creating your own custom CorelDRAW Artistic brush can help you save time.

CorelDRAW tree /

Lets say we need to draw this tree in CorelDRAW as needed for the Dream design technique. The best way to achieve this is to create a custom brush stroke and use CorelDRAW’s Artistic Media tool to just draw the paths of the tree.

Before you start

Plan and draw the stroke horizontally since CorelDRAW automatically recognizes the left side as the starting point of the brush stroke and the right one as the ending point (tip of the stroke).

Custom brush stroke

To create the custom Artistic brush we need to draw a single horizontal stroke and save it as a custom brush. This can be done with any kind of shape or group of shapes.

Lets start by drawing two solid fill circles. A large one on the left side (starting point) and a very small one on the right (tip of the brush).

CorelDRAW brush base and tip

Select both shapes and activate CorelDRAW’s Interactive Blending tool from the toolbox menu on the left. Use these tool settings as reference:

Click and drag from one shape to the other ’till you see the blending steps formed. The result should be similar to this.

CorelDRAW blended shapes

CorelDRAW break blend group apart /

Next you need to break the generated blending group into separate objects to be able to assign different colors on some of its parts (Right click/Break Blend Group Apart).

CorelDRAW brush stroke pattern /

Randomly select some of the objects and assign the desired color to them.

The result should be similar to this.

CorelDRAW brush stroke

After you’re done editing the brush stroke shape you need to group all the objects together (Select all/Ctrl+G) and activate CorelDRAW’s Artistic Media tool (I).

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Select the Brush button in the properties bar.