Free Illustrator Brushes: Teardrop Foliage

I didn’t know what exactly to call them, but I’ve seen these shapes appear in many places across the design world. I’m calling them “teardrop foliage.” I think they are cool shapes, and they are relatively simple shapes, so they are very versatile and can be used in many different ways. I spent some time putting together a free set of Illustrator brushes to help you create these shapes quickly and easily in Illustrator. If you don’t use illustrator, I have EPS and SVG source files for you to download. Enjoy the brushes!

Screenshot:

A Closer Look:

Using the brushes:

Typically, to get the best results you should follow this rule: The longer your path is, the smaller the head on the brush should be. (the rounded part at the end). Illustrator is going to stretch your brush to fit the size of the path that you draw, therefore, if your path is really long, the rounded shape at the end will get stretched quite a bit. That’s when you switch to a smaller brush head. The opposite applies to smaller paths. the smaller your path, the bigger the head on the brush because it isn’t going to stretch much at all.

Don’t forget to play with your stroke size. A distorted brush stroke at 1px might look fine at .25px.

Download CS3 Version:

http://www.bittbox.com/wp-content/uploads/2007/06/BB_teardrop_foliage_CS3.ai.zip

Download the AI file:

http://www.bittbox.com/wp-content/uploads/2007/06/teardrop_brushes_ill10.ai.zip

Installation:

Even though it has an .ai extension, the file you downloaded (if you downloaded one of the Brush Libraries) is an “Illustrator Brush Library,” not an actual Illustrator file. You will not be able to open the file in Illustrator.

1. Unzip the File.

2. Copy or move the file to your Illustrator > Presets > Brushes folder.

3. Restart Illustrator If it was open during installation.

After you restart Illustrator, you will be able to load the brushes by clicking on the little arrow in the upper right corner of the brushes palette.