Creating intricate circular designs and patterns may look difficult because the shapes can be very complicated, but you will be surprised at just how easy making these shapes can be. I will go over some neat tricks, tools, techniques, and settings that will have you pumping out perfect circular designs in no time using Illustrator.

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Ever since I read N.Design Studio’s tutorial on how to make abstract lines easily in Illustrator, I’ve been playing around with Illustrator’s Blend Tool to see what I could use it for other than abstract lines. I wanted to show you some of the (really easy) possibilities of this tool, so I put together a small tutorial and I’m going to show you a lot of examples of the kinds of shapes and effects that the blend tool is capable of.

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It’s really a lot easier than you would expect. This tutorial was requested by many of my readers after I posted this Free set of 35 Abstract Illustrator Brushes. The possibilities are endless as far as brush making goes in illustrator, but I wanted to get you started in the right direction and let you take it from here. (The purpose is to tease you, so you want to try it on your own!)

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Illustrator comes standard with some default brushes. Most of us probably use these brushes as they were intended to be used, but what happens if you push the limits of stroke size? You get a really easy way to create some cool abstract effects in Illustrator. Check out the example below, made with very simple shapes. The complexity is created by taking the stroke way beyond normal with an artistic brush stroke from the brushes palette.

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Many times in the past I had found that I wanted to take a vector path from Photoshop (CS) and somehow get it to Illustrator for further use. There are lots of great and free Photoshop custom shapes out there, many of which might be more useful to you in Illustrator, if that’s what you prefer. That’s what Illustrator is for, right? Vectors.

Photoshop custom shapes come in vector format, just like drawing with the rectangle tool. Unfortunately, there aren’t as many custom shapes available for Illustrator, in the form of symbols. (at least not that I have encountered) I want to show you an easy way to get a vector path from Photoshop into Illustrator so you can take advantage of all those free custom shapes available out there, and possibly save you some time drawing.

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