Title: Refine Strokes Assignments Outline
Course: WILSON MC - INTRODUCTION TO COMPUTER GRAPHICS HYBRID > Section: Week 6 - Refine Strokes and Apply Effects

- INTRODUCTION TO SYMBOLS AND BLENDS

Because Illustrator artwork can be boiled down to anchors and paths, the appearance of those defined paths is what brings artwork to life. The Stroke panel defines the minute features of a stroke — how ends look (for example, square or rounded), how corners look (for example, mitered or round), and how strokes are aligned (for example, centered or inside). The Stroke panel can also be used to apply arrowheads as well as dashed or patterned lines.

Brushes soften the edges of vectors. Illustrator provides a wide range of preset brushes, ranging from charcoal strokes to calligraphic strokes to arrows to patterns. You can draw with the Brush tool directly, or you can apply brush strokes to any existing path. One particular application of brushes is to draw a range of borders around objects — like a frame for a picture.

Brush strokes can be applied to paths generated from text (outlined type) for a wide array of fun and attractive “wordplay,” a technique unique to Illustrator and impossible with a raster/bitmap editor. The real magic of brushes emerges when you create your own.

LEARNING OBJECTIVES:
- CAP strokes
- APPLY stroke effects (dashes, etc.)
- ADD arrowheads
- PAINT with brushes
- DEFINE custom brushes
- DESIGN borders

ELEMENTS OF THIS LESSON INCLUDE:

- CHAPTERS
ILLUSTRATOR CS6: VISUAL QUICKSTART GUIDE
Using the book Illustrator CS6: Visual QuickStart Guide refer to the following chapters for Refine Strokes:
Chapter 10: Fill and Stroke
Chapter 23: Brushes
- PRESENTATION
  - View the 22-slide presentation on Refine Strokes in MGLab to familiarize yourself with the basic concepts and the terminology.
- VIDEOS
  - Watch the following lesson videos in MGLab. As with the slide presentation, use the video content to expose you to the techniques demonstrated. You may need to re-watch portions - or all-  of a video for complex techniques.
    - 1 Gradient Strokes
    - 2 Pattern Brushes and Scatter Brushes