If nothing elseand theres more, as youll seesymbols are great
convenience tools. What other feature let’s you change your mind
and your artwork with such ease? Plus, there’s something to be said
for throwing together an illustration, however trivial, using some-
one else’s drawings.
Using the Symbolism Tools
In addition to how they facilitate the replication and transformation
of predefi ned artwork, the tie that binds brushes and symbols is
painting. Just as you can paint with brushes (as I demonstrated in
Video Lesson 9, “Freehand Painting”), you can likewise paint with
symbols. The symbol sprayer tool lets you lay down whole popula-
tions of instances. Seven more alliterative toolseach begins with
symbol” and ends with another S word—let you edit these popu-
lations. Illustrator calls these tools the symbolism tools.
Figure 9-74 .
317
Using the Symbolism Tools
1. Open my updated version of the artwork. Although
it was not my intention, Figure 9-74 suggests that our
original man Tiki may have aligned himself with some
new breed of dogmatic radicalism, which history has taught us
is a Very Bad Thing. Fortunately, Tiki has since grown in his
philosophy. To see how, go to the Lesson 09 folder and open the
le called Green Tiki with re lions.ai. As pictured in Figure 9-75,
Tiki retains the same alliances. But in deference to his Oceanic
roots, he’s gone green.
2.
Inspect the Layers panel. The Layers panel houses a single
layer called Life. Click the in front of the Life layer to twirl
it open. At the very topabove the wings and lions instances
and the tiki groupis a <Clipping Path> item. Filled with a
light-to-dark radial gradient, this square path masks the con-
tents of the entire layer. It will likewise mask the symbols that
you paint in the following steps.
Figure 9-75 .
318
Lesson 9: Brushes and Symbols
3.
Select the symbol sprayer tool in the toolbox. Click the symbol
sprayer tool (see Figure 9-76) or press Shift+S. Your cursor will
change to a big, circular brush with a spray can in the middle.
4.
Select a symbol. Before you can paint with the symbol sprayer,
you have to select a symbol. Scroll to the bottom of the Sym-
bols panel and select the second-to-last item, Grass 1, which
looks like
.
P E A R L O F W I S D O M
Grass 1 is another of Adobe’s predefi ned symbols. But it isn’t included with
Illustrator; it comes to us from Photoshop. Like Illustrator, Photoshop ships
with a slew of predefi ned graphics. But Photoshop calls them custom shapes.
As an added bonus, I’ve gone ahead and converted an extensive collection
of these shapes to symbols. To load them into any open illustration, click
the
icon in the bottom-left corner of the Symbols panel and choose the
Other Library command. Navigate to the Lesson 09 folder and open the le
called Photoshop shapes.ai. Then click on the symbols you want to use to add
it to your illustration. Alternatively, you can open the Photoshop shapes.ai
document and use that fi le as a jumping-off point. As shown in Figure 9-77,
the artboard sports sixteen instances. (The leaf above the crown is a Japanese
maple, in case you thought otherwise.) But take a look at the Symbols panel
and you’ll see that the document contains 210 symbols in all.
Figure 9-76 .
Figure 9-77 .
319
Using the Symbolism Tools

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