Historically, vector applications like Adobe Illustrator have not attracted users as an ideal platform for creating organic textured artwork. This hasn’t been helped by the sheer volume of poorly vectorized brushes lurking around the internet with their janky endpoints and an overall aesthetic that looks good from afar but far from good.

If you’ve ever attempted to use any of these brushes in Illustrator, you’ll know they’re usually either too one-dimensional, too memory-hungry, or have that overly digital aesthetic that just doesn’t look right no matter how long you stare at it.

At True Grit Texture Supply, we've been working to right all that’s wrong with Illustrator brushes since 2017, applying our expertise in making game-changing brushes for a variety of illustration and design apps to create vector brushes and effects for Illustrator that make even the most hardened vector art purist add a little texture to their clean vector aesthetic.

With a strong emphasis on replicating analog tools and effects in a vector workflow, we invest countless hours in every new illustrator brush set we create, ranging from ultra-realistic inks and halftones to delicious tactile grain and stipple shading.

Tailored for everyone from professional Pen Tool wranglers to vector art novices and everyone between, our Illustrator brushes are crafted to exceed expectations, from their superior realism and intuitive design to comprehensive tutorials and quick-start user guides. We're here to help push your work into new creative realms with distinctive brushes and aesthetics that stretch Adobe Illustrator's capabilities to its limits and beyond.

Every brush set undergoes regular testing and updates to ensure optimal compatibility with the latest versions of Illustrator. Additionally, you receive lifetime technical support from a team of artists with decades of expertise with Adobe Illustrator. Brushes acting strangely or need a little help with your live trace settings? Rest assured, our support team will have the solution.

Few phrases are more clichéd than "made by artists for artists," yet here we are, firmly planting our experienced artist flag in the sand for your enjoyment and benefit.

Informed by real-world experience.

Under the guidance of TGTS creative director Andrew Fairclough, our product development process is the result of 15+ years of professional experience creating distinctly textural illustration and design work for some of the world's largest brands, bands, and publishers.

A side hustle this ain't.

We've been devoted to building pro-quality texture tools full-time since 2016, and making custom textures and tools for client work for almost a decade before that.
In a game with no shortcuts, we've learned a thing or two.

Fueled by this experience, our illustrator brushes are constructed from the ground up using ultra-high-def, custom brush, and texture samples. Just like a crate-digging DJ searching for that perfect sample, we scour vintage stores, warehouses, and estate sales for the rare vintage papers and printed ephemera that give our illustrator brushes that extra something special.

Building realistic texture brushes for Adobe Illustrator is no joke.

Merging creative instinct and artistic dedication to experimentation, the process of creating exceptional Illustrator brushes rarely rewards taking the easiest route. In an internet flooded with random freebies, fly-by-night influencers, and shameless imitators, it's challenging to distinguish the genuine from the pretenders.

Every True Grit product begins with an aesthetic exploration through various source materials, physical tools, and print remnants. We experiment extensively, constantly cross-referencing source materials until digitally replicating our intended aesthetic becomes second nature.

With our target aesthetic now subtly haunting us in our sleep, we create a custom library of assets that serve as the raw materials for our illustrator brushes. Have you ever spent multiple weeks obsessively creating, scanning, cleaning up, and cataloging hundreds of analog brush strokes? Of course, you haven't. You're not insane. But we are, and it's a crucial element of what imparts our Illustrator brushes and effects with the authentic feel and tactility we've become renowned for (five stars, baby!)

Next, we import our high-def samples into Illustrator, vectorize (usually by hand) and clean up unnecessary paths and nodes before loading them into Illustrator’s Brushes panel where they are crafted into usable brushes from thousands of potential settings combinations—so many settings combinations.

For those following along at home, this is just as tedious as it sounds, involving days (sometimes weeks) of experimentation, fine-tuning, and real-world testing with our handpicked roster of professional designers to ensure each illustrator brush meets our impossibly high standards for authenticity and usability.

This, right here, is the hard work of distinguishing the exceptional from the mediocre and the hits from the misses. It's not just about the Illustrator brushes we release, but also about the ones we don't.

So rest assured, Pen Tool lover, we'll be right here, applying our experience and skill to crafting world-class vector brushes, so you can focus on creating world-class vector art.

What’s the difference between a vector brush and a raster brush?

Vector Brushes:

• Vector brushes are used in graphics apps that use mathematical equations that create geometric shapes, lines, and curves (often called bézier curves) controlled by editable control points and handles.
• Common vector applications include Adobe Illustrator, Affinity Designer, and Corel DRAW. Some apps such as Affinity Designer and Adobe Fresco combine both vector and raster brushes in one app.
• Vector apps are ideal for creating graphics that need to be scaled up or down without losing quality, such as logos, icons, and illustrations.
• Vector apps allow for precise control over shapes, making them perfect for creating crisp artwork with sharp edges and smooth curves.
• Vector artwork can be continuously edited and refined without any loss of quality or resolution.
• Unlike raster brushes, vector brushes can be scaled to any size without losing quality.

Raster Brushes:

• Raster brushes work with pixels. When you draw with a raster brush, each stroke creates a series of pixels which form the brush stroke.
• Common raster applications include Photoshop, Procreate, Clip Studio, Adobe Fresco and Affinity Photo.
• Raster brushes are great for creating detailed, organic-looking artwork, such as digital paintings, print effects, comic art, and illustrations with organic textures and details.
• Since raster brushes are pixel-based, output size is limited by a file's resolution and will becoming pixelated or blurry when scaled up significantly.

Put simply, raster brushes tend to be best for creating hyper-detailed, textured artwork, while vector brushes excel at creating precise graphics that can be scaled almost infinitely. There’s a range of valid reasons an artist might choose vector over raster apps though and the choice between them depends on the specific needs of your project and how you like to work.

How to install vector brushes in Adobe Illustrator

Our Illustrator brushes are typically supplied as either an installable brush library or as a .ai masterfile containing all of the brushes included in the set.

Brush libraries:

• In Illustrator, open the Brushes Panel (Window > Brushes).
• Click the Brush Libraries Menu in the bottom left of the Panel (the bookshelf icon).
• Choose Other Library from the Menu.
• Locate the brush library .ai file on your hard drive and click open to install. Our Illustrator brush libraries are usually saved in your download package in a folder named 'Install These Files' and will contain 'brush-library' in the filename.
  

Brush masterfiles:

Open the .ai file and copy/paste the brushes you want to use in your artwork. The pasted brushes will appear in the brush panel ready to use.

Don't sweat it. All of our brushes come with detailed installation instructions specific to how your brushes are supplied.