Paintbrush tool

After you draw a shape using the Paintbrush tool, Expression Design automatically fits a Bezier path to your freehand trail. You can control how tightly you want the path to fit your trail with the Tightness of Fit field of the Stroke page of the Options dialog box.

After selecting the Paintbrush tool  from the Toolbox, you can draw a Bezier path simply by dragging out a shape in the document window. If you want to create a closed path, place the cursor over the starting point of the path and let go of the mouse button when a small white circle appears next to the cursor.

Drawing a trail with the Paintbrush tool, and the resulting Bezier path with brush stroke applied

Note that you can also use the Paintbrush tool as an object-selection tool. Just click (without dragging) any path to select it, or click on an empty area of the page to deselect all objects.

Appending paths

When the Drawing tools append to path option is selected in the Stroke panel of the Options dialog box, you can easily extend an already-existing path with the Paintbrush tool by placing the cursor over the beginning or end point of the line, holding down the ALT key, and then drawing. Or, you can draw a new path with the Paintbrush tool and place the cursor over one of the open nodes of a path, and press the ALT key as you release the mouse button. In this case, the new path will be joined with the old one.

Pressure settings

If you use a pressure-sensitive device (such as a WACOM tablet), Expression Design can vary the appearance of the stroke according to the pressure applied at each point. You can control whether Expression Design pays any attention to pressure-sensitivity information from your tablet and stylus by turning on or off the Enable Pressure Sensitivity option in the Stroke page of the Options dialog box. When this is on, the stroke weight is determined by a combination of the pressure applied to the tablet, the Pressure Scale, and the Stroke Width field in the Properties panel. 

Tip: You can replace one already-drawn path with another by selecting the path you want to replace, then holding down the Shift key and drawing over the path with the Paintbrush tool. If you draw over just a portion of the path, Expression Design replaces just that portion.