We’ll start our first graphic creation with a simplified piece of art work. It’s a rather complex shape, but as far as graphics go, this is pretty simple to create. It may look scary but we’ll take it one step at a time. This type of graphic is really handy for newsletters, and ads that require eye catching attention on certain textual phrases such as promotions.

Ok so to start you need to assess how you want your swoosh to look. I wanted it to look like someone just took a wet paintbrush and going from left to right just made a slight arc. This has the effect of making jagged edges on the right hand side.

I started by selecting my pen tool (p) and just clicking a basic rectangle. Don’t worry about dragging out handles at this point, we’ll use our convert anchor point tool (shift C) for that. After you have the basic shape outlined select your fill color and fill the shape in. Thinking ahead I wanted the paint swoosh to look faded at the ends so I made three color choices. I call it dark for the main shape, medium for the back copy layer, and light for the stragglers.

Ok so with our convert anchor point tool selected click and drag on each of the anchor points of the rectangle. Don’t worry about the even distribution of the handles at this point we’ll be breaking that tie in a moment. Ok now that you have the basic arc done, go to the top left corner and select the left handle with the convert anchor point tool. Bring it down to make a sharper edge to the corner. Rough in all the others as well.

Next grab your add anchor point tool and add 4 or 5 anchor points next to each corner and randomly make the corner look a bit sloppy. Use your convert anchor point tool to bend the path as desired by clicking and dragging the added anchor points. Then click each of the handles with the convert anchor point tool and place them where you want them. There’s no right or wrong here, just try to achieve a random jagged look.

To make the jagged right end of the shape I added quite a few anchor points with our add anchor point tool and used my direct selection tool (a) to drag them in and out until I got the look I was going for. Then I went back to my convert anchor point tool and curved out most of them by clicking and dragging on the anchor points with no real order to it. Once you have the basic outline for the top shape, copy and paste in back. Fill with your medium color and nudge down a bit to offset it from the main shape. Then rotate counterclockwise just a tad. Use your direct selection tool to move the anchor points and handles to vary the shape up. On this back layer I eliminated most of the jagged points on the right because I want them to be stragglers drawn in later. When you have it looking just right, copy the main shape on top and paste in front then select the lower top shape and hold shift and select the lower layer we just created then click the minus front button in the pathfinder panel.

To make the stragglers (the light color shapes to the right), I used the pen tool to draw the basic shape making sure I overlapped the edge of the nearby shape. Then with my selection tool (v) I clicked the straggler shape and (holding shift) the near by shape and then clicked the divide button in the pathfinder panel. This intersects the straggler shape with the underlying shape. Then double click into the new shapes and select both of the shapes that make up the straggler and click the unite button in the pathfinder panel. The use your selection tool and move the shape slightly away from the edge and fill with the light color you chose for the bottom and medium color for the top.

Use this technique randomly throughout the image to create these stragglers.

I hope you had fun making this rather complex shape. I chose this tutorial to get you familiar with the pen tool and anchor points and handles, along with the pathfinder panel in such as way that you don’t need to be precise or perfect in order to make a great looking paintbrush swoosh shape.