CorelDRAW Help | Apply, undo, and clear brushstrokes

Apply, undo, and clear brushstrokes

To clear a brushstroke applied to an object

You can create a brushstroke as you draw. You can also apply brushstrokes to existing vector paths, curves, and shapes created with a wide variety of drawing tools. Some features within the application are incompatible with Painterly brushes. For more information about supported features, see Reference: Painterly brushstrokes.

Brushstrokes are only rendered when you have finished applying or modifying them. By default, a bounding box appears around brushstrokes once rendered in the document window. You can use the selection handles to move and transform brushstrokes with ease, and you can hide the bounding box if needed.

You can undo a stroke. In addition, you can modify and remove brushstrokes from objects at any point, providing you with full control over the evolution of your artistic vision. For more information about modifying the vector and raster attributes of brushstrokes, see Edit the vector curves of Painterly brushes and Customize the pixel brush marks of Painterly brushes, respectively.

When you save a document containing Painterly brushstrokes to a CorelDRAW version earlier than 25.0 (2024), their visual appearance is retained, but they are converted into bitmaps with transparency.

To apply a brushstroke

1 In the toolbox, click the Painterly Brush tool

2 Perform a task from the following table.

To	Do the following
Create a brushstroke	Click the Brush picker on the property bar and click a brush style. Drag in the drawing window. The brushstroke is rendered once you release the mouse button or lift the stylus off the tablet.
Apply a brushstroke to an object	Click the object to select it. Click the Brush picker on the property bar and click a brush style. The brushstroke is applied to the selected object.

You cannot apply a brushstroke to a group of objects if all objects are incompatible with the Painterly Brush tool.

When applying a brushstroke to a group that includes both supported and incompatible objects, the brushstroke is applied only to the supported objects. If the supported objects already have existing brushstrokes, the new brushstroke will overwrite them.

When applying a brushstroke to a group of compatible objects, the brushstroke is applied to every object within the group. In cases where some objects already have brushstrokes while others do not, the new brushstroke is uniformly applied to all objects, overwriting any original strokes.

When you apply a brushstroke to an object with an outline, the brushstroke replaces the outline.

Painterly brushstrokes do not have an outline.

You can also access the Painterly Brush tool by pressing J. For information about customizing keyboard shortcuts, see Customize keyboard shortcuts.

To show or hide the bounding box around brushstrokes, click the Bounding box button on the property bar.

To undo a brushstroke

• Click Edit

Undo Painterly Brush.

You can also undo a brushstroke by pressing Command+Z.

To clear a brushstroke applied to an object

1 Select an object with a Painterly brushstroke.

2 Click the Clear Brushstroke button on the property bar.

When a brushstroke is removed from an object created with another tool, the object retains its fill and other properties. If the object initially had no fill or outline, it takes on the default fill and outline colors for graphics. For more information on managing the default properties for graphics, see Manage and apply default object properties.