I cant seem to use my paintbrush tool. until starting illustrator today it was fine. now one the tool is selected when i hover over the image i wish to paint on i get a grey and black no entry symbol come up. does any one know what might have happened or can give me advice? thank you

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Did you forget to select a brush or stroke color before you draw? Maybe you forgot to unlock a layer? Yeah, it happened to me as well. But honestly, 90% of the time the paintbrush tool didn’t work because of my carelessness.

We ran into problems not always because the tool has an error, sometimes the reason can be that we missed a step. That’s why it’s important to make sure you follow the right steps when you use the tool.

In this article, I’ll show you how to use the paintbrush in Adobe Illustrator before helping you find out why your paintbrush isn’t working and how to fix it.

Note: all screenshots are taken from Adobe Illustrator CC Mac version. Windows and other versions can look different.

Table of Contents

How to Use the Paintbrush Tool in Adobe Illustrator

Before finding out why or how to fix the problem, see if you started in the right direction. So here’s a quick guide on how to use the brush tool in Illustrator.

Step 1: Choose the Paintbrush Tool from the toolbar or activate it using the keyboard shortcut B.

Step 2: Choose a stroke color, stroke weight, and brush style. You can choose a color from the Swatches panel. Stroke weight and brush style from the Properties > Appearance panel.

Step 3: Start drawing! If you want to change the brush size as you draw, you can use the left and right brackets ([ ]) on your keyboard.

If you want to see more brush options, you can open the Brushes panel from Window > Brushes, or use the keyboard shortcut F5. You can explore different brushes from the Brushes libraries menu or add downloaded brushes to Illustrator.

Illustrator Brush Tool Not Working: Why & How to Fix it

There are a couple of reasons why your paintbrush isn’t working properly. For example, problems like you can’t paint on locked layers, or the stroke doesn’t show. Here are three reasons why your paintbrush isn’t working.

Reason

1: Your layer is locked

Did you lock your layer? Because when a layer is locked, you can’t edit it. You can unlock the layer or add a new layer and use the paintbrush tool.

Simply go to the Layers panel and click on the lock to unlock the layer or click the plus icon to add a new layer to work on.

Reason

2: You didn’t choose a stroke color

If you didn’t have a stroke color selected, when you use the paintbrush, it’ll either show the fill color along the path you drew on or a transparent path.

You can quickly fix this by choosing a stroke color from the Color Picker or Swatches panel.

Actually, if you’re using the latest version of Adobe Illustrator and have a fill color selected when you use the paintbrush, it’ll automatically switch to stroke color.

Honestly, I haven’t run into this issue for a long time because I think that newer versions have been developed to fix this type of problem that causes inconvenience in the user experience.

Reason

3: You’re using Fill color instead of Stroke color

This is a situation when the paintbrush doesn’t work “properly”. Meaning, you can still draw, but the result isn’t necessarily what you want.

For example, you wanted to draw an arrow like this.

But when you draw with a fill color selected, you wouldn’t see the path you draw, instead, you’ll see something like this because it fills the space between the path you draw.

There are two solutions here.

Solution

1: You can quickly switch the fill color to the stroke color by clicking on the switch button on the toolbar.

Solution

2: Double-click on the paintbrush tool and it’ll open up the Paintbrush Tool Options dialog box. Uncheck the Fill new brush strokes option and the next time you use the paintbrush tool, it’ll only fill the path with stroke color.

Conclusion

Your paintbrush tool should work if you follow the right steps to use it. Sometimes you might forget that your layer is locked, sometimes you might simply forget to choose a brush.

If you’re using the latest version, the most likely situation you’ll see is Reason

1. So when you see the “prohibit” sign on your brush, the first thing you should do is check if your layer is locked.

Graduated from Creative Advertising major, worked more than eight years as a graphic designer focusing in branding and Illustration. Yes, Adobe Illustrator is my best friend and I’m passionate about art and design.