This tutorial comes from BittBox.com, founded by Jay Hilgert. BittBox, according to Hilgert, is a ‘freebie foundry’ where you’ll find free content for designers, including high resolution Photoshop brush sets, vector downloads, Adobe-related design tutorials, industry news and featured artists from around the globe.

Curl it up
Use these tips to create a simple curl effect in Illustrator.

1. Draw an ellipse (L) on your artboard. Click and drag while pressing the Shift key to create a perfect circle. Note: The size of the circle determines the size of the resulting brush. We created a .5 x .5 in. circle.

2. With the Direct Selection tool (A), select the right-most point on the ellipse and drag it to the right while pressing Shift.

3. Choose the Convert Anchor Point tool (Shift + C) from the Pen tool list in the tool palette. Click the ellipse point you just selected to convert the point to a sharp corner.

4. Select the options arrow in the upper right corner of the Brushes palette and chose New Brush.

5. In the New Brush menu, choose New Art Brush; click OK.

6. Set the Direction of the Art Brush to the right, as in this example. You can experiment later with different directions and sizes. Click OK.

7. Select the Spiral Tool from the Line Segment list in the tool palette. Click somewhere on the artboard to open the Spiral options window. Input the numbers shown in step 7 and click OK. Select your newly created brush in the Brushes palette.

8. In the Stroke tab, change the Stroke weight to achieve different thicknesses in your new curl. It is set at .25 point for this example, in step 8.

9. To convert this form from a line to an actual shape, select Object > Expand Appearance. This will convert the line to a fill.

10. Lastly, a line will still exist from the original form. To delete this line which appears in the center of the shape, select the form with the Select tool (V). With the Direct Select tool (A), press Shift and click somewhere inside the shape—but not on the line in the middle. This will deselect the outer form, leaving the line in the middle selected. Press Delete to remove.