Hey,

Basically I am somewhat new to drawing in vector programs and I am hoping someone can tell me what the trick is to creating a variable width stroke like you see on a lot of stroke type silhouette logos. A decent example can be seen here :: http://www.pixellogo.com/catalog/Exclusive-Logo-Designs-p-3-c-249.html

1st column on the right, 2nd logo up from the bottom; the devil logo. I am not trying to recreate this logo I am just really curious how they created the stroke on this. You see this concept on a lot of logos and I have been stumped on how to do it.

I thought about a caligraphy pen, but seems like that would not work because the widths vary too much, esp. around the nose.

Any advice would be much appreciated.
Thanks.
:dub:

varying line width can be done by just drawing a shape with the pen tool. The other way to do it is by using a pressure sensitive tablet (wacom) and simply draw it.

you could also do it with multiple strokes of a caligraphic or art brush, before joining the paths you would 'expand' the stroke then merge the two shapes afterwards.

Sometimes these shapes or brush strokes are actually done by hand first then scanned in and run through streamline or photoshop then imported into Illustrator for clening and tweaking as well.