How can I make a brush that starts and ends in a thin line?

Question

I am looking to make a brush that I can use for cartooning in CS6 that starts out thin, gets thicker with pressure (I have a cintiq), and ends in a thin line. Does anyone have the expertise to make one?
Thank you.

Answer 1

I watched the first half of the tutorial from your link and some parts of the rest. It is a good tutorial. He is using an art brush which profile was created from an elliptical shape with sharp corners which gives that ink kind of appearance which is good for this kind of style. Most of the time though I prefer the appearance of the rounded ends of the calligraphic brushes. Also one advantage of the calligraphic brushes is that it can change its size or the size of the selected strokes with the [ and ] keys on the keyboard while with the art brushes this is done by changing the stroke weight which also can change the weight of calligraphic brushes in addition to the [ and ] keys.
Like in the tutorial I often use a similar workflow ending up with the brush strokes converted to filled paths but I simply use expand appearance then remove the unwanted parts with the Eraser brush which can be made pressure sensitive in the options that you get when double clicking the Eraser tool. This is less precise than the technique the guy is using in the video tutorial but it is quick, I like  the hand touch appearance of the imperfections, and it also allows me to paint the white (transparent) highlights like for example the highlights on the booths of my cowboy. The Blob brush is the tool above the Eraser in the Tool panel and works basically the same like the Eraser but it adds to the fill of a path and it also has these and more options when you double click it. I use it most of the time in a combination with the Eraser to add or remove final details of illustrations started initially with brush strokes and then expanded. And like in the video tutorial I also like to keep a copy with the stage before expanding the brush strokes in case I need some changes on brush stroke level.
I also use a different technique for adding new color fills on the illustrations instead of cutting paths with the knife. I don't like the knife because I often do not like the first cut which I may realize later when undo is not the best workflow. What I do is copy paste in front the path and use the pencil tool set to edit the selected paths and change the shape of the selected path similar to using the knife but the pencil has to start and end on the path. The advantage of this for me is that the new fill with the different color is overlapping the original fill behind and when later I decide to change its shape I don't get gaps between the two colors which is what will happen if the knife was used.