Update: Solutions to My Illustrator Problems

It occurred to me after writing the previous post that perhaps there was some way to fix Illustrator and get rid of those pesky issues with the pen and brush tools. After all, plenty of other people use Illustrator to draw, so it must be possible.

Lo and behold, the solutions are out there:

• Keep pencil from erasing previous line when you start a new one.
  The answer is buried pretty deep into this thread, so I'll reveal it here: Double-click on the pencil tool. Uncheck "Keep selected." Do the same for the brush tool.
• Make a brush that responds to tablet pressure.

After making these adjustments, I was able to create the following doodle:

This was all done with one brush. See how close the circles making up the necklace are? No way I could have done that before! But now I can draw a row of tiny circles, one right after the other, without hitting Cmd + D after each one.