I am trying to achieve an appearance of an outlined shape that overlaps and intersects itself (The shape on the left). I can only achieve this effect by creating a stroke from the brush tool (or stroke with a 'round' brush definition and selecting 'expand appearance.' However, this leads to a very messy shape with tons of anchor points, and it's not worth cleaning up.
If I create the same stroke with a pencil (or 'basic' brush definition), only 'expand' is available and it combines into one solid shape instead of retaining the intersections.
Is there a way to achieve the effect of the left shape from a pencil/basic stroke?
screencast: https://share.getcloudapp.com/YEuA2d7q