Tips for Brushmaking

Traditional artists use different tools to convey different textures and forms; a rake brush is used for texture, a round brush for details, and square brushes can be used for flat washes. Digital artists similarly use brushes to convey texture and form digitally! Understanding how to create and implement these brushes is essential to digital art. Brushes can be associated with different styles and can change your artwork to be more traditional, graphic, or textured.

Most master digital artists advise that beginners should start by only using the hard round brush. This is because beginners tend to lack edge control and can overuse the airbrush, causing other soft brushes to look muddy when painting. While this is generally good advice for those starting, using brushes for specific purposes can elevate digital art to a new level.

1. Guide to Creating Brushes

Check out the following guides below!

Procreate Brush Guide: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ewNQky3RjsA

Adobe Photoshop Brush Guide: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3x7XcUBhJ8k

Clip Studio Paint Brush Guide: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P-7AI5xTXTg

2. Brush Tips

Brush tips are the shape of your digital brush. They are what makes a square brush create square strokes and a circle brush create circular strokes.

If you scan marks you make on paper, you can turn them into brushes. Alternatively, you can create them directly in your software by playing with shapes and different marks to make new brush tips.

3. Brush Texture

Brush texture is the backbone of a brush. While brush tips change the shape and stroke of your brush, the texture is what is left behind on the canvas. It’s what makes a brush noisy, gritty, or smooth.

Brush texture can be created digitally, but I find it interesting to scan various traditional textures to use for different effects. In my personal workflow, I think it’s easiest to create textures in Photoshop using pattern preview. You can use pattern preview to make your texture seamless by copying and pasting sections and erasing to ensure your texture works well when painting.

Texture is important to add depth to your piece and also can be a way to stylistically add interest.

The following is an example of the same brush tip with 3 different textures.

4. Brush Settings

Here are some quick tips to make your brushes more interesting!

4a. Hue Jitter

Under Color Dynamics in the brush settings, you will find different ways to create visual interest using color!

One of those ways is hue jitter. Hue jitter in a brush can allow you to get a lot of color variation very easily without having to manually switch between colors constantly in your color wheel or hue cube.

Each setting in Color Dynamics lets you control how much color variation you want in a brush.

“Apply Per Tip” at the top adds this effect, allowing your color to change constantly as you paint. When unchecked, the color will not change continuously; it will only change with each stroke.

The following are settings that affect how much color shifting you think is suitable:

A higher percentage for Hue Jitter will increase how much the hue shifts.

Increasing the percentage for Saturation Jitter will result in greater saturation differences across each stroke.

Changing Brightness Jitter allows for greater differences for brightness or darkness per stroke.

4b. Scatter

If you need to make patterns, foliage and leaves, or just want interesting textures, you can use a scatter brush. Use scatter with any brush tip to create an interesting array of strokes. If you create a brush tip shape that looks like a leaf and use scatter, you can get a random pattern.

4c. Pen Pressure

Pen pressure lets you adjust certain settings based on how much pressure you apply using your stylus. You can control hue jitter, brush size, opacity, and scatter using pen pressure. The following shows a brush stroke from a brush with pen pressure enabled in the Shape Dynamics setting compared to that of a brush without it. As seen below, pen pressure controls how large and small the brush gets depending on the amount of pressure applied.

5. Essential Brushes & How to Make Them

5a. Square transparent block in brush

First, I created a brush shape; this shape I made on paper using a flat marker before scanning and uploading to Photoshop.

I selected the shape and under Edit found “Define Brush Preset.”

In the Transfer settings, toggle pen pressure on for opacity.

I also added some texture that I scanned to make it look more “chalky.”

5b. Inky brush

For this brush, I started with a simple circle shape, then went to “Define Brush Preset”.

Under shape dynamics, toggle pen pressure on for size.

In brush tip shape, I decreased the spacing to 3%, and also made the circle more of an oval by decreasing the roundness and turning it at an angle.

Lastly, I added texture to this brush too, since I wanted it to feel like a dryer ink brush.

5c. Foliage-like scatter brush

First, I created the shape of leaves and defined it as a brush preset.

I increased the spacing for this brush to 20% and turned scattering on.

I also toggled on size jitter and angle jitter to give a little more variation.

Essentially, brushmaking stems from experimentation and not being afraid to create original textures and brush tips. You can always duplicate a brush and save it before manipulating it and creating something new.

To make digital brush textures, use digital techniques and effects, and to create traditional-looking brushes, use traditional techniques and embrace an imperfect and organic look.

I’d recommend looking into Lucas Peinador’s YouTube videos; he does a good job of getting brushes to feel very traditional.

The last tip is to explore! Brushes can be an art form in and of themselves. There are so many interesting combinations you can come up with, so many brush tips and textures that might look beautiful in your artwork.

Scanning textures and using photos as texture can work really well. Brush making is a game of tweaking all the settings to see what you can change and what works. Trust the process and have fun. See what you can make with the world around you!

Finally, here are some recommendations for free brush packs!