How to Create Your Own Brushes
How to Create Your Own Brushes
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Digital Painting Fundamentals

Digital Painting Fundamentals(61 Lessons )
Intro to Digital Painting

How to Create Your Own Brushes

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Course In Progress

How to Create Your Own Brushes

1.5K
Course In Progress

Practice what we discussed in this lesson and create a few brushes! Try different methods for creating the initial brush stamp, and experiment with different settings to see how they impact your end result. 

This assignment is geared toward helping you get some hands-on experience working with your drawing software's brush engine. The more you familiarize yourself with the brush engine, the more freedom you will have to get the exact texture and style you want in your paintings. 

Newest
Alex S
1yr
Did my best and managed to get some (decent) brush tips. I use Clip Studio Paint, so a number of the tools covered in the video have different names than they do in Photoshop ("Linear Dodge" in PS, is apparently "Add (glow" in CSP). But what's really given me trouble was that I can't seem to use a linear dodge brush the same way as we're shown in the video. Well I can, but then I'm left with a solid white background that's not transparent (and yes I did lock transparent pixels). I thought I'd found a solution when I the properties featured below, but then any time I tried changing the layer into a multiply layer and so on, I ended up having a solid white background (or the image disappeared altogether) Anyway, I'd love to know what I'm missing here, so that I might better explore the different kinds of brushes I can make.....
hArtMann
1yr
Used the same image twice (the cliff wall to the viewer's left of the river as the base and the foliage on the viewer's right for modifications) to make the 2nd stamp.
Andrew Schlageter
I made a few texture brushes. Top two are for fur (one matted, one bristled) and bottom two are for fabric (one coarse, one fine/silky). for the eggs/orbs, I applied brush strokes in a clipping group and put the blending mode on soft light. I'm using Krita, which has slightly different features than PS but the differences translate well enough. These worked better than I expected but I would change some things about the flow and contrast (especially the fabric brushes). Though I designed them for texturing the highlights and shadows of focal points, they took some experimentation to blend as intended and have some contrast issues when not in a blending mode. Though I will note I have not used them for any actual piece yet and could look better on actual details and planes shaded and formed for the material they're intended to be.
@jasonj33
2yr
Very scientific approach here, I’m intrigued. I’ll watch this lecture once more than dive in. I have a feeling this class will really help me soar in digital art
Matthew Rawles
@Jon Neimeister what are your thoughts on this custom brush?
Jon Neimeister
Looks nice, could be useful for a lot of soft-edged things! Are you drawing with black or a mid-gray here? You'll want to be sure you can get a full opacity stroke out of the brush in most situations, so if you had black selected and this brush is painting 50% opacity gray you may want to fiddle with the settings.
Matthew Rawles
My texture brush i made in clip studio, i had play around with the engine a bit to understand it what are you thoughts any insight is appreciated. I started traditionally as a artist.
A V
3yr
Hey Matthew. I think that brush could produce some sandy or even whispy textures. It would be great if you could vary the values of each stroke. Maybe you could tinker with the pen pressure settings for that. Great job and keep experimenting!
Jacob Morgan
Enjoyed this lesson a lot. I've never really messed with the texture setting in the presets before as I've never been sure how to apply it to my own brushes. And I'm not sure how to implement a photo bashed texture brush into the workflow other than it being a nice sorta pallet starter, I guess? At least that's what I settled on here.
onigi *pronunce [on-ie-gee]*
I tried to make it from a picture of Asparagus. It is more difficult to make a new brush and adjust the settings than I thought, but at least it looks organic! Maybe need to cut the edge more?
Stephen McLaughlin
I have been wanting to take this course as well, but putting it off.
Stephen McLaughlin
Thank you for your post! I have been meaning to learn Brushes but I kept putting it off. I want to use them in Photoshop. You have inspired me to get to it today. Thanks again!
onigi *pronunce [on-ie-gee]*
it is -> it was
Ale Miranda
Hey, first of all thank you so much for the awesome lesson, it had so much useful information I knew nothing about. These are my first attempts at making brushes. for the first one I tried to make a little pine tree stamp by using the brush tool. The second one I made by using a few different fur textures, but it ended up looking more like foliage to me so that's what i used it for. For the third one i just used a a picture of a cottonball and added a little bit of contrast and grain. I don't know if they'll be useful in the long run, but I had a lot of fun making them.
Elizabeth C.
This was also my first attempt at custom brushes! For the first one I tried for a sketching type brush without texture but still with some interesting edges. The second one was supposed to test out using texture, but it didn't really have the directionality I was hoping for.
Holly Laing
Here's my first attempt at custom brushes, I made one set for painting a space scene and the other is meant for painting the northern lights. I struggled a bit with the northern lights brushes, I had to combine a couple of them to get the desired effect, but overall I'm relatively happy with how it turned out. I do think there's room for improvement with all of these, so any feedback would be greatly appreciated. :)
Jon Neimeister
Great job! I love that you created your brushes with a specific objective in mind. :D You might be able to improve your northern lights brushes by using color dynamics. You can randomize the color of each stamp or the brush stroke as whole, depending on your Apply Per Tip setting. Even adding a subtle hue jitter of 10 or 15% can add a lot of color variety to your brush.
DreamMist
3yr
I created these two brushes the left one from brushes I already had the other from a flower pictures I made years ago in my garden I gave it color dynamic (just to test it out I guess) I don't know yet how I'm gonna use these I'll have to probably play around with them a but to see where I can implement them.
Jon Neimeister
Both of these look quite useful for making some traditional paint looking textures! You might experiment with turning Transfer on and set the opacity control to pen pressure, they look like they'd be great paintbrushes with that adjustment.
Dan Casagrande
Created what I thought could be an interesting line art brush, but I was wrong 😅 Then proceeded to created a textured brush, that also turned out a bit weird, but all in all, a very interesting exercise to get to know the brush tool a bit better and get more familiar with it.
Jon Neimeister
Very cool! The first brush may not be what you want for lineart but it looks like a great sketching brush.
Richard Fritz
Hey Jon just found this site and really liked the videos you have made. Is there a timeline on the second part of your courses? Digital illustration and advanced…
Jon Neimeister
Hey Richard! Glad you're enjoying the videos so far. :D We're not on a completely fixed timeline, but the complete course will likely continue over the rest of this year. We'll be getting into some real painting demos and assignments very soon and steadily working our way towards a full illustration from imagination.
Giselle
3yr
Made three different brushes today and tried to play with their different effects. I understand a bit more now about how the different properties affect the brush's look. Not sure yet what they might be useful for, if it all, but they make funky textures.
Jon Neimeister
Nice job! Having funky textures at your disposal is always a good thing. :D
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