When I was growing up I was never far from a pencil and a blank piece of paper and I spent countless hours sketching, doodling and experimenting with any tool that could make a mark on paper. I used to collect the graphite shavings from my pencil sharpener and would dip my fingers into the silky smooth powder and then use my loaded finger to draw or shade my sketches with dusty fingerprints and the smudges that inevitably came with them. The Lead Thumb natural media brush is my digital tribute to those late night experiments in my pencil lab. All these years later I finally made one that won’t spill all over the carpet.
I drew this dog with the Lead Thumb brush by using heavy stylus pressure to draw the dark full textured marks and then softening up the pressure to create the gray shaded areas. When lines were to thick or too pronounced I either used the eraser to chip away at them or just used a mid tone closer to the background to draw over them and soften them.
“Lead Thumb” is available for free all this week until next Monday when as always, there will be a new free Photoshop brush of the week
