I’ve added a new oil impasto brush to the shop tonight ‘Sugar knife‘ Although it applies much like a traditional brush, the texture is more Palette knife-like with it’s layered flat slabs of paint. I promise a break from the oil brushes tomorrow when I will be adding the first pencil in what seems like forever. I hope to get out a set of various pencils within the next month or so.
Here are some of the new brushes added to the shop in the first two weeks of December. These are all free to GrutBrushes Art-Brushes Multi-Set owners still in the free trial period and of course, all Art Brushes complete members.
If last month was a charcoal brush month, this month may be a bit heavy on the oil Impasto brushes but I can’t keep them in the workshop much longer and they are really best when you use a bunch of them together in a painting. Variety of strokes as well as actual brushes presets is the secret to using the Impasto brushes to good effect. The four here now make a total of about 6 oil impasto brushes in the shop. By the end of March I hope and expect there to be about 20 or so available.
Not forgotten, I also added Molt Vinyl and Timpany Dee, both watery ink and watercolour brushes. Molt Vinyl is this week’s free Photoshop brush of the week so grab it while you can
This week’s free GrutBrush is “Molt Vinyl” A thick ink that just won’t sink in. Like painting with ink on stone, this Photoshop ink brush applies thickly, but spreads across the surface, staining slightly and leaving pools of fingerprint sized smudgy ink stains. You can download this week’s free Photoshop brush until next Monday when, as always, there will be a new one waiting for you. grutbrushes.com/freebrush
Q: George asked me in an email: “Is there any way to use these brushes as an eraser?”
A: Yes! If you’re painting or drawing in Photoshop using a brush that has a nice organic brush stroke and you want to correct or erase part of your painting using an eraser that has the same look and feel of your brush instead of the default Photoshop erasers there are a number of ways to do so in Photoshop.
Perhaps the easiest is to switch your brush mode from ‘normal’ to ‘clear’ which will essentially turn your current brush into an eraser, with all it’s settings in tact. But what if you have switched brushes or recently changed the settings of your brushes and want to go back to a previous brush? There’s an easy way to do that as well. With your eraser tool selected, just open the brush preset panel and you will see the history of the last seven brushes you used in order. Simply select the one you want to use and your eraser now takes on almost all the properties of that brush.
See how it’s done in this 45 second video:
This week’s free Photoshop brush is “Will Do” a cottony soft charcoal brush that can build to a full, more textured fill. This brush is a good soft shader when used with a light touch as it has a powdery softness and can be used to build up tones quite lightly.
A cat seemed a fitting subjects and I attempted a drawing of my old friend Charlie, who through my clumsy stylus work seems to have turned from a grey 18 year old (at the time of the reference photo I used) into a bit of a calico kitten, but no matter, I think his essence is still in there. You can download this week’s free Photoshop brush until next Monday when, as always, there will be a new one waiting for you at grutbrushes.com/freebrush
If you are a Photoshop CC 2014 or 2015 user you can use the GrutBrushes plugin to install the free Photoshop brush of the week directly into your tool preset panel and GrutBrushes panel without ever leaving Photoshop!
Instead of clicking on the “Add” brush button to add brushes from your local computer, click on the “New” brush button to add brushes from the web. In the window that opens, navigate to the Free Photoshop brush of the week page and as long as you are logged in (signing up is free) you will see the orange download button, click on it and watch as this week’s free GrutBrush magically downloads, installs, and appears right in your GrutBrushes plugin panel.
Members get to do this with every brush in the shop via the brush portal page so, join as a member or feel free to just keep downloading the free brushes.
plugin:
grutbrushes.com/plugin
Free Photoshop brush of the week:
grutbrushes.com/freebrush
Disaster averted. You can now download the new and improved GrutBrushes plugin from your account page. With yesterday’s release of a new version of Photoshop CC (16.1) Adobe broke a ton of plugins including the GrutBrushes Digital Artist’s Toolset Panel when they turned off Node.js by default.
Today, less than 24 hours later you can download a new compatible version of the plugin (thanks to hard work of Zetta and their adobe scripting wizardry) If you have previously downloaded the plugin it is ready for you on your account page, if you haven’t downloaded the plugin you can get for free here: GrutBrushes Digital Artist’s Toolset Panel for Photoshop CC (2014/15)
You will have to uninstall the previous version before installing this one. If you haven’t updated Photoshop to the latest version (Nov 30th) you won’t have to do anything and your GrutBrushes plugin should still be working fine.
Updated (Dec 2 10:37am EST)
Update 3: Fixed! The latest version (1.0.2) of the GrutBrushes plugin was completed less than 24 hours after the problem was discovered. and You can download it from your account. You may have to uninstall the previous version first if you get an error installing this one over the previous one.
Update December 2: Discovered the cause —Adobe disabled node.js, in the latest (November 30th) release of Photoshop CC breaking hundreds of my favourite plugins (including mine) My developer is working on fix for the GrutBrushes plugin now.
If you haven’t updated Photoshop in the last week, the GrutBrushes digital artists Photoshop plugin will still work and you can still get it for free here. When a new version is available it will be downloadable from your account page
Update 7:40 pm: A change to the latest version of Photoshop breaks a ton of my favourite plugins and this unfortunately includes the GrutBrushes plugin. The developer is hard at work on a fix as I write this but I have no idea when it will be ready.
Stay tuned to the blog for updates grutbrushes.com/blog/
Original Post:
I just updated Photoshop CC 2015 to the latest update: Adobe Photoshop Version: 2015.1 20151114.r.301 and many plugins, including the GrutBrushes plugin no longer work. Uninstalling and re-installing didn’t help. I am checking with the plugin developer and will update you when I find out if this is a temporary issue or a bigger problem, but for now be aware that if you upgrade to the latest version you will no longer be able to use the plugin, but you will still be able to add and access all the brushes as always via the Tool Presets panel.
This week’s free GrutBrush is “Crag Ribble” a digital meld between an ink and a watercolor with a bit of pastel thrown in. Only in digital can you mix the properties of wax and water. You can download this week’s free Photoshop brush until next Monday when, as always, there will be a new one waiting for you. grutbrushes.com/freebrush
