[box type=”info”]UPATE: This promotion is now over but there will be plenty more like it in the future. In the meantime, there are always brushes available for free or on sale and newly published brushes can usually be downloaded for free for the first 48 hours so register to keep in touch[/box]
Download Photoshop brushes Free for a share
To anyone looking for the free Photoshop brushes deal for a share, the coupon wasn’t working for a while and the blue box wasn’t showing up. It’s fixed now, and when you add brushes to your cart you should see the blue share box again. Click on Like, tweet or G+ in your cart and all the brushes in your cart will be free (while this deal lasts) The box to look for in your cart looks like this one here on the right:
An artisanal Photoshop Inking brush for a change of pace. Poster Bantam is a broad and highly versatile Photoshop inking brush that can be used for sketching, painting and broad area fill. It mimics the look of wet water based poster paints on paper or card stock, with a a pretty fluid mostly opaque coverage while bits of the paper occasionally show through ever so slightly. A second swipe of the brush will give full coverage of course. At low pressure the brush is a bit drier, shows as well as some more textured bristles at the edges of the brush strokes. Great for broad gestural drawings, expressionistic sketching, signage and hand painted text.
Time lapse digital watercolor painting done using the pressure sensitive Photoshop Watercolour brush toolset ‘Poster Bantam’ from Grutbrushes.com
Do you miss the old leaky pens from the real world? Well now your Photoshop pen can spring a digital ink leak!
Splatter Reed, the latest digital ink brush is a leaky ink Photoshop brush that splatters ink as you draw. The faster you sketch back and forth the more digital ink splatter you’ll get. Get the messy leaky ink photoshop brush for yourself. This time, the carpet’s are safe.
You can download this Photoshop brush for FREE for the next 48 hours with the code BLOG140617 I’m experimenting with providing all brushes for free for at least 24 hours to members (sign up for free) as they are published so check back soon while that lasts. (Hint…at least one more brush is coming up this week)
Brush strokes drawn with ‘Splatter Reed’ the pressure sensitive Photoshop leaky pen brush
When using the watercolour brushes, you may want to reduce, increase or simply control where the ‘edging’ appears. While painting, make sure you don’t lift your pen or stylus off the tablet, then reduce the pressure until you are pushing very lightly and go over the area where you want to remove the edging.
With a light stroke you will no longer be adding paint and will only be removing the dark edges. Then, if you like, you can go back over the same area with more pressure and add in fill. As long as you don’t lift your pen, your stroke will be ‘edgeless’ on the second pass. The key to all of this is you cannot lift your pen off the drawing tablet, you can take your time but it must all be done in one stroke.
Both of these brushes are based on the same texture but produce radically different strokes.
Someone on Tumblr asked me how many brushes were in the PasteUp brush toolset. The answer seemed to surprise them: “Just one”. They, like many of us, are used to Photoshop brushes being of the stencil or stamp type, where you get an image of a brush stroke and every time you touch the brush to the image you get a ‘stamp’ of that image, perhaps in different sizes or at a different angle. The web is littered with this type of Photoshop brush. For digital painting though, you really want a smooth, variable pressure responsive stroke.
Grutbrushes are different, they are fully dynamic and pressure responsive brush toolsets that respond to the motion, direction and pressure of the stylus and the graphics tablet (Wacom, Monoprice, bamboo, intuos, etc) which means that each stroke will be fluid and unique as you paint with them. Here are a few examples of brush strokes painted with PasteUp watercolour brush illustrating the different strokes you can get just by varying the pressure you apply to your stylus.
Brush stroke samples of PasteUp watercolour brush when used with Wacom tablet
But enough from me, you can try it for yourself. You can still get it ‘free for a share’ for a few more days. Just add anyPhotoshop brushes you want to your cart, and from the cart, click on the share button for either Facebook, Twitter or Google+ and download them ALL for free! Don’t forget these three Photoshop brushes that are also totally free as well. No sharing necessary.
All these brushes require Photoshop CS5 and up to work
OK, thisone’s the best watercolour brush. Maybe I spoke to soon or perhaps my latest Photoshop brush will always be my favourite.
Pasteup has a rougher edge than the other watercolour brushes (with Frontier being perhaps the smoothest edged) PasteUp also has a tonal range that’s a bit higher than most, from very light to almost completely opaque depending on the stylus pressure. This makes it ever so slightly more challenging as it requires a bit more control to manage the opacity of the brush stroke but it still gives a pretty great looking natural watercolour effect no matter what you do.
Brush Stroke samples from the “PasteUp” watercolour Photoshop brush
Here’s a Time-lapse video of the Striped Shirt Boy painting being painted with the Pasteup brush. The original painting took about 10 minutes to paint, it has been sped up here to last about 1 minute.
Digital watercolour painting done using pressure sensitive watercolour Photoshop brush “Swab Caress”
This one was in the workshop for a long time but I am pleased to announce that “Swab Caress“, the latest and perhaps best of my watercolour brushes for Photoshop is now available in the shop. There are another dozen or so that are still in production that should be available within the next month or so.
paint strokes from Watercolour brush “Swab Caress”
painted using the “Swab Caress” Photoshop watercolour brush
From the catalog description:
An organic real watercolour Photoshop brush that responds to pressure sensitivity. A versatile brush for both outlining and fills it has a fairly consistent texture with just enough flaws to keep it feeling organic and natural but not enough to distract from the overall tone of the artwork. The edges of the brush stroke have a distinctive watery paintbrush appearance but are restrained enough to make for a relatively tightly controllable outline.
digital watercolour painted with “Swab Caress” brush for Photoshop
Digital Watercolour Bear painting created using “Grape Remains” digital watercolor Photoshop brush
The latest watercolour Photoshop brush “Grape Remains” is now available in the shop. As with all brushes in the shop, it can be downloaded for free for a short while longer if you tweet, plus or like it on Facebook when you are checking out. Just add it to your cart and click on one of the social sharing buttons in the cart as you check out and you wont have to pay a penny to download the brush. If you’d rather not bother, you can buy it for just a dollar!
Time-lapse digital watercolour painting done using pressure sensitive watercolour Photoshop brush from Grutbrushes.com
The first of many natural media watercolour brushes for digital painters from Grutbrushes.com is now available to download for free! (for a short while) This artisanal Photoshop brush responds to pressure in both opacity and to a lesser extent, size. Useful as a line brush at small sizes while also being versatile enough to serve as a fill in wash. The Frontier brush has enough edge and surface texture to provide an organic natural media feel while at the same time remains subtle enough to not overwhelm the artists subject matter. Suitable for drawing and sketching as well as digital painting.
Painted with Frontier watercolor brush. Download it for free from grutbrushes.com
This is the first of many more natural media brushes for digital artists to come. Sign up to be notified of new brushes and visit the site to download new ones as they become available. You can download it for free for a short while. While you are at it, there are several other brushes that are currently free and for a short while longer you can still download EVERY Photoshop brush on this site for free if you share a tweet, like or plus when you check out. (This promo has expired now.)
Other watercolour brushes you might be interested in:
painted with the PasteUp watercolor sketching Photoshop brushCherry Pectin Photoshop watercolor brush for digital painterssample brush strokes painted with the Cherry Pectin Photoshop watercolour brush
