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A Peek into the Workshop

drawing with the Rooster Suit Photoshop paint brush
Getting the textures right can make make a digital brush ‘feel’ nice.

Here’s a sketch using a brush Im working on. I’m enjoying this one a lot, but I’m just trying to get the medium texture right before I release it to the shop. The brush behaves like an oil paint or pastel, but the low end range acts more like a watercolour. Although it’s all digital and real world rules can be ignored, if a brush has relatively close equivalents in real natural media it’s a bit jarring when it veers off into other media too quickly.

detail of brush strokes
detail

It can be a bit too dissonant, like awkward notes or unusual timing in music. When it’s off enough though, and the look you are going for bears little to no resemblance to anything in the real world there is a lot of room for digital brushes to be as quirky as you want them to be.

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“Roadside Tip” a new Charcoal brush

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Natural Media Photoshop brush
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drawing with the Thyme Liner Photoshop felt pen brush
drawing with the Roadside Tip Photoshop natural media brush
New in the store today, Roadside Tip is a rough granular charcoal which starts with a powdery coverage at the lightest pressure and moves into a wetter, almost oily grit fill at higher pressure. Though the square shaped tip scales with pressure this brush is best suited to broad gestural sketches or strong tonal blocking.[/twocol_one_last] Facebooktwitterredditpinterestlinkedinmail
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Free Brush of the Week #05 “Slither Dew”

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Slither Dew Photoshop Watercolor Brush. A realistic, responsive, watercolour brush for digital artists.
Slither Dew Photoshop Watercolor Brush. A realistic, responsive, watercolour brush for digital artists.
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Painting  with the Slither Dew Photoshop Watercolor Brush
Painting with the Slither Dew Photoshop Watercolor Brush
This week’s free Photoshop brush is a soft grainy watercolour brush with a cloudy form and a texture that accentuates a grainy and fibrous weathered medium. This brush has a farily strong presence but with a light touch of the stylus can also be used for more subtle shading.[/twocol_one_last]

As always, you can download it from the shop or the member’s free Photoshop brush page for free until the end of this week (April 19) when there will be a new free brush.

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Free Brush of the Week #04 “Wool Meander”

A grainy charcoal type Photoshop brush with a fairly wide range in both width and coverage. At the lightest pressure this brush is capable of very light, fine-grained middling width sketch line and even at medium pressure can be quite a versatile shader brush, capable of a wide range of tones. At full pressure you get a harsh, fully opaque line with a large grain and a crumbly edge.

Get it for free until April 12th 2015

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This week’s free Brush – Brash Mass

Brash Mass Natural Media Brush. A bold, robust brush with broad cover and a strong unambiguous graphic presence. In a manner unique to digital brushes this ink-like brush has ultra-sharp crisp aliased edges while displaying a base texture more reminiscent of softer media like pastel. Although you can get a fairly sparse grainy cover at low pressure this brush quickly goes to full opacity with minimal pressure making it best for broad, confident graphic strokes.

Log in and download it now Free until April 5 2015

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Announcing ‘Free Brush of the Week (or so)’ Page

 

'Crumb Runner' Photoshop Watercolor Brush for digital artists
First Free Photoshop Brush of the Week – ‘Crumb Runner’

As a member (signup/login for free) you can now download a new free brush every week on the free brush of the week page as well as on the home page. I will confess now that I don’t know if I can always meet that schedule, sometimes a good brush takes a little longer, that’s why I’m referring to it as the free brush of the week ‘(or so)

If you miss it for free each brush will move to the store where you can always purchase it and a new free brush will take it’s place.

Without further ado, here is the first free brush! Continue reading Announcing ‘Free Brush of the Week (or so)’ Page

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Anatomy of a Digital Watercolor Brush

brush stroke characteristics of Pasteup digital watercolour brush
brush stroke characteristics of Pasteup digital watercolour brush

What is it that gives a brush it’s personality? It’s a combination of your style, how your fingers move and the brush itself. Just as you have a unique way of moving your wrist to create lines, each brush has it’s own unique stylistic signatures. Whether it’s a few stray bristles, the way it holds or releases water, oil, paint and pigment, or simply how slowly or quickly it tapers from a point to a blob, if at all. All these quirks and characteristics add up to give a brush it’s personality.

The same holds true for a good digtal artists’s brush. In this visual dissection I’ve attempted to draw attention to some of the the characteristics unique to the ‘Paste Up’ Photoshop watercolour brush, some of the most prominent features that add up to create the signature look of it’s strokes.

This is just one of 63 (and growing) brushes in the growing collection of pressure responsive Photoshop brushes for digital artists from Grutbrushes.com

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Papaya Grind – A Responsive Photoshop Pastel Brush

digital oil pastel drawing brush strokes created with the 'Papaya Grind' Photoshop Pastel Brush toolset
digital oil pastel drawing brush strokes created with the ‘Papaya Grind’ Photoshop Pastel Brush toolset
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responsive pastel brush for Photoshop
responsive pastel brush for Photoshop

 

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‘Papaya Grind’ Photoshop Oil pastel Brush.
A thick starchy oilk pastel brush with a fine clingy texture and a fadeable edge. With a very fine tip at light stylus pressure it also spreads to a wider tip and comes on relatively strongly with slightly heavier pressure, though it still requires a few passes to cover your image surface completely.
[button link=”https://www.grutbrushes.com/cart/?add-to-cart=44452″]Add to Cart – Free[/button]
Free download ends 03/06[/twocol_one_last]

 

 

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