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Getting The Most out of Your Photoshop Brushes – Exploring The Low Pressure Range

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Sometimes people ask me which brush I used to do the shading in this painting and when I tell them it’s the ‘Ocean Liner‘ brush they usually don’t believe me and I really don’t blame them because this is the stroke most people get when they use the ocean liner brush:

Brush stroke with average pressure applied
Photoshop Brush stroke with average pressure applied

The fact is that most Photoshop brushes have a wide range of looks that you can get simply by varying the pressure of your stylus and sometimes you can find some of the most interesting effects at the very low end of the pressure scale.

By charging the brush size slightly from 20 to 45 pixels and stroking ever so lightly, and lifting my stylus between strokes (this part is important!) I can begin to build up this nice texture.

[baslider name=”lowstyluspressure”]

Now I probably wouldn’t set out to create this with this brush but the point is to not accept your brushes at face value. Experiment and investigate how they behave at the very lowest stylus pressure ranges and you may discover that they, like you, have hidden talents.

 

 

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Impasto Painting in Photoshop – Quick Tips 01

Here are a few quick tips to get you going with the Photoshop Impasto brushes

I will be doing a series of tutorials on how to use the GrutBrushes Photoshop Impasto brushes but this short video above shows a few brief tips.

To summarise:
– Vary your stylus pressure and use short strokes for a more organic look
– Use a flatter Photoshop brush to block in large areas
– Press softly on your stylus to blend or soften texture
– Push harder when you want more texture
– Use alt/option to pick colours from your painting

Brush Strokes and animated previews

Photoshop Impasto painting with GrutBrushes
Photoshop Impasto painting with GrutBrushes
Impasto Brushes from Impastos 01

(Mouseover or tap the icons below to watch the Photoshop brushes drawing ‘live’!)

'Gravel Plough' Photoshop Impasto brush
‘Gravel Plough’ Photoshop Impasto brush
'Granite Sack' Photoshop Impasto brush

‘Granite Sack’ Photoshop Impasto brush
'Horse Main' Photoshop Impasto paint

‘Horse Main’ Photoshop Impasto brush
'Imp Giganto' Photoshop Impasto paint

‘Imp Giganto’ Photoshop Impasto brush
'Gypsum Slate' Photoshop Impasto brush

‘Gypsum Slate’ Photoshop Impasto brush
'Venal Weasel' Photoshop Impasto oil paint

‘Venal Weasel’ Photoshop Impasto oil brush
'Venal Weasel' Photoshop Impasto oil paint

‘Venal Weasel’ Photoshop Impasto oil brush
'Cliff Quarry' Photoshop Impasto oil paint

‘Cliff Quarry’ Photoshop Impasto oil brush
'Tenor Wake' Photoshop Impasto oil paint

”Tenor Wake’ Photoshop Impasto oil brush
'Jee Beach' Photoshop Impasto oil paint

‘Jee Beach’ Photoshop Impasto oil brush
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Painting With Your on-Screen Palette in Photoshop

One of the great things about digital painting is that your canvas can be your palette. By holding down the ALT or Option key in Photoshop you can pick a new color from your current painting’s canvas and continue on. Here you can see me travel a tremendous distance from light to dark just by picking a new darker color from the crevices of my previous impasto brush strokes in Photoshop. This was painted using the new Linsee Dew Photoshop Impasto Oil brush

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Animated Tribute to Mad Max:Fury Road (featuring a GrutBrush!)

Still frame from an animated tribute to "Mad Max:Fury Road" by Pablo Fernández Eyre
Still frame from animated tribute to “Mad Max:Fury Road” by Pablo Fernández Eyre

Using his talent, a lot of patience and the Dense Weather Photoshop oil paint brush from GrutBrushes, Filmmaker Pablo Fernandez Eyre created this animated tribute to Mad Max:Fury Road. You can Watch it here on Vimeo and you can learn more about Pablo on his website whosipablo.com Continue reading Animated Tribute to Mad Max:Fury Road (featuring a GrutBrush!)

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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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Comparing Pressure Responsive Photoshop brushes to Stamp-style brushes


When I tell people about Grutbrushes they often say “Oh yes, I see tons of watercolor brushes on the web” Chances are they’ve seen the stencil type brushes that are made from a scan of one brush stroke that you can then stamp onto your image. You can achieve some fantastic results with those brushes if used sparingly but the big difference, and it really is big, is that Grutbrushes are dynamic and respond to the speed, pressure and motion of your stylus on your tablet allowing you to actually paint with them and achieve organic lines that resemble traditional media. This video shows a side by side comparison between the free stencil type brushes found all over the net and Grutbrushes pressure responsive watercolour brushes made for digital artists. If you haven’t already, you can download a free watercolor brush here to try it out for yourself.

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New Charcoal Brush ‘Peel Braiser’

Photoshop charcoal drawing created using 'Pee Braiser' Photoshop brush
Photoshop charcoal drawing created using ‘Pee Braiser’ Photoshop brush
enlarged brush strokes
enlarged brush strokes

This charcoal or chalk brush is more flexible and fungible than some of the more recent brushes in that it is has a very soft fingerprint at low pressure. With a single stroke you get very light coverage which makes shading easy as you can easily control the amount of colour and by building it up with multiple stokes it’s possible to create areas of light colour blend into very dark sections without visible brush strokes. This maintains a sharp texture like you would have with chalk or charcoal on heavy textured paper without the smudginess that you would get using a stump or tortillion in traditional media.

Video of digital charcoal drawing done using the 'Peel Braiser' Photoshop Charcoal Brush toolset
Video of digital charcoal drawing done using the ‘Peel Braiser’ Photoshop Charcoal Brush toolset
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'Peel Braiser' Photoshop Charcoal Brush for digital artists
‘Peel Braiser’ Photoshop Charcoal Brush for digital artists
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Peel Braiser’ Charcoal Brush.
A hard charcoal with a light coverage that makes it ideal for shading with a crisp texture. With repeated strokes this brush can give you full dark coverage with lots of opportunity for graduated blending.
[button link=”https://www.grutbrushes.com/cart/?add-to-cart=31998″]Add to Cart – $1[/button][/twocol_one_last]

Watch the brush strokes in action

Video of drawing done with ‘Peel Braiser’ brush
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Realistic Ballpoint Pens for Photoshop

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4 Realistic Photoshop ballpoint pen brushes

Together at last! Four realistic ballpoint pens for Photoshop. Pressure responsive and textured to appear like real ballpoint pens, these four Photoshop brush tools mimic fine, medium and broad ballpoint pens as well as a 4th rollerball pen tool that has that tell tale edge of the line ink pooling common to rollerball ballpoint pens.

$2.00Add to cart

[/twocol_one][twocol_one_last]Realistic pressure responsive ballpoint pen brushes for Photoshop Realistic pressure responsive ballpoint pen brushes for Photoshop[/twocol_one_last] Facebooktwitterredditpinterestlinkedinmail