grutbrushes news Archives - Page 2 of 4

Posted on January 22, 2016 by Nicolai — Leave a comment

Photoshop Impasto Brushes 01 Set selection complete

Photoshop Impastos 01 is almost here. I chose the final brush tonight (Lalo Salsa) so that makes 10 brushes selected for the first oil Impastos collection, available this weekend. It’s been a long time coming so thanks for your patience but I wanted to wait until there was a nice selection of brushes that represented a good balance of weights, blends and textures. I think this first set will cover most digital oil painters’ needs from blended backgrounds to the deep, sharp troughs of a loaded camel hair brush. Many of these have been available in the brush shop as singles for a while already and those of you who are Members will already have many of these as well as a few other Impastos that are extra additions not even covered by this collection. Just another benefit of being a member: first access to new brushes before there’s even a notion of them being a part of a set.

This will be the first set of its kind anywhere that I am aware of. Keep in mind that these impasto brushes have depth and texture built into them, there are no layer effects or any post processing applied to the brush strokes you see here. I’ve even restrained myself from applying any canvas layer overlays in order to show you the pure unadultarated brush strokes. If you haven’t tried any of my Photoshop impasto brushes yet you will get a chance to on Monday as next week’s free Photoshop brush of the week will be an oil impasto, and it will likely be a brand new one not even seen here. There’s one I’m working on that’s along the same lines as Imp Giganto that I’m keen to share next week.

Maybe this one:

little-sailboat-photoshop-oil-impasto-painting-with-the-deep-trough-GrutBrush

Posted on December 23, 2015 by Nicolai — Leave a comment

Photoshop Cloud Brushes in the Workshop

I’m working on a set of Photoshop cloud brushes for the new year, this fluffy cumulus brush will be given away free in this week’s GrutBrushes newsletter, in your email either today or tomorrow. Don’t get the newsletter? Sign up or Register here and you’ll be subscribed

Posted on December 16, 2015 by Nicolai — Leave a comment

Photoshop Brushes Update – New in December

New Photoshop Brushes added to the Shop in December

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

Posted on December 3, 2015 by Nicolai — Leave a comment

Install the Free Photoshop Brush of the Week without Leaving Photoshop

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!

installing free photoshop brush of the week using the grutbrushes artist toolset brush plugin

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

Posted on November 28, 2015 by Nicolai — Leave a comment

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

Posted on November 14, 2015 by Nicolai — Leave a comment

Brush Stroke Scratch Pad Nov ’15 – New Photoshop Brushes in the Workshop

Here’s the scratch pad from yesterday’s brush experiments in the workshop. These are scrawlings from a number of different unpublished Photoshop brushes that I am working on. About half of them are oil impasto brushes, the rest are natural media or gouache brushes. (Visit the blog post to zoom in and explore the detail of the brush strokes by holding/tapping to magnify)

Perhaps more interesting though, the background is a paper texture (a seamless tile) that is also part of an upcoming series of papers and art surfaces that I am creating. They are PSD files that include several layers and settings to enhance the effect of the paper. The idea is to affect the appearance of the digital ink or paint, simulating real world phenomena such as surface depth, absorption and media pooling and not merely a background over which colour is applied. I plan to release the first ones for free on the site, starting soon (next week?) I will make a special page in the resources where freebies such as these will be available to download. Stay tuned to the blog for updates

Posted on November 5, 2015February 5, 2018 by Nicolai — Leave a comment

GrutBrushes Brush Stroke Guides Updated With 30 New Photoshop Brushes

The November update to the GrutBrushes cheat sheets & brush stroke guide is here with about 30 new brushes added since the last update.
You can see it online and hover/tap to magnify the brush strokes (the prettiest way to preview) or download one giant Jpeg or PDF

While this is a great way to get a good overview of what all your brushes look like in one go, don’t forget the all important animated brush stroke preview that you get when you click on the red ‘play’ button on every single brush in the brush shop

You can access and see all of these on the brush guides resources page

Posted on August 25, 2015 by Nicolai — Leave a comment

How to get ‘Painter’ Oil Paint Brush look in Photoshop

Well, you can’t import Corel Painter brushes into Photoshop but I couldn’t accept that I couldn’t get that lovely natural(ish) impasto oil look in Photoshop. It took me a long time, but I think it was worth it as I managed to create a Photoshop oil brush that looks and behaves very much like my favourite Painter flat camel hair oil brush. It’s so much fun to use and the oil appears to ‘stay wet’ like real oil paints so you can smush it around until you get the brush strokes you’re looking just so (watch me softening the height of the strokes in the middle here) With a light touch it gives a semi translucent diluted oil but the harder you press, the more impasto texture shows up – Full pressure gives you thick oil paint, light pressure, a light wash, in between you can use it as a blender. This brush seen here is called “Brief Shona”

Though this video is zoomed in about 150%, it is a real-time painting and I am using only one oil brush, at one size (no blender brushes are used, all blending is done with the same brush by varying stylus pressure. I’m nowhere near finished with impasto, I have another dozen or so similar brushes in the workshop that will probably take a while to tweak before they are ready for unveiling but in the meantime you can see this one in the shop here.

As usual, this brush is free to anyone who purchased the All Brushes set in the last 30 days. Just log into your account and you can ‘buy’ it for $0. This may be the last brush available in the All Brushes deal as it will become the ‘All Sets’ collection very soon and premium single brushes will only be free to subscribing members. There’s no membership available yet, so grab the All Brushes collection until then, there will be a discount for previous purchases.

Posted on July 13, 2015 by Nicolai — Leave a comment

Free Photoshop Brush of the Week #18 – “Moss Potter” Charcoal Brush

Drawn with the 'Moss Potter' charcoal brush for Photoshop — Drawn in Photoshop with the ‘Moss Potter’ charcoal brush from GrutBrushes

This week’s free GrutBrush is a versatile charcoal brush with a wide tonal range. With a medium firm stroke this brush will give you a mid tone of about fifty percent coverage, press harder or double back on your stroke and you can fairly quickly get to an opaque full cover. Brush lightly to use it as a tonal sketching charcoal.

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 (July 20th) when there will be a new free brush.

grutbrushes.com/free-photoshop-brush-toolset-for-digital-artists/

*requires Photoshop CS 5.5 or higher and a pressure sensitive drawing tablet. free registration required to download.