So Konwet, the latest ink brush in the store is a runny ink brush with an edge that bleeds as if you are drawing on a wet paper towel. A variable sized allows you to do fairly detailed work at low pressure but the brush really excels at broad gestural drawing.
Here’s another oil brush. I really must put the oils together in a collection. This one has a jagged flower petal pattern shaped brush stroke. It’s a fairly wet diluted brush that can be built up to an opaque coverage. The diluted flow makes blending the surrounding tones together really easy.
This brush is used to best effect by going over and re-working an area to diminish the appearance of the individual strokes and blend the areas together. The distinctive pattern it produces when drawn in a line can be overpowering when not blended but really works to your advantage when re-working an area over a few times as the visible brush strokes maintain a painterly appearance and reduce the likelihood of all the strokes blending together too much and becoming a mushy blur so common with overuse of blender brush tools. If used sparingly you will always be able to maintain the visible strokes that will give your painting an impressionistic and organic feel.
I hope to do a tutorial on how to best accentuate the oil painting look including adding a canvas texture but for now I’ll just say, paint on an Overlay layer and your background is important. If you watch the video at the bottom of this page, you can see that I paint most of it on an overlay layer, so that the canvas texture shows through the paint. Later, towards the end, I start painting on a normal layer, though with a light touch, to add a more opaque layer of paint in certain areas.
You can download this brush for free until Friday! (expired)
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[/twocol_one] [twocol_one_last]‘Dense Weather’ Photoshop Oil Brush.A patchy oil brush with a widely variable flow and a loose frayed edge. With low pressure you get a very diluted low opacity brush for roughing in shapes that quickly converts to crisp layers of built up texture to create nice blended tones.[button link=”https://www.grutbrushes.com/cart/?add-to-cart=34618″]Add to Cart – $1[/button][/twocol_one_last]
Watch the brush strokes in action
painting live with the ‘Dense Weather’ Photoshop oil brush video is sped up after the beginning.
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.
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[/twocol_one] [twocol_one_last]‘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]
“Clay Remains” is a companion to the recently added “Tailors Mane” pastel brush. Similar in tone but thicker in coverage and more powdery at light pressure. If you push lightly it has a bit of a blender effect, a bit like rubbing the page with you finger.
This is what it’s like to draw with the Clay Remains Photoshop Brush:
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[/twocol_one] [twocol_one_last]A dense square shaped Photoshop pastel brush with a thick opaque cover and rough steel wool edges. A good brush for blocking in medium areas of tone
Digital painting with the ‘Ocean Liner’ digital artists Photoshop watercolor brush
Sometimes I get too excited by the latest brushes and neglect the older ones, so to try to break that habit I’m going back into the brush box and doing some paintings with older brushes. Here’s a painting I did today with one of my favourite watercolour brushes, Ocean Liner. The video is sped up so that it lasts about a minute but the actual painting took about 12 minutes.
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[/twocol_one] [twocol_one_last]A fine watercolour brush with a wide ranging opacity that makes a good sketch brush as well as a detailer for finer work. With a controlled stroke, from firm to light, the Ocean Liner brush will give a nicely graduated line from fairly dark yet soft to the faintest hint of a sketch in one go. The cottony texture gives it a warm organic feel.
Digital drawing done with the Tailors Mane Photoshop Pastel Brush. A realistic, responsive, Photoshop Pastel Brush for digital artists.
There’s a new natural media brush in the shop today, a digital pastel brush, though at full pressure it looks quite chalky due to it’s sharp texture.
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[/twocol_one] [twocol_one_last]A thick sharp textured pastel brush with a ribbed staccato line that covers quickly and fully at maximum pressure. With a gentle touch this pastel brush is capable of a sparser almost chalk-like line sketch but it comes to life as a broad and brash sketching brush.
Here’s a sneak peek at the latest Photoshop Brush I’m working it’s a pastel brush (or crayon if we’re being honest) it’s called Wax Factor, and I’m already in love with it. It’s very fast, has a nice full texture when you draw with light strokes but with a bit more pressure easily fills in and gives rich full colour coverage. I will probably give away a hundred of these for free the day I publish it so stay tuned.
Update: It’s now available and FREE for this weekend (Until November 11th 2014) Download this brush here.
One interesting feature of this brush is that when you press hard it has a rough texture, but with very light pressure it becomes a blending brush and you can use it to smudge and soften your strokes or blend them together without switching tools.