Workshops

Patrick Reilly
COUNTRY: US
CLIENTS: Disney,
United Artists, Bacardi,
Truth, Coca-Cola Artist insight
25 CUSTOM
Patrick lives
in Miami,
Florida, and
has been
creating

BRUSH TIPS
fantasy and sci-fi
illustrations as far back
as he can remember.
He currently creates
freelance concept art
and storyboards for
videos, shows,
commercials and films.
Patrick Reilly shares his secrets on how to create,
preilly.deviantart.com
customise and manage brushes in Photoshop

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 Artist insight Custom brush tips

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 Workshops
1 GRAPHIC
TABLET SETTINGS 2 PHOTOSHOP’S BRUSH LIBRARIES
Often, poor brush performance is To access Photoshop’s brush libraries you’ll need to open the Brush Preset
caused by tablet settings. Occasionally, Picker. Select the brush tool, then just right click on the canvas. Now, on the
artists with newly acquired tablets will Brush Preset window click the little black arrow on the upper right corner.
assume they just plug in the tablet and You will now see a list of Photoshop’s different brush sets at the bottom of
they’re ready to go. This is not the case. the dropdown window. Load up some sets and explore for a while.
To get the best performance out of
your brushes, make sure you run your
tablet drivers, and adjust the settings
of your tablet that best fit your
personal stroke and style.

3 COMMONLY USED
BRUSHES PROVIDED
BY PHOTOSHOP
If you’re not in the mood for creating
your own custom brushes and just
want to get right down to painting, you
can always rely on one of Photoshop’s
most commonly used libraries. The
Natural Brushes are a set of brushes
which have already been customised
by Photoshop and provide a good
sense of traditional painting strokes.

4 CUSTOMISING BRUSHES
Sometimes people wonder why their
brushes aren’t reacting to the pressure
sensitivity of their tablet. Well, a few
adjustments need to be made first.
To access your brush settings go into
Photoshop’s Window menu and select
Brushes. A new window will appear
with several setting options and sliders.
If you don’t save your preset, it will be
Experiment with these settings for a
while to get an idea of how they work.
reset when you switch to a different brush
6 POPULAR BRUSH SETTINGS
A commonly used brush is the Hard Round brush with the
Opacity Jitter set to Pen Pressure. Access your Hard Round
brush’s setting, click on Other Dynamics, then change the
Opacity Jitter to Pen Pressure. You can also go a step
further and set the Flow Jitter to Pen Pressure as well.

5 SAVING CUSTOMISED BRUSHES

Once you’re satisfied with the modifications to
a brush you can save it by going to your Brush
Preset Picker, clicking the little black arrow in
the upper right corner, and then clicking New
Brush Preset. Keep in mind if you don’t save the
preset of your custom brush, it will be reset to
default when you switch to a different brush.

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7 BRUSH TEXTURES If you find brushes that lag,
From your brush library you can add the textures to your
brushes. Go into Photoshop’s Window menu and select adjusting the Spacing is a good
Brushes, then click on Texture. Now just select the desired
texture from sample window, which previews the currently way to reduce the lagging
selected texture. After you have selected a texture you can
adjust the Depth and Scale using the sliders provided. 10 USING THE TILT FEATURE
This feature is found in Shape Dynamics. It works best with
8 SHAPE FEATURES 9 SHAPE DYNAMICS brushes that have oblong shapes. Just tilt your stylus and move
To adjust the thickness of your brush, Shape Dynamics enables you to it in the direction in which the tip is pointed. This will lead your
use the Diameter slider. To adjust the control the shape of your brush by brush with either its wide surface or thin surface (depending
angle of brush, use Angle and the amount of pressure, tilt and so on, on the shape of the created brush).
Roundness settings. To get harder or of your stylus. For instance, if you want
softer edges, use the Hardness slider. to control the thickness of the line by
To break up the smoothness of the line, the amount of pressure applied to
adjust the Spacing slider. Occasionally your stylus you can adjust the Minimum
you’ll find some brushes that lag. Diameter to 0 per cent and set the Size
Adjusting the Spacing is a good way Jitter to Pen Pressure. The harder you
reduce the amount of lagging. press, the thicker the line.

11 CREATING BRUSHES
FROM SCRATCH
Create a black and white or greyscale image on
your canvas (maybe a sketch, some weird lines
or objects, even a photo.) Once you have your
image, give it a tight crop, adjust to 72dpi and
keep the size range small to avoid using too
much memory and lagging. Go Photoshop’s
Edit menu and click Define Brush Preset.
Your new brush is now in your library.

12 WHY CREATE BRUSHES? 13 BAT BRUSH SAMPLE

Custom created brushes are excellent for illustrating
detail, textures and repetitive elements in a very short
amount of time. Let’s say you want to create a flock of
bats. You could spend several hours creating each bat or,
you could create a bat brush that can make an entire
flock in a few simple strokes.
Create a sketch of a couple of bats in flight.
Make the image into a brush. Go into Other
Dynamics and set controls to Pen Pressure.
Go to Brush Tip Shape, activate the Spacing
and move the slider to 30 per cent. Set
Scattering to 137 per cent. Go to Shape
Dynamics and set Angle Jitter to 11 per cent.

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14 CLOUD BRUSH
Sketch out a puff of smoke.
Create a brush from it. Go to
Other Dynamics and change
the Opacity Jitter and Flow
Jitter to Pen Pressure. Now
go to Shape Dynamics and
change Size Jitter to Pen
Pressure, set the Angle Jitter,
Roundness Jitter and
Minimum Roundness to
about 30 per cent, then
turn on your Flip X Jitter
and Flip Y Jitter.
15 PALETTE KNIFE
Create a very thin vertical oval and
make a new brush. Now, go to Other
Dynamics and change to Opacity Jitter
to Pen Pressure. Go to Shape Dynamics
and set everything to 0 per cent. Set
Angle Jitter Control to Pen Tilt. Now
you’ve got a Palette Knife. It takes a
little bit of practice to control the 18 SAVING A LIBRARY 19 LOADING A LIBRARY
Angle feature with your stylus though. OF BRUSHES To load a library just access the Brush
Pretty soon you’ll find that you have Preset picker, click the little arrow on
created your own custom library of the upper right hand corner, then click
brushes and you may want to save Load Brushes. Saving and loading
them. You can easily save your brushes brushes comes in very handy when
by opening Photoshop’s Brush Preset you are going to be working on more
picker, clicking the little black arrow on than one computer. You can easily save
the upper right hand corner and then your brushes on a small flash drive and
selecting Save Brushes. load them on to any computer.

20 ROCK BRUSH
Use this to quickly create rocky mountains. Sketch
an image of a rock and convert it into a brush. In Other
Dynamics, set Opacity Jitter and Flow Jitter to Pen
Pressure. In Shape Dynamics, change Size Jitter to Pen
Pressure at 60 per cent. Angle Jitter at 40 per cent,
Roundness Jitter at 100 per cent, Minimum Diameter
Saving and loading brushes at 20 per cent, and Flip X jitter and Flip Y jitter on.
comes in handy when working
on more than one computer
16 TECHNIQUES 1
When using these new brushes try experimenting with every
aspect. For example, create a rocky hill with your Rock brush
then turn your Rock brush into an eraser and cut into your hill to
create more interesting shapes. Create a Scattered Leaves brush,
then use it to create a Leaves On A Branch brush, then use the
Leaves On A Branch brush to create a Tree brush, and so on.

17 TECHNIQUES 2
Improvise and use some of the tips above to
create some textured brushes. Use tip 13 and
substitute the bats with speckles of dirt and
grit. A Speckled Dirt And Grit brush would
come in handy in creating a Rock brush.

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21 ORGANISING YOUR LIBRARY
Sometimes you may feel like your brush library is a bit
messy. You might want to rearrange some brushes or
just delete some of them. To organise your brushes just
access your Brush Preset picker, click that little black
arrow again, and then click Preset Manager. You can
now drag brushes to your desired order.
ONLINE RESOURCES
AND FURTHER INFO
Check out these websites, DVDs and books to
find out more about customising your brushes
You can find other information on customising and creating
brushes by exploring around the internet or by visiting
discussion forums on some of the more popular digital art
sites such as imaginefx.com, cgtalk.com, conceptart.org,
and gfxartist.com. You can also check out some
instructional DVDs that are available at
thegnomonworkshop.com. One particular DVD, From
Speedpainting to Concept Art by David Levy, has a wealth
of information on customising and creating brushes.
For books on the subject you can try Digital Character
Design and Painting by Don Seegmiller – Photoshop CS
edition (ISBN 1584502320). Along with custom brush
building, Digital Character Design and Painting also has tips
on the basics of colour, values, textures and so on.

You can create limitless amounts

of brushes from your imagination
22 BRUSH SHORTCUTS
If you’re using a brush and need access
the colour picker, instead of going to
your toolbar just hold down Alt/Option
and your brush automatically becomes
a colour picker. Release Alt/Option and
your brush is back. Need to create a
straight vertical or horizontal line? Just
hold down Shift, and your line will be
horizontal or vertical.
23 MORE SHORTCUTS
Need a straight line other than vertical
or horizontal? On your canvas make a
dot with your brush, then hold Shift
and create another dot. A line is now
connected to both points. Need to
change the diameter for your brush?
Just tap the [ for smaller size or ] for
larger size. To adjust the Flow just
click a number on your number pad.

24 MAKING UNIQUE BRUSHES

Although I’ve shared some very basic tips on making and
customising brushes, the best way to really learn about it
is to experiment and explore. There are huge numbers of
brush setting combinations and limitless amounts of brushes
that can be created from your own imagination.
25 CUSTOM BRUSH
ARTWORK SAMPLE
This image was created with several
custom brushes. A Texture brush for
the speckles on the rocks, a Girder
brush for the girders around the rubble,
a Cloud brush for the clouds and dust,
a brush that creates lights on the
buildings, a Palette Knife for some of
the highlight cuts in the rubble, and
a Rain brush for the rain effects.

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