Workshops

Patrick Reilly
COUNTRY: US CLIENTS: Disney, United Artists, Bacardi, Truth, Coca-Cola Patrick lives in Miami, Florida, and has been creating 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.
preilly.deviantart.com

Artist insight

25 CUSTOM BRUSH TIPS

Patrick Reilly shares his secrets on how to create, customise and manage brushes in Photoshop

78

March 2007

UNI15.tips_brush 78

31/1/07 12:56:30

Artist insight Custom brush tips

March 2007

79

UNI15.tips_brush 79

31/1/07 12:56:41

Workshops
1 GRAPHIC TABLET SETTINGS
Often, poor brush performance is caused by tablet settings. Occasionally, artists with newly acquired tablets will assume they just plug in the tablet and theyre ready to go. This is not the case. 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.

To access Photoshops brush libraries youll need to open the Brush Preset Picker. Select the brush tool, then just right click on the canvas. Now, on the Brush Preset window click the little black arrow on the upper right corner. You will now see a list of Photoshops different brush sets at the bottom of the dropdown window. Load up some sets and explore for a while.

2 PHOTOSHOPS BRUSH LIBRARIES

3 COMMONLY USED BRUSHES PROVIDED BY PHOTOSHOP

If youre 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 Photoshops 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 arent reacting to the pressure sensitivity of their tablet. Well, a few adjustments need to be made first. To access your brush settings go into Photoshops Window menu and select Brushes. A new window will appear with several setting options and sliders. Experiment with these settings for a while to get an idea of how they work.

If you dont save your preset, it will be reset when you switch to a different brush
A commonly used brush is the Hard Round brush with the Opacity Jitter set to Pen Pressure. Access your Hard Round brushs 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.

6 POPULAR BRUSH SETTINGS

5 SAVING CUSTOMISED BRUSHES

Once youre 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 dont save the preset of your custom brush, it will be reset to default when you switch to a different brush.

80

March 2007

UNI15.tips_brush 80

31/1/07 12:56:46

Artist insight Custom brush tips

From your brush library you can add the textures to your brushes. Go into Photoshops Window menu and select Brushes, then click on Texture. Now just select the desired texture from sample window, which previews the currently selected texture. After you have selected a texture you can adjust the Depth and Scale using the sliders provided. 8 SHAPE FEATURES
To adjust the thickness of your brush, use the Diameter slider. To adjust the angle of brush, use Angle and Roundness settings. To get harder or softer edges, use the Hardness slider. To break up the smoothness of the line, adjust the Spacing slider. Occasionally youll find some brushes that lag. Adjusting the Spacing is a good way reduce the amount of lagging.

7 BRUSH TEXTURES

If you find brushes that lag, adjusting the Spacing is a good way to reduce the lagging
10 USING THE TILT FEATURE
This feature is found in Shape Dynamics. It works best with brushes that have oblong shapes. Just tilt your stylus and move it in the direction in which the tip is pointed. This will lead your brush with either its wide surface or thin surface (depending on the shape of the created brush).

9 SHAPE DYNAMICS
Shape Dynamics enables you to control the shape of your brush by the amount of pressure, tilt and so on, of your stylus. For instance, if you want to control the thickness of the line by the amount of pressure applied to your stylus you can adjust the Minimum Diameter to 0 per cent and set the Size Jitter to Pen Pressure. The harder you 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 Photoshops Edit menu and click Define Brush Preset. Your new brush is now in your library.

12 WHY CREATE BRUSHES?

Custom created brushes are excellent for illustrating detail, textures and repetitive elements in a very short amount of time. Lets 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.

13 BAT BRUSH SAMPLE

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.

March 2007

81

UNI15.tips_brush 81

31/1/07 12:56:54

Workshops
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 youve got a Palette Knife. It takes a little bit of practice to control the Angle feature with your stylus though.

18 SAVING A LIBRARY OF BRUSHES

Pretty soon youll find that you have created your own custom library of brushes and you may want to save them. You can easily save your brushes by opening Photoshops Brush Preset picker, clicking the little black arrow on the upper right hand corner and then selecting Save Brushes.

19 LOADING A LIBRARY
To load a library just access the Brush Preset picker, click the little arrow on the upper right hand corner, then click Load Brushes. Saving and loading brushes comes in very handy when you are going to be working on more than one computer. You can easily save your brushes on a small flash drive and load them on to any computer.

Saving and loading brushes 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.

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 at 20 per cent, and Flip X jitter and Flip Y jitter on.

20 ROCK BRUSH

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.

82

March 2007

UNI15.tips_brush 82

31/1/07 12:57:09

Artist insight Custom brush tips

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.

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.

You can create limitless amounts of brushes from your imagination

22 BRUSH SHORTCUTS
If youre 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 Ive 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.

March 2007

83

UNI15.tips_brush 83

31/1/07 12:57:15