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Make Custom GIMP Brushes for Your Drawing Needs!How to create custom GIMP brushes is the next biggest step in taking control of your digital painting should you decide to use GIMP.As much as I love the default brushes, there will be a time where the brush that you want will not be in the default brush sets. To overcome this limitation, you will need to create your own brush shapes. In the case of GIMP, you will be setting up new custom brushes very soon and more so than any other digital art program! So, shall we get started? 1. Find the brush folderThe first thing we need to do before creating anything is to find out where the program is saving these custom brushes. To do that, you will need to go to File > Preferences > Folders > Brushes. Once you have expanded and have found the brush folder, note the directory of where it is stored on your computer. For example, it would say this on my computer: C:\Documents and Settings\Administrator\.gimp-2.2\brushes These two folders should be set on writable so you are able to save the brushes in these folders. I wouldn’t worry about the first directory. Instead, I would copy and paste the second directory information as that is the main folder GIMP reads from. 2. Create the brushFirst, you need to create a small canvas about the same size that you want your custom brush to be. The choice is up to you as long as it’s a perfect square. This means the width and the length must be the same pixel. As well, make sure you set the entire canvas on transparency. To do that, go to Advanced Options and set Fill with: Transparency. Next is the fun part!
Now, what you need to do is paint the small canvas square with the shape of the brush that you want. This will be your custom brush head. 3. Saving the brushOnce you have made the custom brush head you want, the next thing is to save your custom GIMP brushes.To do that, you will need to go to File > Save As… and then choose the correct file type and directory to store these brushes. Of course, you should also name your newly created brush. Clicking on the File Type option will give you a list of all the file extensions to save as. If you do a quick scan of all the file extensions that can be saved from this, you will notice two particular extensions that relate to the GIMP brushes: GIMP brush (gbr) and GIMP brush [animated] (gih). Unless you’re making a custom brush that has different color animations when you paint, saving it in gbr is the most common custom brush type. Thus, just pick gbr file type for now. Afterwards, you will need to select the file directory to save this brush. Find the directory of where GIMP stores these brushes (as per the information found in the preferences): C:\Program Files\GIMP-2.0\share\gimp\2.0\brushes Get into there and then hit save!
In order to see and use the custom GIMP brushes, the final step is to refresh the brush dialog. The Refresh brushes icon can be found at the very end. It looks like two arrows arranged in a circle. 4. Create more custom GIMP brushes!Congratulations! You have created your own custom brush in GIMP. From here on, you will be creating a few more should you decide to use GIMP as your main digital art program.
You are probably wondering about why GIMP has two different directories to save the brushes. Well, the first directory is for your custom brushes made in the GIMP editor. The radius can be edited to fit your needs. The extensions found in this folder are vbr. The second directory is for the gbr and the gih custom brushes. (Note: as of version 2.4 of GIMP, brushes are now scalable. If you haven’t already, upgrade to 2.4. Otherwise, use the remainder of this article as it is still useful in terms of helping you create custom brushes!) I know it’s a bit of an inconvenience. However, doing so allows you, the artist, to focus on what you need and how to create it rather than depending on the program. Plus, the program is free! Obviously, if it’s too time consuming, you can probably find custom GIMP brushes on the Internet that you can import to your GIMP program. The choices are limitless! For now, just have fun learning what you can do, can’t do, and the workarounds if you can’t do it! Return from Custom GIMP Brushes to Digital Art Tools.
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