The Core Of Digital Painting: Exploring The Digital Art Brushes!
Without going into much detail, digital art brushes is pretty much your pencil or paintbrush in real life. It's important that you get familiar with your brushes because you will be using it 90% of the time. Most of the time, the paint brush will give you plenty of options to play with. You can change the size of the brush, the type of brush used, and you can even change how the brush behaves based on pressure sensitivity. Digital art brushes are not just limited to painting either. The eraser tools are digital art brushes in its own right and will have options that are very similar. The difference is that it takes away color from your canvas as to adding color to it. Other tools that have similar effect, in that it changes the actual color values, are the dodge and burn tools. Of course, there are digital art brushes that can be unique to each painting software. I will show a few but do not depend on it. You will always go back to the basic brushes once it's all said and done. Here are the articles that deal with the digital art brushes you will use for digital painting: 
Essential Digital Brushes
Every respectable painting software should have these essential digital brushes. Anything less will only lead to frustration and loss productivity. Here is an introduction to the important ones.Photoshop Brush Tool
This is the introduction to the basic Photoshop brush tool. Although the brushes are designed in a general sense, it still has a lot of basic and unique brushes you can use for digital painting. Custom Photoshop Brushes
A simple enough process, this is where you learn how to create custom Photoshop brushes should the default brushes do not have the textures you want. Painter Brush Tool
Probably the king of all digital brushes, the Painter brush tool has samples of brushes from almost every medium possible. It really is designed for the digital painter in mind. Paint Shop Pro Brush Tool
The Paint Shop Pro brush tool is capable of not only raster images, but vector images as well. It really is the Jack of all Trades for digital painting and handy if you want to go that route. GIMP Paintbrush
Learn to use the GIMP paintbrush: a free tool for all new budding 2d digital artists! Even though GIMP is free, the features available here are impressive. GIMP Pencil and Airbrush Tool
GIMP likes to split the brushes into the GIMP pencil and airbrush. The pencil is good for planning rough sketches while the airbrush is good for shading in general. Create GIMP Brushes
Sometimes, the default brushes may not be enough. Here's where you learn how to create GIMP brushes to add to your reportoire of brushes you can potentially use. Custom GIMP Brushes
Though it may take some time, this section teaches you how to create custom GIMP brushes from textures painted from scratch or from a referenced source. Scalable GIMP Brushes
A milestone is made on October 24, 2007. Use scalable GIMP brushes to help you paint more effectively by allowing you to change brush sizes faster. Photoshop Eraser
This is the introduction to the Photoshop eraser tool. It is kept as a separate tool and has three different variants on its own to play with. Painter Eraser
The Painter Eraser is classified as a digital art brush. Therefore, you need to look under the brush categories to find it. Even then, there are many variants that you can select and use. Paint Shop Pro Eraser
Introduce yourself to the Paint Shop Pro eraser tool. It is a simple tool that sometimes acts like another digital brush used for painting. GIMP Eraser
The GIMP eraser tool is a modest correctional tool. It may not have as many options as other popular painting software, but it does get the job done. Photoshop Dodge Tool
Unlike just painting over an object, the Photoshop dodge tool allows you to make colors lighter without ruining the texture. Use this tool to save time and do simple color corrections. Painter Photo Brush
Specifically called the Painter photo variant tool, it contains useful editing options like burning, dodging, blurring, and sharpening (just to name a few). Paint Shop Pro Lighten Tool
More than just burning and dodging, the Paint Shop Pro lighten tool also includes hue manipulation and saturation options to play with. GIMP Dodge Brush
Once you get into the hang of digitally painting in GIMP, you can start to use the GIMP dodge tool to bring in more depth into your paintings. Photoshop Blur Tool
With the Photoshop blur tool, you can blur, sharpen, or smudge objects in your painting to show different levels of focus through depth manipulation. Painter F-X Brush
The Painter F-X brush illustrates dependency on the tools versus using it as a shortcut. While the effects are nice, you always want it to be a shortcut rather than a crutch when all is said and done.
Is There A Neat Feature Or Brush You Use Often?
Digital art brushes are unlimited. There are too many variables and brushes you can have.
While I try to cover the essential ones, there are those that have set up their own style of painting based on their brush preferences.
What's your favourite brush and options that you like to use often? I invite you to create a mini-page and showcase what your preferences are!
Return from Digital Art Brushes to the 2d Digital Art Guide.
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