Painting without Costs: The GIMP Paintbrush!

While there are other free digital art programs, most of them remain on the Linux operating system without a direct port to Windows. This means that GIMP will be the main program to represent what’s possible in the open source market.

Having said that, do not be fooled by the fact that it’s free. GIMP offers a lot of digital tools comparable with more expensive digital art programs.

What’s more, you can find plug-ins to further enhance this program to suit your 2d digital art needs!

But before that, you will need to learn the basic tools.

1. The GIMP paintbrush

One thing about GIMP is that it opens up in multiple windows. You get one for the tools, the options, and the digital canvas itself. We’re not going too in depth to how many windows it will open up as it will depend on the version you are running.

We are just interested in the main toolbox that comes with this program. If you look at the toolbox, try to locate an icon that looks like a paintbrush. This will be the GIMP paintbrush that you will use most of the time.

You will also notice two additional icons near it: the pencil icon and the airbrush icon. These icons have similar options as the paintbrush. The difference is how it paints on your digital canvas.

2. The options available

For the most part, most of the options seem similar to what you have seen so far in the digital art programs we have explored. For example, the opacity settings, the brush settings, the blend modes, and the pressure sensitivity are there.

You will be using the combination of opacity, pressure sensitivity, and brush sizes for the most part in your digital paintings.

However, there are few options worth mentioning when you select the GIMP paintbrush for the first time.

One thing to notice is that you can paint gradients in GIMP more easily than in the other digital art programs. That is, it’s integrated well within the paintbrush options.

On top of that, you get a fade option. What this does is that it allows the brush strokes to become faint depending on how much pixels you set it up for. It’s like a brush running out of color the longer you hold the stroke for.

3. The other familiar options

The brush sizes give you a few default brushes to work with. Although there aren’t a lot of brushes available, you really only need the basic solid and faded brushes. Of course, you can customize the size to fit what you’re painting.

Another common option is the blend modes. For the most part, these blend modes are identical to what we have talked about in the digital art programs. Granted, the names are slightly different but most do perform the same functions found in most digital art programs.

The blend modes are:

Again, you don’t need to learn all of them. Just stick with normal mode as you explore how to paint with the GIMP paintbrush.

4. Carrying on

Like all the digital brush tools, this will be your main tool to paint with in GIMP. You will also notice that there is an airbrush as well.

Personally, the difference is very minimal. That is, the GIMP paintbrush and the airbrush act in a similar manner when you’re painting finer details. However, if you need to paint a large area with the same color, then the GIMP airbrush would a better choice.

Basically, you would use the airbrush to paint the background colors while switching to the paint brush to paint light and details.

We will explore more of GIMP’s toolbar. All I want you to know is, for a free program, it is definitely on par with more expensive digital art software. Its tools and what you can do with it are amazing!

In fact, I would recommend GIMP as the digital art program to start out on a Windows machine. This is definitely a program that is worth more than its free price suggests!

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