Picking the Right Texture Brush: Find out How to Use it for Digital Painting!

Are you unsure of what texture brush types are needed for digital painting? Well, there's nothing to fear. Do not be overwhelmed by the brushes available as we will talk about the best Photoshop brushes for digital painting in this lesson!

In reality, there are only a few brushes that you will use depending on your painting habits. While I go through a few of the best Photoshop brushes I like to use, these brushes are general enough that any painting software will have it preinstalled.

In order, we will deal with the default soft round brushes, hard chalk brushes, scattered type brushes, and object texture brushes. Just with these four simple types, there are unlimited number of possibilities and combinations!

That means you can start painting right out of the box! As long as you have a proper drawing tablet, you can take advantage of these digital painting brushes to create wonderful pieces of digital art!

1. Soft round texture brush types

The first category of digital painting brushes is the round soft brushes. Ironically, you will not be using this brush very often to start your painting off (pre-production).

Instead, the round brush is used mostly for production and post-production when you are done planning your gesture drawings.

Why? It is because the round brush is used to create transitions between different colors as well as smoothing out existing colors.

For example, you can glaze over a character with the colors of the backgrounds to link the character to the background or to reflect certain colors from other substances.

As for the brush settings itself, there are two particular settings that you will be using.

For the first setting, attach it to your pressure sensitivity options. This will allow you to glaze the color properly as it is relying on how hard you push on your drawing tablet.

The second setting is when you put in to change the size of the brush. That is, the amount of color is consistent but it changes the brush range of where you are coloring.

You can set up your tablet to have part or both of these properties. For example, you can activate one of these properties as you tilt the digital stylus a certain degree.

Another option is that you can just keep the pressure sensitivity on the amount of color applied and just use keyboard shortcuts to automatically adjust your brush size.

Play with the options that you feel most comfortable and natural for you!

Excellent resource:

2. Hard chalk texture brush types

These types of digital painting brushes are what you are going to use the majority of the time. Not only can it create the proper outlines, it can also block in different shapes to create depth.

Hard chalk brushes come in a variety of size. Some are large squares while others can be thing rectangles. All of it is used extensively for blocking in shapes and fine details!

What makes these brushes special is that the default brush is set at an angle. Combined with uneven edges, this means there are a lot of varieties of brush strokes that can be achieved.

Just like the round brush, you can either set the pressure sensitivity to match the brush size or the amount of color being applied to your digital drawing.

What's more, when you repaint over the same area, you can gain additional textures with the same brush type.

In terms of drawing and painting, you would use a small chalk brush to create your gesture drawing of the subject.

Then, you will switch to a larger chalk brush to fill in all the shading required. After that, you will be switching between various sizes to block in the details.

In addition, if you combine this particular type of brush with other tools like the smudge and eraser tools, you will get extra textures not possible with the soft round brushes.

For example, combining it with the smudge brush can help you paint convincing wispy clouds.

3. Scattered texture brush types

Typically speaking, splatter brushes are fairly situational. Depending on your subject or composition, you may not need to use it at all if you are just doing portraiture.

However, if you're painting a lot of scenery, you will be using it often to paint trees, water splashes, light reflections, skin tones, etc.

Depending on your painting program, splatter brushes can be a brush on its own or it can be a setting that you need to adjust.

For instance, Photoshop will change any brush that you choose into a splatter brush.

In the brush options, there's a setting called 'scattering,' which spreads the brush into many random directions depending on the amount of pressure you apply.

As well, you can combine it with existing brush options so the brush can either scatter lightly in applying color or scatter in various spread sizes.

You can even set a fixed or random angle to the scatter brushes!

Other than that, these digital painting brushes are pretty straightforward to use and can come very handy when creating fancy textures or simulating the randomness of nature.

Excellent resource:

4. Object texture brush types

Just as it sounds, object brushes have designs that look like everyday objects we recognizes. Depending on your digital program, you may have some fairly nice object sets to play with.

There are leave objects, fruit objects, star objects, vehicle objects, etc. The list goes on and on! You also have a choice to create any custom object brushes as needed.

The most common ones that you are going to use are the nature brushes that simulate grass, leaves, and other natural patterns.

While you can create foliage simply by scattering the brush, these particular brushes are useful when you are painting objects up close to show added details.

At the same time, you can create additional textures using the object brushes.

For instance, you can set a leaf brush to have gaps in between each stroke. When that happens, you can create a nicely textured organic whip of some sort.

Moreover, you can create quick swarms of insects or bugs in the distance (when you scatter the object brushes) without a lot of effort.

It's all about how you want to use it and what your composition demands. Just knowing that you can do this can save a lot of time when you are just trying to get an idea across.

I hope you enjoy this little introduction to the common digital painting brushes you need to start painting on your computer.

Everything else comes with experience as you apply these texture brush types to create your own artworks that clients will gladly buy!

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