BRUSH THREAD

[Anonymous No.2661705]

Share your brush library!

I had too many brushes, so I decided to reduce them to this selection. Do you d/ic/ks think an essential brush is missing?

[Anonymous No.2661707]

Higher res

[Anonymous No.2661709]

>>2661705
did you make all of those yourself?

[Anonymous No.2661710]

>>2661705
All you need to work with is the good ol' trusty humble hard round brush.

[Anonymous No.2661719]

>>2661705

How do you categorize them in PS? Just having a long list is retardedly shitty

[Anonymous No.2661721]

>>2661705
Can you post an example of your work with all the brushes you use?

[Anonymous No.2661722]

>>2661709
Nope, it's my personal mix of default PS brushes and brushes from various packs I downloaded since 2013

[Anonymous No.2661723]

>>2661710

>hard round meme

One of the dumbest ideas ever promoted on /ic/
Textured brushes are more or less essential in a lot of work flows.

[Anonymous No.2661725]

>>2661719
I know! That's why I use this system: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=iipUPpCFGYg
Those descriptions on the left in my pic are actually the "separator brushes"

[Anonymous No.2661726]

>>2661721
I only use 3-6 per painting, never used all at once in a single painting

[Anonymous No.2661739]

>>2661726
Can you post an example?

[Anonymous No.2661740]

>>2661725

Thanks, I'll try this. My brush list is like a microcosmic representation of my life, I can never throw away brushes that are half decent because "you never know when they could be useful" and I end up having to scroll through hundreds of brushes every time to find the right one... Much the same way I keep alot of useless junk laying around at home. Arggh. Sorry for the therapy session

[Anonymous No.2661742]

http://www.mediafire.com/download/1dnvb9c8pcay58g/2015+6+7.tpl

[Anonymous No.2661746]

>>2661742
Oops.


Catbib brushes

[Anonymous No.2661751]

>>2661723
hard brush meme is based in truth fampai, just means dont use fancy brushes as a clutch for fundies

[Anonymous No.2661762]

>>2661723
Everything can be done with the hard round. It's not always the most efficient, but it requires you to actually know what you're doing. The whole "meme" of it is to essentially get people to actually think about what they are painting instead of just using tree brushes, grass brushes, and cloud brushes and then calling it a day. Using the hard round to paint organic forms too keeps people thinking in planes and structure rather than just using a soft brush and fucking up the forms but thinking it's right because there is a gradient.

[Anonymous No.2661766]

>>2661739

[Anonymous No.2661768]

>>2661705
Anyone have a good square brush for laying in basic colours or whatever?

[Anonymous No.2661769]

>>2661766

Someone give that poor man a snickers

[VC No.2661770]

This is a pretty interesting topic. The first time I started using Photoshop was on the Mac in '99, with version 4.5, and shortly after that 5. The first few years I collected as many brushes as possible: soft, hard, stamps, textures and whatnot, just loading everything in one gigantic brush set. I even had whole rows of the same brush in different sizes, so I didn't have to resize them.

What I notice now is that, over the years, I kick out more and more brushes, simply because it makes no sense to keep brushes that are too similar, or are stamps of some technical element or bark texture I always thought I'd need one day, but actually never did.

[VC No.2661774]

>>2661770

My personal experience is as follows:

- Ease of use trumps everything. If you can simply use a brush for some cool effect and save a lot of hassle, do it. Do not cripple yourself by trying to copy some specific effect with a simple round brush. Why do you have all those options in the first place anyway?
- However, do not clog your set with stamps and textures you might use only once, if ever. Be honest with yourself. Are you really ever going to use that cool sci-fi electronics stamp?
- If you have textures or brush stamps in your set: generic brushes trump very specific brushes. It's better to have 5 brushes you can apply in 10 different situations, than 50 brushes you use only once.
- Make your own brushes, or at least know how to make them. It's easy. And less shameful than when you make some awesome artwork and everyone can see that one cheesy brush that every noob downloads. Also, a lot of downloaded brushes have settings that do not suit your style. Know how to adjust them to your liking.
- Create brush sets. The simple truth is that you need different brushes for different situations and styles. When people argue on the internet about brushes, it is often because they work in different styles / techniques and therefore need to use different brushes in the first place. Duh! It is super easy to switch brush sets in Photoshop, so have a set for photo editing, mimicking oils/pastels/watercolour, photobashing, retro style, texturing, whatever.

[Anonymous No.2661776]

>>2661740

Yeah, I know the feel, I was hoarding brushes.
But it's liberating to make a careful selection of the truly essential ones. It takes a long time to make that selection thought, took me maybe 4 hours. In the end it's better to be good with 20 brushes than bad with 100.
Btw, here's how it looks in PS

[Anonymous No.2661780]

>>2661739

[Anonymous No.2661782]

>>2661774
Absolutely agree

[Anonymous No.2661785]

>>2661739

[Anonymous No.2661784]

>>2661770
>What I notice now is that, over the years, I kick out more and more brushes, simply because it makes no sense to keep brushes that are too similar
I've not been painting as long as you, only around 7 years or so, but I have noticed the same thing. I used to have hundreds of brushes in my sets but have been happier since culling out all the similar ones or ones that I never used. Now I think I have less than 30 brushes in my set and actually have been thinking about cutting out a bunch more from that.

Btw VC, do you have a website or something? I've seen you post here on occasion and I know you work professionally and have more experience than pretty much the entire board, but I don't think I've actually seen your art.

[Anonymous No.2661791]

>>2661774
Is there any video or something that shows how to make custom brushes?

[VC No.2661794]

>>2661774

My personal preferred set-up is as follows:

I have one main brush set that covers most situations. It has a little bit of everything. Then I have a bunch of custom brush sets for specific situations: artistic brushes, FX brushes, texture brushes and stamp brushes for foliage, clouds/smoke, stains, splatter and smudges, etc. These brush sets are mapped to my tablets pie menu, so I can switch sets at the push of a button.

[VC No.2661862]

>>2661791

Just check YouTube. I'm sure there are a whole bunch of them. It's really easy to make your own brushes.


>>2661784

I've attached a painting I did for the /ic/ 'monkey with knife' drawing challenge. (I'm working now on something for the 'crab with knife' challenge).

[Anonymous No.2661882]

>>2661862
Cool man, that looks great! Glad to have someone of your calibre hanging around here :)

[Anonymous No.2661916]

I use some of wangjie li, sergei kolesov, zedig and ruan jia's brush pacs out of which i probably use like 4-5 from each pack, then john silva's smudge pack for blending.

btw some brush packs that i've seen floating around are just some of this same packs scattered, like for example dave rapoza's brushes are a combination of sergei's sketch brushes, dan luvisi's and the entire john silva smudge pack plus some of (i think) ruan jia's and blur's good brush.

desu i dont think brushes make too much of a difference.

pic related is something i did with 1 brush and a soft blender.

[Anonymous No.2661919]

>>2661762
How do you get edges with the hard round brush?

[Anonymous No.2661928]

>>2661919
lower the opacity so you can get finer value transitions

[Anonymous No.2661932]

>>2661916
These are neat, but they're really sloppy when it comes to edgework. After doing your blending like that you should clean up things with a hard brush again.

[Anonymous No.2661933]

>>2661705
Download link? :^)

[Anonymous No.2661936]

>>2661919
>>2661928
This painting (by Linran) uses some texture brushes too, but a lot of it is done with a hard round and even the texture brushes are hard edged. Just posting it to show how you can get edge variety using only hard brushes.

[Anonymous No.2661942]

>>2661705
yo please share

[Anonymous No.2662505]

I Just have 2 main ones, a square hard edge and round soft endge.

I really need more but i can afford to be buying packs of brushes just for maybe getting 1 usfull one.

[Anonymous No.2662508]

>>2661705
I just use the default brushes that came with Sai/ PS :/

[Anonymous No.2662517]

>>2661705
>11 brushes for line work

You do realize that you can resize the basic round brush?

[Anonymous No.2663210]

wow anon you cant mange this many brushes?

[Anonymous No.2663290]

>>2661766
Not good really, but the values are really flat.

[Anonymous No.2663312]

My brushes:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/0ajbdkoyulh6eht/2016.abr?dl=0

You will want to set it to large thumbnails and then I have the same organization method that others in this thread have.

Pic related is a study from today I did that used these brushes.

[Anonymous No.2663324]

>>2661936
well, he uses opacity so nothing mindblowing there. picture is good thou.

[Anonymous No.2663343]

>>2663324
Well yeah. When people say to use the hard round they mean that you can still use opacity. Otherwise edgework becomes pretty tough, it would be really tedious and require a lot more thought. You could still do it in theory though by really controlling your values and creating smaller value steps in areas, or doing some sort of broken colour or stippling type thing.

[Anonymous No.2666280]

>>2661780
oh god what did you do to poor emmy?

[Anonymous No.2666431]

>>2661710
Actually this person is right to some extent. Textured brushes will help but many good artists do everything with just one hard brush. It's not the tools that make the artist remember, so don't forget the basics just because they're basic. A good artist can make a masterpiece using crayolas ffs.
Plus in every book i've looked at for character designing and rendering, they recommend a hard round brush first before anything else.