A Creature Offers Neat Brushes to You

Why hello there! I wanted to spend some time today talking about a really cool digital art brush. One that I don’t see talked about much, really, at all. Yeah, you can make your art with any kind of brush, and a hard round brush and airbrush go a long way. Yet sometimes I see both beginners and even skilled artists struggle with that airbrush, especially when we start to look at shading.

Heya! My name’s Kanjon and you’re watching a Digital Dabbles video on brushes. What? It’s back already? Yes! I’m making a mini-mini-series specifically about a cool brush. In fact, this exact brush is why I ended up starting Digital Dabbles in the first place! I’ve wanted to talk about this brush for so long, but figured that I should talk about digital art in general before getting there, and, well. Yes. ADHD? Me? What?

It’s probably easier to show you the trouble with our friend the airbrush. It’s super powerful! But if you’re using it to shade, it’s very easy to end up with a blobby mess that’s hard to clean up. Underneath the arm, it should be pretty dark, and there’s a hard edge where the upper arm is. It’s really easy to fall into a trap of using the airbrush here and having the arm shading “fall” into that armpit. There’s some ways to account for this. You could try smudging where the hard edge should be, but that usually makes noticeable marks along the side. You could try a different layer, but… what do you do where the layers meet? You could start using selections to mask what you paint on, but then it’s easy to end up with hard edges where you didn’t mean to!

It’d sure be nice if you could somehow cut off half of the airbrush. If only there was a way to edit a brush…!

Heck yeah! Here’s the brush that I love. It’s so useful and flexible! On the top side, it’s a hard edge, but it fades out on the bottom. It moves with the tilt of my pencil, and I can use it to get right up against edges and shade. I can use this same shape as a smudge brush, and smudge along that hard edge if I need to smooth something out. I can also do that used as an eraser. And look! If I twist the brush, I can use it without that hard edge for a quick soft tool without needing to change brushes! There’s so many ways to use it. And because this has that nice solid edge, you can use it in situations without linework quite well. It’s also great for texturing hair, fur, or just adding artistic appeal to a piece. And you can even add texture to the brush itself if you want to use it with other styles.

I’ve seen this mentioned once as a “double sided brush” in an art course I took, and then, never again. I’ve also heard of something similar called a “triangle brush”, but even that I’m having trouble finding again! I’m sure a lot of experienced artists know about this one, but it’s so rarely talked about that I want to be sure to show you. I call these “Comet” brushes, because, well, look at those brush stamps. They look like comets!

The main feature is that it’s hard on one edge, and smudged down to fade to nothing. I’ve made a few more for fun that give some different textured results in shading. This last one works well for me drawing left to right, since it has a nice solid leading edge and tapers off at the end. I think everyone should have some brushes like these. I’m going to put them online for free, just check the link in the description… and probably on the screen. But what’s REALLY cool about this kind of brush is that it’s easy to make yourself! You can create your own shape that is unique to your art and becomes your own secret sauce. I’d like to show you that in the next video — be sure to subscribe and stay tuned!

This is just one kind of brush I like a lot. There’s a few more I might talk about someday, and you never need a specific brush to paint anything. It’s just nice to have the connivence and variety right there. What about you? Leave a comment with that one kind of brush you keep going back to: what’s neat about it? How have you made it work in your art? Go have some more fun with brushes, artist, and chase that passion. See you soon!