Why do Procreate's New Brushes Feel so Different?

Brushes! I’ve been thinking about digital brushes a lot lately and what makes them not just feel nice, but work well too. Last week I also had the chance to check out Procreate’s updated brushes, and this made some stuff click.

Kanjon here, I talk about art and have previously had some complaints about Procreate’s older default brushes. Sure, many of them felt “fun” to draw with, but they’re all just very… loud. Very bold. And if you’re trying to sketch, that’s usually not what you’re after. If you’re sketching on paper, you can start really lightly, kinda feel out the shapes, and start to press more as you figure things out. That’s kinda what sketching’s about, right? But if you look here, I’m trying to make light marks, and it just… kinda makes a mess. It’s almost like a pen! On some of the bolder marks, it all kinda has the same texture, the same boldness.

For the longest time I’ve bounced between art apps to use other kinds of brushes. If you want to jump between digital and traditional, as many do, you do want something that works like the pencil you’ve got – so that you don’t have to re-learn how to press down onto the screen. As much as I hate to say it, Adobe’s stock brushes in things like Fresco and Photoshop are pretty good for that. The main reason behind it? A person named Kyle T Webster. This guy knows brushes inside and out. Last year he left Adobe and joined a little company called Savage Interactive. And they… make Procreate. And now we have like, 150 new brushes. I’ve tried almost all of them out; there’s some awesome watercolor dynamics and painting mixers. Super fun to use. But my favorite by far are the new pencil brushes.

Let’s take a look. Oh my. That’s… way better. I can use these to sketch! I can gently press in marks! It doesn’t skip as I lightly brush! The texture looks nice and pencil-like! This is something that’s going to be way more useful for general sketching, and there’s a bunch to pick from that all feel pretty great. But… why? What makes them better? I spent a bunch of time combing through some differences.

When you compare, the new brushes have a lot going for them that make it work: they have new brush stamps; some have two! They work with different pressure curves. They have adjusted flow settings, which affect how much of the brush stamp comes out onto the canvas – and that’s different than opacity. It’s hard to point at any one thing and say that’s what made it better. But… there is an easy way to get close with other brushes, if you still have a favorite.

And that is to mess with “flow”. I’ll show ya. On this brush, it’s very bold, and has a lot of the issues I mentioned when sketching. But if we go over to this Rendering tab and turn Flow down… look at that. Already it works way better. I can tune this even more by going to my pressure settings and turning this other Flow slider up, yes, up, which means that my pen pressure affects the flow even more. Now I really can brush in marks without having a lot of those ugly bits.

That’s not going to get you the world’s best brush; the new brushes have a lot going for them as I said. However, if you’ve been eyeing a brush and haven’t been able to get it to work for you, try messing with the flow as I did. This works in other art apps too, though you might find the settings in different places and not all of them will let you adjust the same amount of flow in the same kinds of ways. Got any favorites? Wanna give this a shot? Share what you’ve tried in the comments, and if you haven’t already and want more art videos, give that subscribe button a smack. I’m gonna go play with these brushes more; you should go draw too!

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Thanks for watching! Q&A’s back! I’m going to leave the form open for a week or two and it won’t be first-come-first-serve. If you’ve had motivational challenges in art or creativity, check it out; I’d love to try to help. I know I’ve been a bit slower to share recently – I’ve had some motivational troubles myself! I might mix things up a bit; if you’re curious about what, check out the video in the description.