If you’re a digital artist, your main tools will be the brushes you use, no matter what software or app you are using.
Brushes have played quite an important part in my creative journey, that I felt like I needed to write a bit about it.
There are tons of different brushes, that will give your illustrations different effects, textures, etc. Some will look like traditional ones, some won’t, some will be used to only blend, or just to erase, etc.
Nowadays, most drawing apps allow you to import brushes you downloaded, but also to create your own. I’m mostly thinking about Clip Studio Paint—you can download free and paid brushes from the app directly—, as well as Procreate—which is the app I use to create my own brushes.
I find that the brushes you use—and the way you use them—play a very important part in making your art stand out. When I open Instagram, I see the fantastic artworks share by artists and illustrators that I love, and I immediately recognise who did what, because each artist has their own style, and the brushes that they use are a big part of their style.
When I started to use Procreate a few months ago, I noticed that a lot of these artists were selling their brushes online. And since I loved their art, I bought some of them.
But the tricky part was, I was trying to find my own style too, and having these brushes made by other illustrators made it kinda frustrating for me when the results I got didn’t look like theirs.
That’s when I decided to create my own brushes. I started by twisting a little an existing brush in Procreate, used it, changed a few more things, etc, until I was happy with it. And then I made another one, and a new one again. And eventually, I made my very first set of brushes, that included no more than seven brushes. But I was really happy with how they came out, though it had been quite a long process.
But these brushes were completely mine, and no one else had these. So I had no one to compare myself to, and that allowed me to completely work on my own style. I decided I would use only these brushes during a period of time, for all the illustrations I would do. And I think having these “unique” brushes really helped me to develop it. I wasn’t trying to make my illustrations look like someone else’s, but I was instead trying to make my brushes fit what I wanted my illustrations to feel.
And now that I have been able to develop my style a bit more, I can use again other illustrators’ brushes, but in my own way. I don’t use them anymore to “copy” these artists, but to complement my own illustrations. And it just feels so right to me now!
Creating the “perfect” brush definitely is not easy. You’ll probably have to spend a lot of time working on it, you may feel like you completely failed a drawing because your brush wasn’t like you expected it, or you may be disappointed in the results you get at first.
But I promise this is definitely worth it. And the experience of creating a brush teaches you so, so much! Even if you decide not to use your brushes anymore once you feel you developed your own style, you will see that you have learned many things, and earned many skills as well.
And isn’t it what we aim for as artists?
It was quite a short post, but I do hope it was useful. It felt important to me to talk about the brushes and how they impact your style, because that’s something I was really struggling with even just a few months ago.
But now I can say I am quite happy with my style.
I also love trying new brushes to give my art new textures, effects, and so on, but at least, now I try them in my very own way, and I’m not trying anymore to imitate someone else’s way.
Thanks a lot for reading this blog post, and I hope to write again soon!
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Ilona Ro - Illustrations 