Photoshop: Digital Brushes

After last weeks Research Proposal document submission I had a couple of days rest and tried to catch up with the rest of 'real life' stuff that had been abandoned for a good few weeks while I was working on my document.

Since majority of the written work is now out of the way I can concentrate on going back to doing some practical work on my project, which has sadly been more or less abandoned since the crit week.

As a first thing on my ‘to do list’ had been creation of some digital brushes that would help me imitate traditional media look. General Photoshop brushes that come with the software are certainly not enough. I have also discovered that some of downloaded brush sets are also not quite what I am looking for. Also, I think learning to create my own brushes would benefit me immensely in the future. From reading some of the digital painting magazines I took from library (series of ‘Digital Art Masters'  and 'Digital Painting Techniques' both by 3DTotal) I have come to realise importance of the digital brushes. Although, brushes will not make one draw/paint better however used cleverly and appropriately can save time and help one with achieving some of desired texture look; what I'm really looking for in this case.

The process started with making some marks on paper using traditional media like: graphite pencil, charcoal pencil, ink as well as acrylic paint, then scanning all of it to digitize it and turning each in to brush/brushes.


Here is my .pdf document showing originals and tests of Photoshop brushes I have managed to produce.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/blyq137wwh5ozub/PhotoshopBrushesSet.pdf

Link to actual brushes can be found at the end of the .pdf document.


I have to say some of the brushes came out to be more successful than others. (E.g. pencil ones and some paint ones as they resemble more the look/texture of the real media.) In general I think knowing how to create digital brushes is a great skill/knowledge for any digital painter as it gives a flexibility and speed  to workflow as well as perhaps a 'personal touch' to final artefact.