I have neither the skill nor the patience to draw the kind of portraits that Josh McCann does, but what makes them all the more remarkable is that he draws them with the GrutBrushes pencils! The piece above by Josh is the latest addition to the GrutBrushes gallery (Scroll down to see a timelapse video of this piece being created)
“For the most part I only use 4 [pencil] brushes (Mech Mini, Mech Mid, Maybe Sews and limbo lift.) I have saved each of those brushes out with varying levels of opacity and flow. And then I created my own mixer brush for blending. They’re great brushes for drawing!!”
If you find your brush lags as you draw with your stylus, there are (unfortunately) many possible reasons but here are some things to try
The very first thing to do is to turn off smoothing on your brush, if it’s on. This can make it appear as if your brush is lagging but that is just the effect of the smoothing function, slowing your line down to even it out any jitters you may have as you draw. High smoothing will slow down your strokes considerably
Congratulations!…If you are one of the winners, send me an email at info@grutbrushes.com and I will send you the information on how to download your prize
In this 2 minute Photoshop tutorial I show you how you can easily add a realistic paper texture to your photos in Photoshop using GrutBrushes Art Surfaces.
They are not just for digital painting!
All the paper textures shown in the video are now available in the shop but if you haven’t had a chance to try one yet, just click below to download.
Update 2 – 2019:
The plugin is working again! If your GrutBrushes plugin stopped working after you updated Photoshop. Uninstall it (instructions here) and then re-install it and it will work (you can download the latest version from your downloads tab in your account or get it here if you never had it)
Update 1 (23 Oct 2018): The problem seems to be affecting Mac only. I have been able to confirm that the GrutBrushes plugin still works on all 3 updates to Photoshop CC v20 that I’ve seen so far on Windows
Original Post (18 Oct): It seems the latest Photoshop update is not compatible with the GrutBrushes plugin and will cause it to stop working. The brushes still work of course, the problem is just with the plugin. I have written to my plugin developer to see if they can help, but until then it looks like updating to the latest version of Photoshop will disable the GrutBrushes plugin. Re-installing it does not seem to fix it.
I have written to my plugin developer to see if they can fix it and I will let you know here as soon as I hear back. In the meantime, be aware that if you update Photoshop to the latest version, you will lose access to the GrutBrushes plugin! (Your settings should still be there and I hope they will return if I can get the plugin working again)
If you want to keep the old version of Photoshop installed as well as the new one you can uncheck the “remove old versions” box when updating. This will install the new version and keep the old one installed.
Keep in mind this means you will have two separate versions of Photoshop on your computer,
Uncheck this box to keep 2 versions of Photoshop on your computer
You also have the option of re-installing older versions of Photoshop from the Adobe Creative Cloud app:
you can re-install older versions of Photoshop
if you have already upgraded and don’t want to install the previous version you will have to access the brushes from the Tool Presets panel.
I’m very sorry for this but I had no idea Adobe would be doing this. I hope I can find a solution soon. Stay tuned. I will update you here as soon as I hear.
The first Procreate GrutBrushes are now available with many more to come. You can buy Procreate Unlimited for a bargain right now
It’s just $10 today but it will go up as more brushes are added! You will get access to download all the Procreate brushes published in the next 6 months.
Once there are enough of them, I will start bundling them into sets (inks, pencils, watercolours, etc) but until then, purchasing GrutBrushes Procreate unlimited is the only way to get them for now
Even though there are some similar brushes (I will try to reproduce some favourites) These are not the Photoshop brushes converted, these are ALL NEW exclusively Procreate. (If I could convert them, there would be a lot more than just 25 to start with)
You can “try before you buy” with the free Procreate brushes available as well. Install them right onto your iPad from the web page!
I get this question almost every day now and while I don’t have any proper documentation for it yet, you can import GrutBrushes TPL files into both Artstudio Pro (I love this app!) and Adobe Sketch apps
You can import any of the GrutBrushes TPLs right now, but you probably don’t want to import them one at a time. So, in this super-quick video tutorial I show you how to export a batch of TPL brushes into one file all at once. That way you can just upload that single TPL containing all your favourite GrutBrushes to DropBox, iCloud or whatever you use to get files onto your iPad.
Once you have it in the cloud you can import it into Adobe Sketch or Artstudio Pro (shown below) Someday I hope to make a video tutorial showing the whole process, but until then, both apps do currently have information in their documentation on how to import Photoshop brushes so have a look around.
Importing Photoshop Brushes (TPL) into the Artstudip Pro app on the iPad Pro
Here I am using the GrutBrushes pattern brushes on the iPad pro! Using GrutBrushes with the Apple Pencil is a dream.
GrutBrushes can be imported into ArtStudio Pro and Adobe Sketch on th iPad Pros
…and no, sorry, you can’t use these GrutBrushes in Procreate! It has it’s own wonderful brush format but it can’t import Photoshop brushes. UPDATE: Procreate GrutBrushes are now available! They are not the same as the Photoshop brushes but I think you’ll like them just as much
There are dozens of apps that claim to be able to import Photoshop brushes but what most of them mean is that they can import the tip shape, but that’s just the most visible but probably the least important feature of a good digital brush.
GrutBrushes are all about the dynamics…HOW the brush behaves, not what it’s brush tip shape looks like.
Unless an app imports all the brush dynamics it’s really not importing the brush.
Adobe Sketch and Artstudio Pro are currently the only apps that can import GrutBrushes Photoshop brushes. If any new apps come along that claim to be able to import Photoshop brushes and all the brush dynamics please let me know, I’ll be the first to buy it and test it out.
