GrutBrushes Blog - What's New in Photoshop Brushes & Digital art

Posted on July 4, 2014 by Nicolai — Leave a comment

A Realistic Photoshop Pencil – The Borrowed Pencil

I’m working on a set of pencils, a pencil for every occasion, you know, HB, B, B2 etc. But sketching doesn’t always work that way. In the same way that the best camera is the one you have, the pencil you’ll use to sketch your next masterpiece with is often the one the waiter left on the counter, or the pencil from the box in the garage, or the Borrowed Pencil

Time-lapse digital digital drawing done using the 'Borrowed Pencil' pressure sensitive Photoshop Pencil tool toolset — Time lapse of a digital drawing done using Photoshop Pencil tool tool ‘Borrowed Pencil’

This Photoshop pencil is a versatile realistic sketching pencil that with a light touch, has a very faint light line but with firmer pressure produces a dark confident line. The graphite line has some slight edging, as if from a flaky lead and the fill texture is visible, perhaps akin to the look of a medium pencil on 100lb paper.

Download the borrowed pencil Photoshop pencil here ~~for free today~~ (free deal expired)when you use the coupon code ~~GBPENCIL~~

Posted on June 23, 2014 by Nicolai — Leave a comment

Free Photoshop Brushes are back!

[box type=”info”]UPATE: This promotion is now over but there will be plenty more like it in the future. In the meantime, there are always brushes available for free or on sale and newly published brushes can usually be downloaded for free for the first 48 hours so register to keep in touch[/box]

free pressure sensitive artisinal Photoshop brushes — Download Photoshop brushes Free for a share

To anyone looking for the free Photoshop brushes deal for a share, the coupon wasn’t working for a while and the blue box wasn’t showing up. It’s fixed now, and when you add brushes to your cart you should see the blue share box again. Click on Like, tweet or G+ in your cart and all the brushes in your cart will be free (while this deal lasts) The box to look for in your cart looks like this one here on the right:

Posted on June 20, 2014 by Nicolai — Leave a comment

‘Poster Bantam’ – Photoshop Inking Brush

An artisanal Photoshop Inking brush for a change of pace. Poster Bantam is a broad and highly versatile Photoshop inking brush that can be used for sketching, painting and broad area fill. It mimics the look of wet water based poster paints on paper or card stock, with a a pretty fluid mostly opaque coverage while bits of the paper occasionally show through ever so slightly. A second swipe of the brush will give full coverage of course. At low pressure the brush is a bit drier, shows as well as some more textured bristles at the edges of the brush strokes. Great for broad gestural drawings, expressionistic sketching, signage and hand painted text.

Time lapse digital watercolor painting brush strokes painted using the pressure sensitive Photoshop Watercolour brush toolset 'Poster Bantam' — Time lapse digital watercolor painting done using the pressure sensitive Photoshop Watercolour brush toolset ‘Poster Bantam’ from Grutbrushes.com

This brush is free for you today just for reading this! Enter the coupon code INKME01 into your cart and you can download this latest Photoshop brush for free (until June 23 2015)

Brush strokes drawn with Poster Bantam Photoshop inking brush

Posted on June 18, 2014 by Nicolai — Leave a comment

Leaky Pen Photoshop Brush

Do you miss the old leaky pens from the real world? Well now your Photoshop pen can spring a digital ink leak!

Splatter Reed, the latest digital ink brush is a leaky ink Photoshop brush that splatters ink as you draw. The faster you sketch back and forth the more digital ink splatter you’ll get. Get the messy leaky ink photoshop brush for yourself. This time, the carpet’s are safe.

You can download this Photoshop brush for FREE for the next 48 hours with the code BLOG140617 I’m experimenting with providing all brushes for free for at least 24 hours to members (sign up for free) as they are published so check back soon while that lasts. (Hint…at least one more brush is coming up this week)

Time-lapse digital watercolour painting done using the 'Splatter Reed' pressure sensitive Photoshop Ink brush toolset — Brush strokes drawn with ‘Splatter Reed’ the pressure sensitive Photoshop leaky pen brush

Posted on June 4, 2014 by Nicolai — Leave a comment

Digital Painting Tip – How to control watercolour edging

digital watercolor painting tip — How to remove watercolour edges

When using the watercolour brushes, you may want to reduce, increase or simply control where the ‘edging’ appears. While painting, make sure you don’t lift your pen or stylus off the tablet, then reduce the pressure until you are pushing very lightly and go over the area where you want to remove the edging.

With a light stroke you will no longer be adding paint and will only be removing the dark edges. Then, if you like, you can go back over the same area with more pressure and add in fill. As long as you don’t lift your pen, your stroke will be ‘edgeless’ on the second pass. The key to all of this is you cannot lift your pen off the drawing tablet, you can take your time but it must all be done in one stroke.

Download a free realistic watercolour brush tool to try it for yourself.

Posted on May 28, 2014 by Nicolai — Leave a comment

Dynamic Pressure Sensitive Photoshop Brushes vs Stencil brushes

pressure sensitive Photoshop brushes for digital artists — Both of these brushes are based on the same texture but produce radically different strokes.

Someone on Tumblr asked me how many brushes were in the PasteUp brush toolset. The answer seemed to surprise them: “Just one”. They, like many of us, are used to Photoshop brushes being of the stencil or stamp type, where you get an image of a brush stroke and every time you touch the brush to the image you get a ‘stamp’ of that image, perhaps in different sizes or at a different angle. The web is littered with this type of Photoshop brush. For digital painting though, you really want a smooth, variable pressure responsive stroke.

Grutbrushes are different, they are fully dynamic and pressure responsive brush toolsets that respond to the motion, direction and pressure of the stylus and the graphics tablet (Wacom, Monoprice, bamboo, intuos, etc) which means that each stroke will be fluid and unique as you paint with them. Here are a few examples of brush strokes painted with PasteUp watercolour brush illustrating the different strokes you can get just by varying the pressure you apply to your stylus.

Brush stroke samples of pressure responsive watercolour brushes from Grutbooks.com — Brush stroke samples of PasteUp watercolour brush when used with Wacom tablet

But enough from me, you can try it for yourself. You can still get it ‘free for a share’ for a few more days. Just add any Photoshop brushes you want to your cart, and from the cart, click on the share button for either Facebook, Twitter or Google+ and download them ALL for free! Don’t forget these three Photoshop brushes that are also totally free as well. No sharing necessary.

All these brushes require Photoshop CS5 and up to work

Posted on May 28, 2014 by Nicolai — Leave a comment

PasteUp – New Watercolour brush

Actual brush strokes from the “PasteUp” watercolour Photoshop brush

OK, this one’s the best watercolour brush. Maybe I spoke to soon or perhaps my latest Photoshop brush will always be my favourite.

Pasteup has a rougher edge than the other watercolour brushes (with Frontier being perhaps the smoothest edged) PasteUp also has a tonal range that’s a bit higher than most, from very light to almost completely opaque depending on the stylus pressure. This makes it ever so slightly more challenging as it requires a bit more control to manage the opacity of the brush stroke but it still gives a pretty great looking natural watercolour effect no matter what you do.

Brush Strokes from the watercolour Photoshop brush toolset "PasteUp" — Brush Stroke samples from the “PasteUp” watercolour Photoshop brush

Here’s a Time-lapse video of the Striped Shirt Boy painting being painted with the Pasteup brush. The original painting took about 10 minutes to paint, it has been sped up here to last about 1 minute.

You can try Grutbrushes for yourself and download a free watercolor Photoshop brush here.

Posted on May 20, 2014 by Nicolai — Leave a comment

Best Watercolour Photoshop Brush Yet?

Closeup of time lapse digital watercolour painting done using pressure sensitive watercolour Photoshop brush from Grutbrushes.com — Digital watercolour painting done using pressure sensitive watercolour Photoshop brush “Swab Caress”

This one was in the workshop for a long time but I am pleased to announce that “Swab Caress“, the latest and perhaps best of my watercolour brushes for Photoshop is now available in the shop. There are another dozen or so that are still in production that should be available within the next month or so.

paint strokes from Watercolour brush "Swab Caress" — paint strokes from Watercolour brush “Swab Caress”

Painted using the "Swab Caress" Photoshop watercolour brush — painted using the “Swab Caress” Photoshop watercolour brush

From the catalog description:

An organic real watercolour Photoshop brush that responds to pressure sensitivity. A versatile brush for both outlining and fills it has a fairly consistent texture with just enough flaws to keep it feeling organic and natural but not enough to distract from the overall tone of the artwork. The edges of the brush stroke have a distinctive watery paintbrush appearance but are restrained enough to make for a relatively tightly controllable outline.

digital watercolour painted with “Swab Caress” brush for Photoshop

Posted on May 8, 2014 by Nicolai — Leave a comment

“Grape Remains” Realistic Watercolour Brush for Photoshop

Digital Watercolour Bear painting created using Grape Remains Photoshop brush from grutbrushes.com — Digital Watercolour Bear painting created using “Grape Remains” digital watercolor Photoshop brush

The latest watercolour Photoshop brush “Grape Remains” is now available in the shop. As with all brushes in the shop, it can be downloaded for free for a short while longer if you tweet, plus or like it on Facebook when you are checking out. Just add it to your cart and click on one of the social sharing buttons in the cart as you check out and you wont have to pay a penny to download the brush. If you’d rather not bother, you can buy it for just a dollar!