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Free Brush of the Week #62 – “Chin Chatter” Natural Media Brush

This week’s free Photoshop brush is “Chin Chatter” A very grainy natural media brush, with a messy medium spread in terms of grain size and breadth From gritty sand to small pebbles this brush sprays out particles like gravel from a wood chipper

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Free Photoshop Brush of the Week #58 – “Knit Pin”

Free-Photoshop-Brush-of-the-Week-#58-Knit-Pin

This week’s free GrutBrush is “Knit Pin” a speckled, high contrast brush with a tremendous breadth of stroke from a scratchy pin-prick line to a fanned out fill, always with a sharp spotty jagged edge.

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Painting by Keve Kepes

By Keve Kepes, Freelance Artist, Illustrator
Painted By Keve Kepes, Freelance Artist, Illustrator

I’m delighted to add this new piece by Keve Kepes in the GrutBrushes Gallery today. Thanks very much for sharing this Keve! To see more of Keve’s work visit his Artstation portfolio.

Have some artwork created using GrutBrushes that you’d like to share? Submit your best today (if you don’t want to share it, send it anyway and let me know it’s not to be published, I love to see what you’re making)

 

 

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Drawing with this week’s Newsletter Freebies

[baslider name=”papertextureespaloaf”]

This week’s Newsletter freebies included this Photoshop paper template. It’s one of the many art surfaces templates for Photoshop that I’ve been working on since people started emailing me asking for the original canvas texture I used in a lot of early demos.

When you download the PSD file you can simply draw, paint or paste your own artwork into the green layer and the texture and lighting effects will be applied automatically.

Draw on this layer and texture and lighting will be automatically applied
Draw on this layer and texture and lighting will be automatically applied

Not getting the newsletter yet?  sign up quickly,  this will probably go out in tomorrows issue!  Went out April 13th (and make sure email from info@GrutBrushes.com is not getting caught in you Spam filter and going into your junk mail folder) This sample was drawn with the Jam Wiggly brush which is this week’s free brush which you can still get until Sunday April 17th.

This paper texture is now available free for Art Brush members on the Photoshop freebies page. Want more Art Surfaces? Sign up below and I’ll be in touch when they’re ready.

[fue_subscribe label=”Email:” placeholder=”Your email address” list=”Art Surfaces Updates” submit_text=”Subscribe” success_message=”Got it. Thanks! I’ll be in touch”]

 

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Free Photoshop Brush of the Week #55 – A Hairy Week

This week’s free GrutBrush is an airy specialty brush that produces a light whispy texture like a faint pencil drawing.

As always, you can download it for free from the free brush of the week page until Monday when there will be a new free Photoshop brush.  After that you can still get this brush here or as a part of the ArtBrushes Complete set.

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Free Brush of the Week #54 – “Spent Pestle” Specialist Brush

Painting with eth Spent Pestle Photoshop brush
Painting with the ‘Spent Pestle’ Photoshop brush (paper texture added)

This week’s free GrutBrush ( grutbrushes.com/freebrush ) is a specialty brush which mostly means that it doesn’t quite fit perfectly into any of the traditional media categories like charcoal, ink, watercolour, etc. Nor does it quite fit into my catch-all category “Natural Media” where I normally place brushes that behave and look like traditional media. This is what I call a ‘Specialty’ brush. Tthey tend to have a look that is quite unique that makes them suitable for one particular tasks rather than general drawing or painting. you wouldn’t chose a specialty brush to take a message while on the phone or draw a map to your house.

Making this image

To create this drawing I alternated between black and white a lot (using the ‘x‘ key shortcut) and used the white to carve away at the black lines, sometimes shaping them into finer points than the brush weight allowed. When I was done, I turned the layer into an overlay, over the paper texture and toned down the white parts of my drawing using hue/saturation to the point where it is still just slightly visible, almost as if it’s a faint water stain, like wet sand off a shoreline. I then added a tetxured overlay of the paper on top of the black areas to give it a more ‘lived in’ look and integrate it a bit more with the paper backing. A flat layer of colour on a natural background always looks too artificial to even be a part of it’s own background, nothing in real life is one single colour or tone.

Having more fun with the brush of the week demo doodles

This drawing is also the start of a bit of a departure from the usual demo images, not in the content or style, which is my usual doodley sketch style, but in the rules I set for myself when creating it and it’s something I hope to be doing more of from now on. For the past year, I usually set myself pretty tight rules on how I present the demo images, I try to make sure I only use that one brush, ‘as is’, I don’t change the width, I don’t manipulate the appearance of the lines, I used to stick to only one that brush for the whole piece. In the beginning I even tended to restrict myself to black and white to present what I felt was the most accurate depiction of what the lines look like so that you know exactly what you’re getting when you download the brush. This year I am going to try (spare time permitting) to relax my self imposed rules and have a bit more fun with the brushes for a few reasons:

  1. You can always click through to the brush page on the website and see all the technical details there including an animated preview showing exactly what it’s like to draw an unadultarated brush stroke in black on a white background.
  2. It’s a free brush, so I am not sure why I feel like I’m doing a bait and switch just because I used an eraser to tidy up a splotchy area of one line or added a texture, or changed the line width. I realise that I shouldn’t shy away from showing unconventional uses of the brushes the point is to show you what you can do with an art tool, and part of that should be to get creative with it, I’m not making a schematic for a medical device!
  3. The final reason is mostly for me. While following strict rules may be a reliable way to immediately showing what the brush looks like, that’s not very conducive to creativity or fun. I always tell myself “Just stick to using the brush as is, consider this drawing a product demo and then later you can have some fun with it and do something more creative” but in reality, later never comes. Making the brush of the week is often the only time all week that I actually do any doodling so If I don’t use the ‘free brush of the week’ in a creative and fun way when making the demo image, I may never get to it again! It does me good to remind myself that I started making these brushes was a way to add creativity back into a stressful work life, and I hope I can share some of the benefits with you.
    So from now on I’m going to try to be a little looser with the brushes and play around a bit more. Hopefully I’ll take advantage of my relaxed rules and start having a bit more fun with the brushes, and Im sure you’ll forgive me if I add in a few flourishes with other brushes and take a few liberties with the technical details. I promise that the images will always be primarily driven and inspired by the brush I am giving away.
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Making a Mess Again in Photoshop

Photoshop Ink and paint splatter brushes
Splashing about with Ink and paint in Photoshop

Taking a quick break from working on the cloud brushes to play around with some new splattery ink and paint brushes in the workshop. As usual, the goal is to make brushes that behave naturally; staining, splattering and ‘soaking’ into the paper as you draw, these are not stencil stamps. Here you can also see how using one of my paper templates enhances the organic look (take a look at the lighting in the darkest spots for example)

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Site is Teetering, but here’s a quick tutorial video.

http://grutbrushes.wistia.com/medias/5rs9l20dzn?embedType=async&videoFoam=true&videoWidth=1020

Normally I’d be announcing the free brush of the week today (Week #52…1 full Year or free brushes!), but I was waiting until some really serious website problems were resolved. That doesn’t seem to be happening so my post announcing the free sampler set of 10 brushes and tools (6+4) which I’m releasing as a “Pay What You Want” product (i.e. free!) is delayed.  While waiting for someone to help me fix it I made this quick video shows how to install them into Photoshop using the plugin. Come and download it at your own risk as the site seems to be in danger of going down at any moment but while it’s up, you can get them here

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