I used to think custom brushes were a waste of time, but this one trick changed my mind

For the longest time, I stuck with the basic round and soft brushes in Procreate, thinking making my own was just for pros with too much time. My big problem was painting grass and fur, it always looked fake and took forever. Last month, I was stuck on a piece for three days trying to get a field of grass to look right. Out of pure frustration, I watched a short tutorial by an artist named Loish where she made a simple scatter brush in about five minutes. I followed her steps, just using a few basic dots and tweaking the spacing and scatter settings. The next time I tried the grass, it took me maybe twenty minutes instead of three days, and it looked way more natural. It was a total game changer for my workflow. Now I have a small set of brushes I made for specific textures. Has anyone else found a simple brush tweak that saved them a ton of time on a common problem?

3 comments

3 Comments

wesley1815d ago

But honestly, what's the real cost here? You spend five minutes making a brush, sure, but then you're stuck with a tool that only does one thing. What happens when you need grass that looks different? You just make another brush? That's a whole library of one-trick ponies to manage. I learned way more about painting real grass by struggling with those basic brushes for three days than I ever would have by just scattering dots. Doesn't that reliance on a custom brush just make your skills lazy?

uma_ellis5d ago

Wait, you were stuck on that grass for three whole days? That's brutal, I would have given up after a few hours. I can't believe one five minute tutorial fixed something that took that long. What was the hardest part before you made the brush?

susan6495d ago

Tell me about it. The worst part was trying to get the color variation to look natural. Everything just looked like a flat green carpet.