Brushes. The library of them that the Procreate App has can be intimidating. There are so many options to choose from. From pens to pencils, paintbrushes to charcoals, what to choose is super difficult, and sometimes it takes a lot of trial and error to determine exactly what your piece needs. In this post, I will be sharing the 5 brushes that I find myself using in nearly every piece that I draw.
The five brushes that I use the most are Monoline, Technical Pen, 6B pencil, Burnt Tree, and Artist Crayon. These five brushes are super versatile and make up the groundwork for most of the work I create.
Monoline:
I love Monoline for a lot of reasons. If you adjust the streamline of this brush all the way to 100%, it is so smooth and creates the cleanest lines. I use it for writing, outlining, sketching, and adding little decals or flourishes to my artwork. It is super versatile and can be used for a lot of different tricks. For writing, I prefer to use it a little bit smaller, as when it is big it is a little hard to control. But sizing can be very fun to play with when creating little designs to add to your piece. This brush is a must use and is super easy to start off with, which is why it is taking first priority in this blog.
Technical Pen:
Technical pen, oh, technical pen. I don't particularly love writing with this pen, but that is purely style preference. If you love the thin, whispy cursive, this brush is perfect for you. It tapers at the beginning and ends, and is pressure-sensitive, so you can really create the lines exactly as you want them. My favorite thing to do with this brush is to outline things. As you can see in the clouds, the little black outline adds a whimsical feel to the doodle and brings it a little bit of personality to the piece. I also like to outline flowers and letters with the technical brush. One other thing that is very helpful about this brush is it can get very small and is very good for touching up details or fixing lines that need to be adjusted, pixel by pixel.
6B pencil:
A pencil brush can be super cute and helpful. I had a really hard time at first with finding a good pencil brush I liked. Then I went into the brush settings for the 6B pencil brush and adjusted the maximum size it could be all the way up and now I can use it a lot more. With its shape source being a rectangle, you can really write some cute letters using this brush, and the texture adds a really nice flair to what you are doing. When you write with the 6B pencil brush, it almost gives your writing a vintage, weathered feel. I like to go over my writing with a lighter color or two to really make it pop.
Burnt Tree:
I like this brush for texturing exclusively. It adds a really nice, rustic feel to drawings. The way I have been doing this lately is just selecting the color that I used, taking it down a shade or two, and then drawing over my drawing with it to add some texture like you can see in the image example here.
Artist Crayon:
This is another brush that I love to use for texture, but I use it more for writing and adding some flourishes to my art. It adds such a cute, texturized feel to anything and is a lot of fun to use. Using this brush like the burnt tree brush would also be great for adding texture to doodles.
Those are the brushes! The brush library is super intense and you will definitely find a brush for what you need, but keep an eye out for a tutorial on how to create your own brush!
Isabelle
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