Brush Shapes...
 

Hello,

I've been wondering about this for so long I just had to ask. When sketching in Photoshop, I see alot of people using irregularly shaped brushes. Is there an advantage to using these brushes as opposed to the circular ones? At first, I thought: TEXTURE! But when you're dragging the brush around, any holes left by the brush head itself are wiped up with the stroke unless you're "dabbing."

Thanks,
Angus :?:

Yes and No. Like most things it comes down to personal preference. I don't think that I've seen hardly anyone who does really well in the middle. Either they use custom brushes and hardly ever paint with just a circular brush or vice versa.

Here's some good examples:

http://www.goodbrush.com - Lots of custom brushes
http://mv.cgcommunity.com/ - Mathias, Lots of custom brushes

dylancolestudio.com - Lots of use of the circular brush but painting really fine
http://dusso.com/ - Lots of circular brushes

It takes alot of practice and hard work to get custom brushes to work like real ones, I think that's why you'll see alot of conceptual artists use custom brushes because they can be very dynamic and unpredictable and give you alot of happy mistakes. In matte painting it can be really hard to use something so unpredictable to create fine work and so that's why I don't think you'll see very many matte artists use custom brushes (cept for maybe a pallette knife) in the final stages of a painting.

Okay, that does make sense.

Thank you!
Angus

i find getting into the brush options helps alot. with shape rotation, scale, saturation etc etc and some spacing will allow you to get better use. i did an entire field of flowers and clovers with only one clover and only one flower as brushes

Ah ha! That solves my problem with textures Da_Elf. I always keep the spacing meter at or near minimum--making all my strokes come out smooth even if I'm using an irregularly shaped brush.

I'll be sure to play with the spacing from now on for textures.

Angus

wow. i actually said something that made sence this time

I was cleaning out the garage today and in looking at a piece of artist's chalk I remembered, Dylan uses a chalk type brush, Chalk 35 I think. But he doesn't change alot of the settings (at least in his DVD's) to crazy settings like some concept artists do.

There's some crazy stuff you can do with settings that change things you would never expect. Actually sitting down an taking the time to make your own custom brushes is a big help.

The hardest one is a good palette knife. I still haven't perfected mine yet.

What exactly is a palette knife? I've heard them mentioned in school, too.

This is a very thin but long brush, check this tutorial (point 15) how to make your own :)

A real pallet knife is used to mix oil paints and to apply paint to the canvas.
Google image search it and you'll see what I mean. The tut looks close but I
think Painter has a more realistic one.