If you are just new to the digital painting world, it’s very common to wonder which are the best brushes for digital painting. Before jumping into all search results on the web that demonstrate a variety of brushes and their features, let’s have a quick understanding.
Depending solely on either pro-custom brushes or standard brushes is not advisable. Best practice, according to experts, is to use both these tools simultaneously based on your requirements.
Standard brushes are the first to master. It is advisable to know and try out all options inside standard brushes properly. It teaches you the basics that are necessary to accurately get the most out of the custom brushes available.
Light and shade, adjustable size, hardness, opacity, and also good pressure-sensitive stylus touch pen with a good tablet are the first few things to work on. Once you gain experience with these, you are welcome to look out for the 5 essential brushes for digital painting we have curated for you as per your needs. You can also find the best photoshop as well as clip studio paint brushes for creating professional-styled artwork.
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Top Five Brushes For Digital Painting
- Fur, Hair, And Grass Brushes (Free)
- Realistic Charcoal Brush (Free)
- Photoshop Tool Preset Brushes Set #1 (Free)
- Aaron Griffin Art Brushes (Free)
- Fairy Dust Brush (Free)
Best Brushes For Digital Painting And Drawing 2024
1. Fur, Hair, And Grass Brushes:
Although unusual to find its place at the top, artists find quite confused while searching for the right brush to paint grass, jungles, hair, fur, etc. Also, this brush exceptionally saves time and comes to the rescue during the challenging deadline. That is why it placed at the number one position in the list of best brushes for digital painting.
Being the free brush set, it becomes greatly sought after by artists. This brush set packs 52 brushes that are tailor-made to lay out realistic effects regarding hair, fur. These high-definition 3D rendered brushes offer resizing without any compromise on effects. Inside the pack, there are two ABR files, each for CS2 to CS5 users and CS6 to CS2017 users. All of these features makes it one of the best program to create digital art.
- Realistic Charcoal Brushes:
Now, these are the most essential brushes for digital painting which is created by WojtekFus in 2014. This charcoal pack may not be suitable for beginners as it needs some practice to use it justifiably. They work perfectly in even the modern versions of Photoshop, so yes, it can still woo the users.
- Photoshop Tool Preset Brushes Set #1
Well-known Cale Atkinson has developed this unique tool which needs some initial skill as well as tool preset knowledge to operate. This brush pack is that mystery pack that Cale himself uses and makes his extraordinarily unique craft. So, something to check out. No?
- Aaron Griffin Art Brushes:
Aaron Griffin’s work is available to check online. Artists are advised to first check those works and come back to try out this pack. Assuming you already checked them out, and got intrigued by his artwork, here is the information that he already made his brush pack available in 2016. Aaron, as you found out, has his forte in figure paintings. His brushes are free forever to use in any project you take up. Aaron is an extraordinary artist and illustrator, idolized by many. So, include it in your list too!
- Fairy Dust Brush:
Here is a very interesting inclusion in our pick. This one is a custom-made brush. Also please refer to our guide to make this brush in both Photoshop and Painter. Such kind of these digital painting brushes is used by many professionals.
Photoshop: First make the opacity 100%, keep Flow at 100%, Other Dynamics should be Opacity and Flow, 0%, then Smoothing should be checked, under Scattering, Both Axes, 85% be done.
Now, coming to the specialty of the brush. This brush is apt for texture in mouths. Along with the surface areas, apply the light color and run the brush over it. Lips, cheeks, chins, nose front – all these portions can be greatly managed with this brush.
For a more natural effect, size and opacity have to be switched regularly. One may be wondering why the name is fairy dust. Well, as the name suggests, this brush can be used for fairy tales’ magic spell effect. This brush is good for painting the starry sky!
Special Mentions:
Although we listed our best five picks, there are still good brushes available to try out depending upon your requirements in your work. For example, ‘Dripping Paint Brushes’ offers a good realistic effect for portraying ripples, dribbles, droplets. Next up in our mention is ‘Free Photoshop Environmental Brushes’. This one is a high-resolution brush suitable for illustrating the environment and landscapes. No restrictions, free to use for any self-use or commercial projects. ‘Shattered Glass Brushes’ is unique as the name sounds.
Developed by UCreative, this brush pack set for Photoshop contains 12 high-resolution brushes which can be utilized for creating shattered glass effects in your paint.
So, in this list of best brushes for digital painting, we mentioned the most unique, time-saving, free-to-use brushes. Artists can try them out to vivify their creativity.
Also, we included one custom-made brush to give beginners an idea of how the regular round brushes can be tweaked a little in their settings and we can make outstanding paintings.
Now, the ball is in your court to utilize all the above stuff and come out with your chef-d’oeuvre!