In this Tips tutorial I’m going to introduce the top 10 brushes I love the most and that I use the most!

This is, of course my personal list of choice, but I hope I can share the love for the Assets offered in CSP and support this way the work of many many talented artists out there!

 

1. Rose Red Brush

This one is SUPER useful for manga and illustration alike. These look realistic and so so beautiful; I use them a lot when I want to make a luxury BG for a character or actually use them as roses in my pictures.

This asset is very simple to use, and you can change the basic parametres of the brush similarly to other brushes.

Also, there are two variants of this brush, one is linear while the other one draws the rose’s position randomly.

2. きらきら星 (Kira Kira Boshi – Sparkly Stars)

When I’m giving the finishing touches, I really like to give my drawing little sparkly details.

This is originally created to make stars, and it works perfectly for that, of course, but in my case, I use it like this:

 

Of course, you can change the values and properties, and this brush allows density modification, too!

3. てがきほしブラシ(Tegaki hoshi burashi - Hand drawn star brush)

I like to use this one in my chibi drawings, specially. But it’s really versatile! You can change colours, and shape, and density…almost all values can be modified, of course, and also, they’re so CUTE.

If, like me, you don’t like a plain BG, use these!

This brush uses your primary and secondary colours as reference, so chose your favourite colours, then click on the primary colour and you're ready to go!

 

You can also modify the brush's density, as shown here.

Possibilities are endless.

4. Sponge PH (CSP official brush)

I LOVE this brush when I’m drawing children illustrations or when I want to give my art a sketchy and cute style.

It’s really useful and gets a spongy effect on my drawings, and I really like how it manages the shades and blending.

 

This are my tool properties:

And this is how I use it,

First, I apply a flat base; and then I use the sponge brush. The more pressure I apply, the darker the shade is, so be careful and don’t press your stylus too hard!

 

5.つや髪ハイライトペン (Tsuyagami hiairaito pen – Shinny hair highlight pen)

This one costs 10 clippy (super cheap!) and it’s so time saving I wanted to cry the first time I used it.

It’s clean and easy to use, and what’s better, it’s solid and it works in both B/W and colour illustrations.

 

This brush is super versatile, and you can basically adjust every aspect of it to your liking.

6. お色気ペンセット (Oiroke pen set – Sexy pen set)

This pen set is sold for 50 clippy points and it’s worth every single one of them.

The set comes with several brushes for manga or illustration use (although I personally use them in my comics).

The set counts with 11 different brushes for you to use.

It’s useful for drawing sweat, heavy breathing, etc. Like, for example, when you draw someone out of the shower!

7. ざらつきカケアミリニューアル＋トーン8種(Zaratsuki kakeami rinyuaru+ton 8shu–8 types of rough hatching renewal+tones)

This set is super complete, it’s got many types of hatching (kakeami) brushes, as well as two erasers and many tones.

It’s useful for textures, but specially for manga, in where cross hatching is very much used.

The set includes 9 cross hatching brushes of different densities, 2 erasers with different shapes and 8 types of tones.

I particularly use it for backgrounds and also for back hair, when I don’t want to make shinny curls, but matte.

8.玉ボケブラシ (Tama boke burashi – Blurred ball brush)

This one, I think, is useful for illustrations and coloured pictures.

These basically recreate a feerical atmosphere or recreate night city lights. I like to use them to give my illustrations a special touch of light or a romantic air.

Its properties are really complete so you can basically change every single aspect of the brush, but here are my properties of choice.

9. Neonpen

Well, this one is a guilty pleasure of mine. I’m too in love with this brush. It’s useful for everything; for backgrounds, details, 80’s style pictures… I simply love it.

Also, it’s so simple to use, since it’s properties are very basic and you won’t need to touch anything to make it work perfectly.

 

It basically uses your primary and secondary colours of choice and make a neon-like line of any shape.

The set includes two brushes, the first one merges all strokes while the second one overlaps new strokes when drawn on the previous ones.

10. (追加)ハート吹き出し (Tsuika) Haato Fukidashi (Annex – heart speech bubbles)

This brush is specially useful for manga, expressions and icons/avatars. I’ve used them in comics before and it’s so easy to use. Basically, you can choose between several empty bubbles and all have a little heart and /or express some love feeling.

It’s a set, and it includes 4 different brushes that actually have 18 different variations for you tu use in your mangas!

The same author also has other speech bubble materials that are super interesting and useful, don’t forget to check them out.

The settings are also really basic so it’s not a problem if you want to customize the size of the brush.

BONUS! 선넘네? 지우개 seonneomne? Jiugae- Good? Eraser

I’ve reviewed this asset on Twitter before, but really, it’s the best eraser since sliced bread!

I mean, you don’t have to worry about that patch of colour outside the lines anymore, this little one will get rid of it for you.

 

All you need is to check your lines layer as the reference layer and they you are free to colour as messy as you want, since this eraser will fix it for you.

 

Make sure you properly close your lines a that there is no pixels between them and this will work perfectly and fix anything outside the lines that you don’t want to be there!

 

Too good to be true.

Also, settings are easy to customize!

And that's it, my 10 (+1) Asset Brushes I Absolutely Adore. Of course there are a lot more, but if I helped you discover a new brush, then my job here is done!

 

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