How to Create Custom Textured Brushes To Imitate Traditional Art

Prologue

Good morning students!

 

I’m professor Crimsy and today I’m coming back from the grave to give you yet another Clip Studio Paint tutorial, so welcome back people and take a seat because we’ve got a lot of things to learn in this video and I don’t think you want to miss out on today’s topic!

 

First, I will introduce you to custom brushes and their most important settings, but more specifically I will show you TWO techniques I used to create 6 custom textured brushes which emulate traditional mediums like paints, watercolors and pencils (among other things).

 

These 7 custom textured brushes were made to fit the needs of my current project and they feature the:

 

-Messy ink pen

-Cursed ink pen

-Dark void brush

-Evil thorns brush

-Fleeting hearts brush

-Watery hearts decoration brush

-Haunted watercolor brush

 

Oh and by the way, if you happen to like any of these brushes made by yours truly, you may find them as a pack on the Clip Studio Asset store and download them for free! ;)

 

Introduction to Custom Brushes

Setting up the Scene

So let’s begin right away by learning how to create a custom brush.

 

By default Clip Studio Paint already has a wide variety of brushes available in their libraries such as Pen, Pencil, Brush, Airbrush, Decoration brushes and all these main categories also have their own subtool categories.

 

All these brushes can already do wonders for your art, but let’s say today we want something custom made!

 

The first thing you need to do is to create a new square canvas. I decided to work with a 4000 pixels square canvas and I always keep my resolution at 300 when I work. It's just a good habit to keep in general when you work with digital art, so let’s click okay and here we’ll have our new canvas.

 

The next step is optional, but it is a personal suggestion of mine. What you can do is go click on these three little lines right up here, this will open a drop down menu with the option ‘’add from default’’.

 

When you click on this, a new window will pop up and then you can select which tool menu you want to duplicate in your tools menu. Just go on the Brush option, highlight it and click okay.

 

As you can see we now have the same menu here twice, but this one I will right click on, go to brush settings and rename it ‘’Crimsy’s homemade brushes’’.

 

Now the reason why I do this is because I would rather make my own little library of custom brushes and not mess around with the default brushes by accident, especially since I already customized some of them to my taste and I would not want to lose these settings by mistake.

 

Creating a custom Brush

There are two main types of brush tips you can design:

 

1. You can hand draw any type of shape in the center of the canvas as long as it touches none of the edges, which is ideal for paint brushes and color mixing.

 

2. You can make a seamless brush that will form a perfect stroke, which is perfect for ink pen and repetitive patterns like chains, ropes, thorns, etc.

 

To help you get a better grasp of all the settings, I created multiple brushes for each of those two categories, starting with the centered brush method featuring 5 different brushes.

 

The Fleeting Hearts Brush

So first off, let’s begin with an easy one to cover most of the basic settings, my Fleeting Hearts brush.

 

What we’ll do is select a brush, any type of brush will do, but keep in mind the result will be different depending on the brush you choose. and then we’ll simply doodle the shape of the brush tip for our very first custom brush.

 

Feel free to experiment with brush tips a lot. You can even include transparency if you want. The only important thing to remember is to always use pure black when designing a brush tip because that’s the default color every brush has to be to work properly, simple as that.

TIP: If all you want is a decoration brush, then feel free to draw a complete illustration with colors and use it for this purpose, but if you want a drawing brush that you can paint and mix colors with, then you must make it with pure black.

 

Alright, so once you’re happy with the shape of your brush, let’s open the material window by clicking on the little arrow right here, then select ‘’all materials’’, ‘’image material’’ and now right click on ‘’Image material’’ and select ‘’new folder’’, which I will name once again ‘’Crimsy’s Brushes’’.

 

Once this is done, we can close the Materials panel and create our brush.

 

So first let’s hide the white background because we don’t want to include it in the brush.

And then we can go to Edit → Register Material → Image

 

Doing that will open a new window where you can name the brush tip, so let’s name it ‘’Sketchy hearts’’. Also make sure the ‘’use brush tip shape’’ box is checked as well otherwise it will not be registered as a brush tip.

 

and lastly we will select the folder in which we want to save it, which would be the new folder we just created in the materials panel. So ‘’all material’’, ‘’Image Material’’ and let’s highlight ‘’Crimsy’s brushes’’.

 

Now Press okay and let’s start playing with the settings of our brush, but in order to do that, we’ll first need to create a basic sub tool.

 

To do this, we’ll choose one of the top 4 categories of brushes in our newly created ‘’Crimsy’s Homemade brushes’’, I decided to go with the ‘’Thick Paint’’ one and we will simply right click on any of the brush, it doesn’t matter which one and choose the ‘’Create Custom Subtool Option’’.

 

As you can see, there are multiple options to choose from here, but for this brush I will keep the default options and only rename it ‘’Fleeting Hearts Brush’’ and click okay.

 

This will open a new window once again and this is where things get interesting and very experimental. These are all the brush settings you can play with, so before I start explaining to you what all these settings do, let’s go get our newly made brush tip right here.

 

You will see that by default the circle shape is highlighted and that the option to add a brush tip shape here is greyed out so what we want here is to use a material.

 

By choosing this option now you can add a brush tip shape so let’s do just that and then type here ‘’fleeting’’ so our ‘’Fleeting Hearts’’ design will pop at the top, highlight it and press okay.

 

TIP 1: You might have noticed that the shape of the brush here at the top has changed as well. This is the brush preview that gives you a hint as to what a brush stroke will technically look like on paper.

 

TIP 2: At this point, feel free to also test all the changes you make to your brush in your canvas because all these changes will be applied in real time and can be experimented with as you go.

 

So, the first thing you need to know about the brush settings is that all these options here can be activated or deactivated upon clicking on this little eye symbol right here. When you do activate one of these settings, it will also appear in the brush settings menu on your left so you can freely play with them without having to come back to the settings menu every time.

 

TIP: If you don’t want your settings to be crowded with useless information, make sure to only keep the relevant settings activated and hide the rest.

 

TIP: Also note that leaving this box unchecked does not deactivate the setting next to it, it really only affects it’s visibility in the tool properties

 

The Settings Explained

So let’s start from the top, and little note here, I will only go over the important settings pertinent to each of the brushes I made so don’t fret too much if I don’t explain everything, chances are they will get explained later on, so let’s begin!

 

-The brush size affects the scaling of your brush, so it should always be activated.

 

-In the ink tab activate ‘’color mixing’’

 

TIP: Note that the color mixing option and the blending mode option cannot coexist in the same universe so once you activate one, the other gets yeeted out of existence.

 

The Color Mixing options are:

 

-The amount of paint dictates how dense each new layer of paint will be on top of the previous color underneath, so the higher you make this value and the more the new color will override the old one. (I put 37)

 

-The density of paint directly affects the opacity value of your stroke as you apply it to another color. see it as another sort of opacity option like the first one, but unlike that one, this option actually blends the colors together instead of just adding them on top of each other. (I went with 100)

 

-The color stretch affects how much blending will happen between colors, so the higher you make the value here and the more colors will blend together. (default)

 

Anti-Aliasing I keep at the default value,

brush shape I never touch, but this is where you could switch your basic brush shape if you chose the wrong preset to begin with.

 

And that brings us back to the brush tip menu where you can play with the hardness of your brush,

the thickness which stretches the shape of your brush tip,

but really what interests me here is the angle option because what this does is it rotates the angle of your brush, but you can also click on this little icon here and choose the option ‘’random’’ so for your whole stroke the applied shape will come in a random angle and this alone can give some pretty interesting effects.

 

Next we have the spraying effect, which I will explain quickly because none of my brushes uses it, but basically once activated it creates multiple instances of your brush tip to make this sort of spraying pattern and yeah that’s it, just know it’s there if you want to play around with it.

 

 

The Stroke tab also has some very interesting options to experiment with:

 

-The Gap option dictates how dense you brush tip will be repeated in your strokes including a single dot option which props this slider up so you can define even higher or lower custom values (single, 15)

 

TIP: Please note that lowering this slider below 15 has bigger chances of creating lag when drawing your stroke and lowering it down to the minimum value has a high chance of making your computer freeze from the huge amount of instances required to make the stroke.

 

Alright, so that’s a pretty good starting brush, the shape looks nice, the colors blend well together, I think we can move on to our next brush!

 

 

 

The Sketchy Hearts Watercolors

This brush is a pattern brush mostly meant for decoration purposes.

 

1. In order to create this one, I went in ‘’Brush tip’’, selected the ‘’sketchy hearts’’ brush and this time, I left every setting on default, so no random rotation was used here.

 

2. For the color mixing, I went with:

Amount of paint: 30

Density of paint: 100

 

3. Then in the stroke tab, instead of having ‘’gap’’ activated, I clicked on ‘’ribbon’’ instead. This option makes the pattern of your brush repeat individually along the stroke instead of overlapping the pattern on itself along the stroke, making it perfect for decoration brushes like this.

 

4. Next, let’s add a texture to our brush. The Texture setting is the best for watercolors because it allows you to add texture to your stroke which imitates the look of paint on paper really well. All you have to do is select which texture you want to apply to your brush, press okay and all these options will become available to play with such as the density of the texture, its scale, its rotation angle and it’s blending mode.

 

5. And finally, the watercolor edge is a setting made specially to create a better watercolor effect by adding a darker border to the edge of your stroke. You can also play with the opacity and the darkness of that edge for stronger results.

 

TIP: I highly encourage you to check the little box ‘’process after brush stroke’’ to reduce potential lagging as you create the stroke, but will yield the same results.

 

As you can see, this one was very simple to make, yet it looks very cute and captures the look of watercolors very well I think. :)

 

The Cursed Pen

I began by drawing little ghosts to represent the state of my current being and then made them into a brush tip.

 

1. in the brush tip tab I selected the ghosts for the material and then went on a crazy stretching spree by making the thickness value at 611!

 

2. I made the stroke a ribbon and then activated the color mixing with the values: 50 for amount of paint and 100 for density of paint

 

This made the brush shape look a bit crazy in the canvas, but look at this fun stroke though, spooky. It looks a lot like a pen, which is not usually made with a centered brush tip design, but the stretching is so intense that it works so I wanted to share that weird technique with you in case you might want to try it as well.

 

The Dark Void Brush

The next brush I made using the same exact cursed pen we just created, so talk about repurposing brushes!

 

1. With it I created this sort of spiralling shape and then turned it into a brush tip of its own, which I called the ‘’Dark Void Brush’’ because that’s what it reminded me of.

 

2. Then I put the angle of the brush on random

 

3. I put the amount of paint at 25 and density of paint at 100

 

4. Finally, I played with the gap of the brush a bit to give it this very nice textured look!

 

It’s really good for blending and it also makes a pretty good textured pen if you make it small enough.

 

The Haunted watercolors

And lastly we have the Haunted watercolors brush.

 

1. To create this one I used the same brush tip as the two previous ones, but this time I wanted a good watercolor effect so I put the angle of the brush on random and checked the ‘’adjust brush density by gap’’ option box

 

2. I put amount of paint at 34, density of âint at 100 like always

 

3. But this time in the Stroke tab, I put the brush on continuous spraying, which generates multiple layers of the brush just by keeping it pressed down and I thought this option worked pretty well for this specific brush.

 

4. I also played with the gap of the brush a bit and left it at 7.4

 

5. Next I added this paper texture to it with a density of 11 and a scale of 2, it’s subtle, but that’S what we want for this brush

 

6. And finally I added some watercolor edge with a value of 4.1, level 2 opacity and level 1 darkness and I checked the ‘’process after brush stroke’’ feature

 

As you can see, now when we mix colors together and apply multiple strokes over one another there is this sort of watery effect appearing on the canvas that really looks like watercolor paint on paper. Again, it is subtle, but the texture it adds looks pretty nice!

 

And that’s it for the centered brushes technique, we got 5 very different brushes out of only 3 brush tip designs, soi that’s pretty neat, but we still have two more to make and this time we will use the seamless brush tip technique.

 

The Messy Ink Pen

Our pen brush number one I named the messy ink pen. Pens have the singular attribute of being generated as a continuous line so you need the top of your canvas to fit with the bottom part seamlessly for this one to work otherwise a seam will show in the stroke.

 

1. For this brush all I did was to create a black rectangle, draw some ink blots into it, make sure the blots did not cross over the edges at the top and bottom of the canvas.

 

2. Once you are done, make a brush tip out of it, but this time, instead of going for a brush as our preset, we will choose the pen option and press okay.

 

3. I then selected the brush tip we just made and left the other settings here at the default value except for the thickness which I put at 50.

 

4. After that, I went directly to the stroke tab and checked the ribbon option, which already gives you this pretty nice stroke.

 

5. I also added some color mixing to the mix and put pretty much the same standard settings I used before, so 25 amount of paint and 100 density of paint.

 

6. Then I added this paper texture to it to get that more traditional look. I put the texture density at 100 and the scale at 72.

 

7. Finally I went to the Correction tab, which we haven’t really used yet and I checked the eye icon for the stabilization feature.

 

Stabilization is one of the best settings for pens and one to definitely look for when creating linearts and beautiful curves in your art as it slows down the process of generating the curve in order to smooth out your hand movement.

 

And that’s it, as you can see this type of pen is really quick to make and it feels really good to use honestly.

 

The Evil Thorns Pen

 

For this very last one, you will also need to make a seamless design, but unlike the first one, we want a more complex shape to play with, so what I did is:

 

1. I drew some vines and added thorns to them.

 

TIP: If you guys have not seen my first Clip studio paint tutorial video, I highly encourage you to go do it since I go in detail on how to create seamless patterns for your art projects!

 

Basically, we are trying to make a seamless pattern, so we need the bottom part of the canvas to match with the top part, but clearly here it doesn’t match at all, so what we’ll do is:

 

2. Go to View → Grid (this will activate you grid)

 

3. Then Go back to View → Grid/Ruler Settings

 

4. Put the Gap at 1000 and the divisions to 1 and press okay

 

5. Finally Go back to VIew again and click on ‘’Snap to grid’’

 

6. Now, when you’ll go to your selection tool, this it will snap to the lines of your canvas perfectly

 

7. So what you’ll want to do is select the top half of your thorns, do a copy/paste, so Ctrl+C, Ctrl+V

 

8. Then take the top part of your thorns and bring them all the way down to the bottom and make sure there’s no gap left. Do the same for the bottom part, but this time bring it all the way up.

 

9. Deactivate your grid nd then all that’s left to do is reconnect these two parts together in a logical way like this

 

10. When you’re done drawing, redo the same process as before and voilà, you now have a seamless brush tip!

 

11. So, for the last time, register it as a brush tip, create a new custom subtool with the pen preset and press okay

 

12. There’s not much to do left, besides grabbing your brush tip, go to the stroke tab, check the ‘’ribbon’’ box and add some paper texture to it (if you want to). I also activated the color mixing, but I left the amount of paint and density pretty high because it’s not a pen meant for color mixing really.

 

And that’s it, we now got a pretty neat thorns brush. Using the same technique as I just showed you you could also make ropes, chains, wires, vines, anything really along that theme so go crazy with it if you want to.

 

Conclusion

Wow, that was a big video. I hope no one passed out from all that information.

 

I think that I covered everything I know about brushes and home to customize them and I truly hope this video was helpful in any way to my viewers.

 

Please consider subscribing to my channel to help us out in return and if you want more resources like this in the future! :)

 

There are so many things to learn when it comes to Clip Studio Paint and digital art and I’d be more than happy to bring you along the way as we explore all the nooks and crannies this software has to offer.

 

For now that will be it for me, thank you so much for watching and I will see you in the next tutorial!

 

Best regards,

 

-Crimsy

 

EXTRA || Here's some Art I made using mostly these custom brushes!