GUIDE TO CUSTOM BRUSHES

Kyle Runciman / November 2nd, 2012

Tutorial created in SketchBook Pro 6
1 Why Custom Brushes?
The brushes that ship with SketchBook Pro are great. You can do almost anything with them. However,
you can create an immense library of Custom Brushes for different purposes. The only standard brush-
es I regularly use in my workflow are the Erasers, Flood Fill, Solid Paint Brush and the Airbrush. All of
the Pencils and Pens I use are tweaked to my style. I’ll include my trusty Brush Set for you to try out.

2 Brush Window UI Changes

I’ll be using SBP 6 for this tutorial, but the workflows are fairly similar with versions 2009 and above,
with the exception of a few added modifiers. (A lot of these brush customizing tools can be found in the
mobile and tablet versions of SketchBook as well to tweak existing brushes.)

The UI has changed significantly in SketchBook Pro 6, so I’ll start by pointing out some crucial elements.

SBP 2011 SBP 6

The main difference, visually, is that the default window is now 2 columns wide. You can grab the
bottom of the Editor to adjust how many brushes are exposed. Each column can be dragged up and
down to get to even more brushes.
Rather than stacking sets of 18 brushes underneath the Standard Set as in 2011, the Brush Sets have
been moved to a Library to keep things cleaner. You can drag brushes from that Library to replace
brushes you dont use in the main window.
Hit the ‘List’ icon in the top right (right image) to expose the Library.

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3 Brush Library
This is where you find all the awesome new brushes that have been added and some old favourites.
It’s also where all of your custom sets will be stored. There’s a scroll bar on the right to navigate.
The ‘Marking Menu’ icon will apeear when you have a brush set active in the Library. That will be
where you find the custom Brush/Set creation options. Start a new Brush Set. Within that set, start a
New Brush.

4 Select Brush Type

When you select ‘New Brush’, a pop-up appears giving you
a list of options to base your New Brush on.

By default, Current Brush should be selected.

I like to start with ‘Standard.’ A ‘Do-It-Yourself Brush’ icon
will appear in your Brush Set.

Double-click that to open the brush editor.

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5 Custom Brush Editor
The Custom Brush Editor is much more thorough than the standard Brush Properties window, as can be
seen below.
Unless you are using a monster tablet, chances are you won’t be able to see all of the Custom Brush
tools all at once. The window is broken down into four collapsible sections; Radius & Opacity, Brush
Color, Advance Properties and Texture. I’ll go over these more in-depth later, but here’s a quick run-
down of each section.

Radius & Opacity - Adjusts brush thickness, taper and transparency driven by pen pressure.
These adjustments are based on the Brush Stamp.
Brush Color - This is a new one for SBP 6. Here you can randomize the color of your brush, per
stroke. Adjustments for Hue, Saturation and Brightness are available.
Advance Settings - More adjustments based on the Brush Stamp. Roundness/Aspect of the stamp,
Rotation and Spacing of the stamp with sliders for Randomization, and Wetness
for select brushes.
Texture - Here is where the custom stamping comes in. You can Capture a part of the active
layer in your brush stamp. Brush Edges and Rotate to Stroke are also down there.

Standard Brush Custom Brush

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6 Brush Radius and Opacity
This is the meat and potatoes of any Custom Brush. The majority of my brushes are built using only
this section. My work is heavy on linework, so a set of great pencils and tapered paintbrushes is
crucial.

It’s pretty straight forward. Minimum and Maximum brush thickness. (This can’t be reversed like it can
be on mobile. If you move the Heavy Pressure slider below the Light Pressure value, the Light Pressure
will follow it.) [Strokes 1-3, below]

Size Randomize changes the size of the brush stamp within the stroke. [See stroke 4 below]

Minimum and Maximum Opacity, or how opaque/transparent each stroke shows up. For example, I
keep my main pencil at a maximum of 0.80 and my airbrush at a max of 0.30. [Stroke 5-8 below]

Lastly is Opacity Randomize, which behaves in the same way as Size Randomize only varying the stamp
Opacity/Transparency. [Stroke 9 below]

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7 Brush Color
Brush Color is a new addition to SBP 6, so this won’t apply to earlier versions of SketchBook.

There are three sliders, each controls color variance between strokes. (The Brush Properties stay the
same during the stroke. Each stroke will be a different color/shade.) The effects of each are described
below.

HUE RANDOMIZE

The color value along the color

circle is randomized.

The Saturation and Brightness

values remain the same.

SATURATION RANDOMIZE

The vivid/dull values change

horizontally along the
‘color diamond’

The Hue and Brightness values

remain the same.

BRIGHTNESS RANDOMIZE

The dark/light values change

vertically along the ‘color diamond’

The Hue and Brightness values

remain the same.

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7a Hue Randomize
This slider moves from 0 - 180 (if you’re wondering
why the numbers aren’t all the same between the
three. [Oscillates 180 degrees to each side of the
selected hue = 360 degree color circle])

The first batch of lines has the Hue slider set to 45.
(45 is 25% strength)

This is with the slider maxed out to 100.

You’ll notice the Saturation and Brightness of each

stroke is consistent throughout.

7b Saturation Randomize
Saturation and Brightness sliders are a simple
0-100

Here, the slider is set to 25 (%)

And Maxed out at 100 (%)

7c Brightness Randomize
Pretty self explanatory at this point, right?

Set to 25

Maxed out at 100

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8 Brush Advance Properties
Advanced Brush Properties are where you can get really creative with your brushes. This is where
you’ll need to make tweaks and changes if you’re dealing with a Custom Texture Stamp brush.

Default Roundness for most brushes is 1.00. If you’re looking for any sort of brush that requires
rotation or simulated tilt, this is where you start. None of the Rotation tools below will have any affect
without an aspect ratio (Roundness) below 1.00 (Stroke 1>> 1.00, Stroke 2>> 0.60, Stroke 3>> 0.30)
Rotation Randomize alters the Rotation value for each stamp within a single stroke. This is more
evident with roundness values below 0.50. (Stroke 5)

Spacing is the distance between stamps in a single stroke. The default spacing of the Pencil is 1.2
The minimum spacing is 0.1, this will give you a very dense brush, and may impede performance.
Maximum is 10.0 and will give you results similar to Stroke 9, below
Space Randomize varies the amount of space between stamps in a stroke (More noticeable with a
higher Spacing value, Stroke 10)

Wetness is reserved for specific brushes, like markers. This slider will have different names depending
on brush type. Paint Load for Synthetic Brushes and Strength for Smudge Brushes.
1
2
3

7
8

10

I’ll revisit this portion of the Editor after dealing

with Custom Texture Brushes.

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9 Brush Texture
Down at the bottom of the Editor, you’ll find the Brush Texture section. There’s a few vital elements
down here that are useful for more than just Texture Stamping, but the bread and butter lies in the
Capture Button.

This tool allows you to use part of a sketch or imported image as the base for a custom brush. *Right
off the bat, it needs to be noted that the Capture tool only recognizes data on the ACTIVE LAYER. So if
you’re trying to get a complex image created with several layers, you’ll need to merge those layers first
for this to work.*

I tend to use these brushes to knock out repetetive details that would otherwise take a long time to do
manually; wheels, tire treads, hoses and electronics, etc.

Brush Edges is where you determine how crisp/soft a brush looks. Soft > Solid > Hard. Very useful for
even basic Pens and Pencils. Personally, I use Solid for most of my linework tools, I find Hard can have
some interesting behavior on brushes with taper.

Rotate to Stroke, is a little checkbox with immense power. For any brush with a Rotation value above
0.0, this can be toggled on, so that the rRtation angle remains uniform based on your stroke. (Examples
to follow.)

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10 Brush Edges
Brush Edges is a pulldown menu with three options; Soft, Solid and Hard. This function controls the
edge of the Brush Stamp, but has a general affect on the Brush stroke. Selecting Soft gives the Brush
Stamp a gradient/fade around the edge, (as seen in the preview at the bottom left of the window.)
Hard is a much more crisp stamp, almost right to the edge. There will be a little bit of a blur, always, but
that’s to help with anti-aliasing. Solid is the midway point between Soft and Hard.

Here’s what that looks like.

SOFT SOLID HARD

Below shows the same Brush with each selection of Brush Edges.
(1 = Soft, 2 = Solid, 3 = Hard)

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9 Custom Texture
As mentioned earlier, Capture allows you to grab elements from your canvas, be it a drawing, painting
or imported image, and create a brush based on that stamp. The process can be simple, Hit the Capture
button, move the cursor over the area you wish to capture and tap your pen down.

When Capturing, make sure all the strokes/paint you want included in your brush stamp are on the
ACTIVE LAYER. (Typically, I’ll make a duplicate of all the layers and merge the duplicates, rather than
mashing the original art, just for the sake of creating a brush. Once it’s captured, I throw away that
Layer.)

There are 2 options for the Capture in a pulldown menu. (This menu is only accessible when the
Capture button is activated.) Shape and Shape + Colors. Capturing Shape grabs the alpha channel of
whatever is in the Capture target. Meaning that, if you are taking a small portion of a larger image, you
will come up with a dark circle. (Depending on the color you have selected.) This option works best for
grabbing line work, or a series of strokes. You can change the color of brushes Captured with Shape
only tool. You cannot change color of Shape + Colors brushes.

Shape + Colors is the option required for capturing multi-colored elements/images.

When Capturing, the Target circle will be the same size as the Maximum Radius set at the top of the
Brush Editor. To adjust the Capture Target zone, use the Brush Puck or hold the ‘B’ Key until the size of
the target is appropriate.

The Ellipse surrounding the paint strokes in the above image reflects the Roundness value set for the
brush earlier.

To Capture, simply tap your pen down. The captured image will appear in the brush editor preview.
Hit Capture again, to make adjustments until you get what you were hoping for.

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12 Brush Texture: Shape
I started by laying down some strokes using the brush that I’ve been building since the start of this
tutorial. There is a bit of the Color Randomization happening so this group of paint strokes has several
different colors.

Using the Shape capture, all of that color is lost, and replaced with the color active in the Color Editor.
From here, you can use this brush with any color.

The alpha (black+white) channel of the shape is what was captured. The reason it appears to be
squished is due to the Roundness value set earlier. If you bump that Roundness back up to 1.00, the
stamp will appear like it does on the canvas. (ie, it’s capturing the information, and displaying it as you
require, based on your brush settings. )

13 Brush Texture: Shape + Colors

*Admittedly, this isn’t the best example of this tool, but I wanted to build a brush up from start to finish
using all editable options.*

Here you can see the different colors in the group of paint strokes was captured in the stamp and can
be seen in each stamp when you lay down a stroke.

The beauty of this Shape + Colors tool is that you can draw and render one component, Capture it,
and then lay down a stroke of the stamps in sequence. You can go back to the Advanced Properties to
adjust Spacing and Rotation until it’s perfect.

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14 Rotate to Stroke
Rotate to Stroke can ve a very handy tool for specific jobs. I use this a lot in my concept designs for
quick detailed electronics, braided hoses, springs/suspension and materials like carbon fiber.

For this example, I captured a few lines for a profile tire tread. Using an Ellipse, I put a stroke down
without Rotate to Stroke. In the top image, below, you can see that the results aren’t ideal. Below, I
turned on Rotate to Stroke, and fine tuned the Rotation value so that it hugs the circle as I had
intended.

From here, I would massage the Spacing value and Brush Size to have have the pattern loop perfectly.

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15 Brush Properties: Identify Custom Brush
Now that the brush is where I want it, I name it and set the icon.

Click the Edit button just under the brush preview to expose the Identify Custom Brush dialogue.
I’m terrible with keeping organized, but I find it really useful to rename my brushes as I build them.
(This helps when customizing the Lagoon, as you can select brushes from a text list. If you don’t, the list
will just be a mess of ‘Do-It-Yourself Brush’s)

For Texture Brushes, I tend to click the Use Texture as Icon option. It will show the Texture stamp as the
icon in your Brush Library. If I’m building a set of Pencils, I’ll scroll down the list to find the Pencil_2B,
Pencil_HB, etc icons for easy reference.

16 Save
Click Save.

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17 Export
I always keep an up-to-date version of my Brush Set exported. That way, I can just re-Import, if for some
reason I have to reset defaults, or jump to a different computer.

You can Export the brush right from the Brush Editor. Click Export at the bottom of the Editor, and save
to the directory of your choice when the Explorer/Finder window pops up. It will save as a .zip file,
which contains the .xml data.

To Export a Brush Set, go back into the Brush Library. Click on the Marking Menu in the right corner
and drag down to Export Brush Set and save.

To bring the Brush Set back in, hit the Marking Menu icon and drag down to Import Brush Set. Select
the .zip file you saved, and all the brushes will appear in a New Brush Set in the Brush Library.

That’s it, I think. I talk alot.

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