Feature 3 · The brushes

Dozens of brushes: how to find one fast

Brushes are grouped by temperament

Open the brush panel and you will see them sorted by purpose: common, inking, impasto,

ink-wash, oil painting, special, nature. Decide what you are doing first, then go to that group.

Three universal knobs

Tip size: almost every brush has it. Small for detail, large for laying in colour

Opacity: low lets colours build up; high covers strongly

Flow: how much "paint" comes out per stroke. Low flow is for gradual build-up

Hold to refine a shape

With a regular paint brush, pen, pixel brush or vector brush, draw a line, circle, rectangle, triangle, trapezoid or arc and hold the tip still without lifting it. After 350 ms, a recognized stroke becomes a clean shape. Hold Shift for a circle or square. Moving again restores the original stroke; lifting the tip ends recognition.

In Software Settings → Hold to Shape, you can turn this on or off, set a 200–800 ms delay and recognition sensitivity, and choose among six shape types.

Not sure which one? Start in the common group. Those are safe all-rounders that never look weird

Pixel brushes vs vector brushes: know the difference

The one-line difference

A pixel brush lays down colour — it changes the pixels of the layer. A vector brush lays

down a string of draggable points you can edit any time.

Pixel brushes (the brush group in the toolbar)

Several kinds — paint, soft, spray, pixel, ink-wash — plus two erasers

Rich texture and tonal strokes; but they are pixels, so zooming degrades them

Good for: colouring, laying down paint, anything that needs "feel"

Vector brushes (shortcut B, right after the brush tool)

Only two: vector brush and vector highlighter (fixed translucency, auto-thickened line)

Stored as points and curves; edges stay crisp at 1000x zoom

After drawing, click it with the direct-selection tool: add nodes, bend curvature, change width and colour — never blurry

Vector-only options: 7 line styles (dashes and dots), end arrow, tapered tail

Annotations, circling things, sketching diagrams → vector brush. Painting and retouching → pixel brush.

Pixel strokes can be rescued too: click one with the direct-selection tool and a slim stroke converts into a vector curve

Inking group: sketching and line work

The pencil family

From fine sketch pencil up to 6B — the higher the number, the darker and softer. Sketch with 2B to 4B; HB is light, good for under-drawing.

Hard pens

Iridium fountain pen: even lines, good for tidy outlines

Comic G pen: thickness follows speed. This is the standard comic nib

Ballpoint, soft dip pen: a handwriting feel, good for quick sketches

Charcoal

Hard charcoal for blocking shapes, soft charcoal for big tones. Lift highlights afterwards with the soft eraser.

Do not sketch with too black a pencil or it will not erase cleanly. Start at 2B

Impasto group: crayons and watercolour

Four crayons, four tempers

Oil crayon: thick wax, strong coverage. Good for the chunky colour blocks of children's illustration

Dry crayon: paper texture shows through, sandy result. Good for surface grain

Blending crayon: actively mixes with what is underneath. The natural choice for gradients and transitions

Staining crayon: a thin tint only. It tints without wiping out the shading below

The watercolour family

Light / pale / medium / dense are four steps from thin to thick. Medium is the everyday one.

Wet-in-wet bleeds colour outward — effortless for mist and background texture.

Floating colour reproduces the look of pigment settling with a darker rim at the edge.

The blending brush pushes around paint that is already down, like a brush loaded with clean water.

Press hard and crayon fills the paper grain; press lightly and it only catches the surface. Same brush, two looks

Ink group: calligraphy and freehand

Pale / dense / ink brush: three ink densities, the workhorses of freehand painting

Sharp-tip ink: a fine point with crisp turns. Orchid leaves, bamboo

Springy writing: a resilient feel, good for everyday lettering

Running-script dense ink: saturated and responsive, holds together when written fast. For cursive

Flat calligraphy tip: a flat head that gives square strokes at once. Clerical and stele scripts

Dry flying-white: the scratchy look of a nearly empty brush. Only reads well against dense ink

Wet wash ink: a big wet brush for distant mountains and shadows

Flying-white alone tends to look dirty. Lay dense ink first, then sweep the edges with flying-white for depth

Special group: landscape elements in one stroke

Brushes here draw whole clusters at once instead of one shape at a time:

River: drag a line and a river with flow direction grows along it

Sea and lake: wider and calmer than the river. For laying water surfaces

Distant mountains: one drag produces a ridge line with receding tones

Houses: 23 buildings (realistic brick, watercolour Jiangnan, fine-line heritage, ink freehand, anime townhouse), drawn in three-quarter view

Ground: 16 side-view strata and 11 top-down surfaces, to sit plants and trees on

Lightning: four storms (bolt, branching fork, sheet flash, violet storm)

Cloud / smoke: click for one puff, drag for a continuous bank

Flame: click for a fire, drag for a line of fire, with sparks

Starry sky, heavy rain, snow, fireworks: all click-to-scatter, drag-to-spread

Hair: light pressure for tips, heavy for roots. Character hair and animal fur

These brushes are for laying in broad relationships before adding detail. Do not expect one brush to produce a whole picture

Nature group: realistic asset brushes

This group is stamp brushes drawn from real assets — one click drops a whole plant or animal:

Plants

Grass: twelve grass types plus wild flowers growing together. Density, scale, flower amount and dryness are adjustable

Scattered leaves, petals: for falling-leaf effects

Rose, chrysanthemum, sunflower, lotus, bamboo: whole plants or blooms, placed in one click

Tree: 24 variants across realistic seasons, anime seasons, ink and watercolour. Size is free

Dandelion, four-leaf clover: small accents

Animals

Butterfly, dragonfly: wings with translucency

Goldfish, small fish, shrimp: small aquatic life

Shell: beaches, still life

These brushes keep the asset's own colour and shading; the foreground colour does not tint them. To recolour, add a layer and use a colour overlay instead

Keep randomisation on when painting grass — each stroke then differs, which avoids a copy-paste look

Oil painting brushes and other special brushes

Oil painting brushes

Oil brush: an all-round colour brush. Bristle marks follow the stroke; light pressure picks up under-colour, firm pressure deposits fresh paint

Flat brush: square head, the fastest way to lay a large base colour

Filbert: pointed on one side, round on the other. Covers area and finishes edges

Dry bristle: exposes canvas grain when lightly loaded. Rough surfaces and light sweeps

Wet bristle blender: pushes boundaries apart. For transitions

Paint Buildup controls coverage and pigment height; Color Pickup controls mixing. Bristle Density and Detail shape the grooves. Medium Dilution preserves the loaded impasto at 0%; raising it makes paint more translucent with softer edges and less height gain for thin glazes.

Each oil stroke becomes a selectable object with its own pigment height. Use the selection tool to move, resize or rotate it. Changing brush width reshapes both pigment and relief; the colour controls can recolour it. Side lighting follows the raised bristle grooves. Dry bristles leave a thinner deposit. WCI projects keep the height data; ordinary image exports show the lit, flat appearance.

Others worth knowing

Splatter: flung paint specks

Wobbly: lines with a built-in hand-drawn tremor. Good for sketch-style diagrams

Rainbow: hue shifts along the stroke. Children's illustration, decorative lines

Dry sweep: almost no paint, dragged across. Highlights and wear

Pointillist: dense small dots for a pointillist look

Marker, impasto: opaque coverage for flat colour blocks

Dry sweep works best with a light colour over a dark surface. The other way round just smears