This article offers a step-by-step guide on how to alter and utilize brushes in digital art, focusing on changes in size, color, opacity, flow, and smoothing. It also highlights how these adjustments influence the overall look and feel of a digital painting project.
Key Insights
- The article explains how to adjust brush settings such as size, color, and opacity, demonstrating that a higher opacity results in less transparency, hence less of the underlying layers showing through.
- It discusses the concept of flow, likening it to the amount of color coming out while painting, with less flow compared to a dried-up marker that releases less color.
- The article also brings up the importance of 'smoothing' in digital painting, explaining that it determines how smooth the lines are as we draw, with higher smoothing percentages producing more gradual changes in an artist's movements.
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In this video, we will be continuing to work with brushes. With our file open, I am first going to change the size of my brush head back down to a reasonable size of around 50 pixels, and let us also change the color.
I will change it to a dark green and press OK. Now, if I begin trying to draw here, we will see that it does not allow me to draw. This is because I still have Layer 1 highlighted in the artboard.
Instead, I will select Layer 2, found in Artboard 4, and now I can begin to paint. I will hold Shift to drag a line down toward the bottom, and here we can see I have a green line. Next, let us practice changing the opacity of this line by going to our Options Bar, clicking the drop-down arrow, and sliding our opacity to around 20%.
Now, if I click and draw across the previous lines, we will see that I have a very faint green line. This is because our line is transparent at 22%, meaning it is very light, and much of the colors and images below will show through. Let us change our opacity again to about 70% and draw another line.
The higher the opacity, the less that shows through. At 100% opacity, nothing underneath will show through. Let us set our opacity back to 100% and press ENTER.
Next, let us discuss flow. At 100% flow, this means that the full color is applied as we click and drag. If we change our flow by clicking the drop-down arrow and adjusting the slider to around 20%, then click and drag, we will see that not much color appears, even though the opacity is still at a full 100%.
This is similar to using a dried-up marker, meaning that less color is applied as we drag. Let us change our flow back to 100% to finally discuss smoothing. Smoothing essentially refers to how smooth the lines will be as we draw.
It is currently at 10%. Let us change it to 0%, and I will draw a squiggly line moving left and right across the canvas. We can see how the paint closely follows my movement.
Now, if we change smoothing to 100%, we will see that as we move left and right very quickly, the line is smoothed as we go, and we get a more gradual response to our motion. Let us put this all into practice by going back to Artboard 1 and adding to it. We will select Artboard 1, and next, let us add a new layer on top of the blue.
We can name this layer “Green Layer.” Press ENTER. Let us rename Layer 1 as “Blue Layer.” Press ENTER.
With the Green Layer selected, we can then adjust our opacity, flow, and smoothing to our desired values to create an abstract color overlay on top of the blue. I am going to adjust mine to my liking; however, you can set yours however you prefer. First, I will set my opacity to about 25%.
Let us change the flow to 73% and the smoothing to about 77%. I will then adjust the size to about 160 pixels, and let us adjust the hardness to about 54%. Looking at my cursor, it still seems that the brush head is a little small for what I want to do.
Therefore, I will adjust the size again to about 448 pixels, which looks like a more appropriate size. Next, I am going to apply broad strokes across the canvas, giving it an abstract feel. Feel free to paint your version however you prefer.
As you will notice, once I release the mouse and begin painting again, it adds additional green because the transparencies stack on top of each other. I will add one more layer, and here we can see we have created an abstract green overlay on top of the blue that fades out.
One additional thing you will notice—if I drag over here—we will see that Artboard 2 is not painted. This is because the paint exists on the Green Layer in Artboard 1 only, and therefore it does not affect Artboard 2. Let us now save our project by going to File > Save, and now we have saved an artboard with an abstract effect.
In the next video, we will continue painting with brushes and will discuss brush tips in the Eraser Tool. See you there!