Discover the intricacies of painting with brushes in digital artboards. Learn methods to zoom, add layers, reset tools, adjust the size and hardness of the brush head, change colors, draw straight lines, and fill larger artboards effectively.
Key Insights
- To zoom into a selected artboard, use the hand tool to drag and focus the view onto that particular artboard.
- The brush tool allows for adjustments in size and hardness of the brush head and the color of the paint, which can be manipulated to create diverse effects while painting.
- For ensuring straight lines while drawing, the shift bar on the keyboard can be used after clicking to start the drawing. This will maintain a perfect line whether dragged left, right, up, or down.
Note: These materials offer prospective students a preview of how our classes are structured. Students enrolled in this course will receive access to the full set of materials, including video lectures, project-based assignments, and instructor feedback.
In this video, we'll begin painting with brushes. Let's begin by painting in Artboard 4**. Typically, we could zoom into Artboard 4 by selecting it and clicking Zoom and Fit Screen**.
However, with Artboards, it will simply zoom to fit the screen of all the Artboards within our view. Therefore, to zoom in on Artboard 4, we can click on it and, using the Hand Tool**, drag over until we have Artboard 4 in our view. Next, let's add a new layer so we can begin painting.
We can go to the New Layer icon found in the bottom right-hand corner of the screen and add a new layer to Artboard 4. Let's now begin painting. We can go to our Tools Bar and select the Brush Tool**. The first thing we'll want to do is reset our Brush Tool to remove any past settings.
We can reset it simply by right-clicking on the Tool Preset Picker and selecting Reset Tool**. Now all of our options will have been changed to the standard defaults. The first thing we'll notice in our Options Bar is that we have several options for how we can paint.
If we click on the drop-down menu for the Brush Preset Picker**, we can see that our first options allow us to adjust the Size and the Hardness**. The size indicates how large the brush head will be as we paint. For example, if I begin drawing a line, we'll see that our current brush head size is 13 pixels.
If we want to change this, we go to our Options Bar and either drag the slider or type the number we want. Let's type 50 and hit ENTER**. Now we'll see that our cursor has changed size, and if we click and drag, we'll see we have a larger line or brush head.
Next, let's change the Hardness**. We can change this again in our Options Bar, right below the Size setting. Let's change it to 100 to see the difference. If we click and drag, we'll see that it's a much harder line than the previous one.
Therefore, changing the Size and the Hardness will give us different effects as we paint. Next, let's discuss how we change colors for our painting. We can do that within the Tools Bar by selecting the Foreground Color**.
If we click on this, we can choose whatever color we prefer. Let's change it to a light blue by dragging our indicators to the desired blue and clicking OK**. Now, if we draw our line, we can see that we have a blue line.
Looking at this line, we can see it's kind of crooked. One technique to ensure that we always have straight lines is to hold the Shift key on your keyboard after clicking to begin drawing. Now, if you drag left or right, you'll see that it stays in a straight horizontal line. In addition, if you click and hold the Shift key while dragging up or down, you'll get a straight vertical line as well.
Next, let's begin using this technique to fill our larger Artboards. Let's get Artboard 1 in our view by scrolling up with the mouse to change the view. Now, to move left and right, we can hold the CTRL key on our keyboard and scroll down to move right and scroll up to move left. With Artboard 1 in view, we can begin painting.
First, let's select Layer 1 found in Artboard 1. Now let's change the size of our brush head to a larger size so that we can completely fill Layer 1 on Artboard 1. I'll change it to around 200 pixels and begin filling the entire Artboard. This might take some time, so I'm going to increase the size again—to around 450 pixels**—and then, with brush strokes, I'll fill the entire Artboard.
Now we have Layer 1 filled blue on Artboard 1. Let's save our file using CTRL + S on the keyboard, and in the next video, we'll continue working with brushes.