It's Not The Brushes, It's You: Breaking Down The Pitfalls of Digital Brush Obsessions

To preface: You do not have to follow all of my advice. I don't know everything. This is just based on my experiences as an artist and my own personal observations. Be creative and experiment with what works best for you. 

Have you ever heard of the phrase "A good craftsman never blames his tools." It is allegedly an old French proverb, common in woodworking, with many different interpretations on the relationship between artists and the resources they use to create their work. You can find a variety of meanings in this, and all the fallacies that come with it. 

In digital art, we have a world of resources at our fingertips. With thousands of brushes, textures, fonts, effects, and more, it is easy to get overwhelmed. How do we sort through all of this information? How do we process it? And how do we avoid getting lost? Art can be as complicated or as simple as you make it out to be, and part of this is all a matter of perspective. 

For instance, Procreate, the drawing app I've been personally using for years now, comes with 18 categories of brushes by default, with names like "Inking", Organic", and "Abstract." If you're new to digital art, it can be hard to choose which one you should start with. What's the difference between "Sketching" and "Drawing"? What about "Textures" and "Materials"? But really, does it even matter? 

Getting hung up on all these little details keeps you from seeing the big picture. Illustrations are made of shapes and lines, and if the brush is going to give you shapes and lines, then it will work. Sure, there'll be variations, but it all hinges on one factor: You.

At the end of the day, the person making these shapes and lines is you and only you. The brush has no understanding of perspective, it has no understanding of color or light or shadow or how all of these come together to create form. There is no magic brush out there that can control your brain Ratatouille-style and with only one stroke paint works that Davinci could only dream of. It's a harsh reality, and it forces you to look at yourself and your own skills, but there's a silver lining in it all.

It means once you've got the skills, you don't have to have the correct brush to draw, you can use whatever tools are available to you. You don't NEED to drop $40 on a brush pack hoping it will finally be the one to fix you. All the tools you need will come with the program you've got, whether that be Procreate, Photoshop, Clip Studio Paint, or, god love 'em, MS Paint. 

Skills vs. Tools: A Case Study 

This may be a bit hard to believe at first. I see posts all the time on places like Reddit and Tumblr, talking about "the best brush to do x" or, when an artist uploads a nice painting, people ask what brushes they used, as if just getting that brush will make them able to paint something as good. 

I'm, however, going to show you some examples of my own work that I've done lately. I've been learning how to paint the past few months, and have been testing several different brushes to see how they work for me. 

About a year ago, I bought Ahmed Aldoori's painting class (it's pretty good, by the way). One of the exercises we had to do was to paint skulls from reference, and then paint them from imagination.

I decided, for fun, to use a different brush for each painting. They're all about the same in quality. Yes, some brushes made it a little easier to blend, or a little easier to add hard edges, but the differences didn't have a major impact on the outcome. I was relatively new to painting, so they all came out just okay. 

Now, this Summer, I decided as a little treat for me, I would buy the Manero brush set that was advertised to me in an email (yes, I am the person who dropped $40 on a brush set). I saw there was a painting pack included in the bundle, so I thought, "why not? maybe this will finally get me to paint." I've always struggled with blending and perhaps a painting specific brush set would help me with that.

These were the first paintings I did with them. They're not great. Painting is hard, that's why I put off learning it for so long. But, I was determined to make it work, especially because, again, I spent $40 on a brush pack. I was going to get my money's worth and put them to good use. 

For two months straight, I focused on my painting, doing several studies (around 10) a week until I started noticing improvements. All of these studies are done with almost exclusively the same brush (it's called Wet Paint from Manero's Paint and Chill pack, and then I added a bit of chalk texturing to a few of them for fun.) I did the drawings with that brush, and then I painted on top with it too. I had some good studies, and I had some bad ones, and the brush didn't make the bad ones any better. 

Finally, here are two of the most recent studies I've done. The top one is done with the wet brush, and the second one is done with the default Procreate square brush (and there's a bit of chalk on them both.) I've still got a lot of work to go, but the improvement is there, and it shows in both paintings, regardless of the brush choices. 

All of this is just to say, your skills are more important than your brush choice, so don't get so caught up on what brush to use that you lose sight of your studies and practice. The default round or square brush will carry you far (Sinix has a video demonstrating this.) and will be that friend who's always there for you no matter what. 

Okay, we get it, but what ARE brushes good for?  

To say your brush has absolutely no effect on the final piece would be wrong, and it does have an impact on the piece to an extent, both on the outcome and on the process/techniques used. I like to think of your brush choice as the toppings on a cake. Say you're baking a cake, and you want to top it with some fruit. What should you choose? Strawberry is a classic choice, cherries are pretty, and raspberry can add a bit of tartness. In the end, the fruit choice won't affect the flavor all that much, and if the actual cake doesn't taste that good, some fruit on top won't fix it. Brushes can create some interesting visual elements (like that chalk brush I used in the above examples), but it can't save a fundamentally flawed drawing.

Now, other than adding some flavor to your drawing, what else can they do?

1. Speed Up Your Workflow

Some brushes come with additional features that can make your process faster. For example, a painting brush with blending features allows you to put down colors, and then blend those with colors around it, as opposed to having to eyedrop or use opacity to blend the stroke you just put down. There are also brushes that can emulate certain effects, textures or objects, like fire, rust or tree leaves, and can act as shortcuts (be careful, though, as using shortcuts without learning how to do it by hand first can stunt your growth. This video here demonstrates using brush shortcuts.) Airbrushes are good for subtle amounts of value control, or glow effects. There's nothing wrong with shortcuts, there is no such thing as "cheating" when it comes to art, but make sure you aren't robbing yourself of a chance to learn. 

2. Add To Your Style

Certain artists use specific brushes, and that can add to their style, making them identifiable by the brushes they use. Brushes can signify different themes, such as retro or cartoon-y looks. Manga as a style uses a lot of halftones and comic patterns, which, when used in your own art, can bring it stylistically more in that direction if that's what you're aiming for. I like to use a lot of texture in my work, to create a more gritty and natural feel, which suits the horror tone I tend to do. Things like color variation or hue jitter can create interesting looks, and pixel art and brushes are an entire genre on their own. 

3. Experimentation

Occasionally, I go through art block. It happens to all of us sometimes. One of the things I like to do to renew my interest is to use a brush I've never used before. There are slight quirks in brushes that can change your workflow just slightly, and it's enough to feel like I'm doing something other than the usual things I always do. I'll download some brushes for free somewhere, or if I feel frisky, I'll buy them, and with a new brush, you always want to test it out, which means you'll want to draw.  

Can a brush make a piece worse?  

There are times when the brush you're using is actively detracting from your art. I had this problem when I first started drawing. I was using these very textured brushes on small canvases, and I was receiving feedback from others that the texture was distracting. 

I used to use this pencil at a big size on a small canvas, and the texture made everything blurry. There was a lack of clarity and direction in the drawing.

Here's one I did later, with a smaller, less textured brush, on a bigger canvas. It was easier to make harder edges and so they read better. Similarly, if you're using too much airbrush (soft edge brushes in general) on a painting, you're not adding any distinct transitions, which can make the piece blurry and messy. 

 

One of the other issues I've been running into lately is that my art feels "too cartoon-y." I'm interested in more detailed and realistic artwork, and sometimes adding a bit of an uncanny edge.

I did this drawing the other day. They're both children, and they both look cartoon-y, but the one in the back looks even more so. "What's the difference?"

Recently, I started reading Junji Ito's horror comics. I love his work and the tone they have, and I wanted to translate that into my art, so I did some studies of his panels.

 This was the study I did

And this is the original page. When I was doing the bottom panel, it finally dawned on me. It's probably obvious, but it took me forever to realize: it's the size of the brush he uses. Because he's using a thinner brush, he can add thinner lines, which means you can put more detail into the same space, and that extra amount of detail adds to the realism (and to the uncanny look.) That's why the drawing I did earlier, the girl in the back looked even more cartoon-y, because she was further from the camera, and thus smaller, so I couldn't add as much detail. 

I was afraid of using a smaller brush for a while, because it felt like I needed to be even more precise or else my work would look bad. But, I finally gave it a chance, and the results were definitely closer to the style I've been aiming for.

I did this drawing with a thinner brush, and while it does look scratchy (it happens with a thinner brush, practice will make me better), it's definitely heading in the direction I want. 

I still have to figure out how to draw characters realistically when they're in the background, so there's a lot of studies left to do, but I feel like I've made progress.  

Conclusion  

This was a lot of words just to say "don't worry about your brushes." Yes, brushes can have some impact on your work, but you'll only get better at art through practice, and anything that gets in the way of you creating is going to hinder that. Just draw, draw, draw, and when you're more comfortable with art, then give some other brushes a chance. Best of luck!