- Hello iPad Letterers, It's so nice to see you! In today's video I am going to show you my all time favorite thing and that is making Procreate brushes. I've made thousands of
custom Procreate brushes in the last five years and I'm really obsessed with it. One of the questions I get a lot is how to you make these brushes? And since it's not a super simple answer I thought I'd put this
video together for you and show you my exact process but before we get started, I want to ask you, if you have any of my brushes? Which one is your favorite? Let me know in the comments and I'm super curious to know
which one you like the best and if you were to ask
me the same question, then my answer normally is my favorite brush is my newest brush because every time I make a new brush I find new and interesting
ways of creating the brush and that's why it usually is my favorite. So now let's grab your
iPad and Apple pencil and let's see if we can make your new favorite brush together. Of course you will need
that procreate app, so let's stir the procreate
app in this Creative Canvas and the canvas I'm using here is the screen size default canvas, it doesn't matter too much, you just want a surface so that you can try out your new brush. So we're going to open
up that brush library and let's start by creating a new library. You can pull down on all
your brush sites here to reveal the plus sign you tap on plus and then we
can call this "my brushes," and now you can see it's empty if you tap on any of the other brush sets you can see it's got lots of brushes and these are all the brushes
that I have already made but I usually like starting
with a fresh brush set so that I know where the brushes are and then it makes it much
easier to see your new brushes. Then tap on the plus sign
to bring up the brush studio and you can see there
is so many options here. So what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna walk you
through my exact process of how I make brushes. It doesn't mean I'm gonna go through all this different settings and that's because I'm actually
not using all the settings all the time and also making brushes is very much a trial and error process but I'm gonna give you a starting point of your own trial and error process so that you find it much easier
to create your own brushes. So you'll see that we have
the different categories here and then if you tap on
one of the categories you see the properties
within each of the categories and then here on the right hand side we have got that drawing pad and this is super useful because this is where
you can try out the brush that you're currently working on. You can tap on that drawing
Pad to choose different colors. And so this is super handy
to try out different colors and different shapes of the
brushes that you're working on. You can also clear the
drawing pad like this to start from scratch. So the first thing we are going to look at are the Shape Source and then also the Grain Source and these two settings
are really the basis of all procreate brushes. Let's start with the Shape Source and that shape source is what determines the outline of your brush. A stroke is created by a series of shapes and the way it works is that you drag your Apple
pencil over the screen and then procreate will connect all these individual Shapes
Sources to make this path. It's a little bit easier to
see if we amend that path so you can increase the
spacing of your stroke and now you can see how a path consists of
these individual shapes. So now let's change that shape source to see what happens when we do that. So you tap on edit and then tap on import and you can see there's a
few different options of how to import your shape source, so you can use a photo,
can import from a file but then there's also their
Procreate Source Library and this is a really good starting point because it gives you so
many different options so you can scroll through
this and you can see that there is so many different
shapes to choose from. So now for the brush that
we are going to create, let's select this Acrylic
Stamp here and then tap done and I can see how the preview has changed and we can now see the individual stamps of the source that we have selected. So now let's have a look at
some of that shape behaviors. The first option here,
lets use scatter the brush and that randomly rotates the brush, you can also rotate that source or at that same angle,
if you would like to. And then count is an interesting setting because this determines
how many brush stamps are gonna get placed on top of each other in order to form the stroke. So now let's see what
happens if we increase this and you can see now how
the shape changes it's form even so slightly because
it's got all these stamps placed on top of each other. And then you can randomize this as well if you want with the jitter or you can also completely randomize the shape source placement like this, you can flip X and flip Y and then you also see here,
there's azimuth setting you can turn this on or off. And this is important if you
create calligraphy brushes with the angle of your
Apple pencil matters because with the azimuth setting, you can make sure that the
stroke always follows the tilt of the Apple pencil. For the brush that we
are going to make today we don't need it so we're gonna leave it off. And then here you've
got some other options of rotating the source or you can even make it a
little bit more narrow or wider so definitely try out all of
these different settings here and then next step you
have that Grain Source and this works pretty much the
same way as the Shape Source you also have these different
options of how to input grains so we're gonna go Source Library and then we're just gonna choose one of the existing grains here
and then gonna tap done and you can see now how
the grain has been applied to our brush. So now what we're gonna do
is decrease the spacing again and so now we can see the
grain of the brush come through and then again, you have
different options here of how you want those grain to behave. You can zoom it in or out and then you can make it bigger
or smaller inside that shape another you can do is choose texturized and this means that grain
always stays behind the shape and doesn't really move with it but I never used the setting I always used the Moving
Grain Source like this. and then I usually don't touch
any of the other settings but definitely feel free to play with them if that's something that
you're curious about. So now we've already looked
at stroke path a little bit but this is what I usually work on next. You've already seen how it can adjust the spacing in between the
different shapes like this but then we can also amend the jitter and this now moves that
shape sideways as well. So this can give some
really interesting effects and then here at the end we have fall off and this determines how
quickly your stroke fades out but this is a setting I usually don't use and I just keep it at none. So now let's move on
to that taper settings. So this determines the start
and the end of the brush, how they behave. One of the things you'll notice with the Apple pencil is that
is very pressure sensitive and in order to help with
the start and the end of the brush stroke a little bit you can use the taper settings. So you can taper this tab
and the in of the brush and I usually set it to
just a little bit here at the start at the end, not too much. And I also like to set
the brush tip to blunt and then that makes sure that I've got a nice start
and ending to my brushes. Now let's move to that next
setting, which is rendering and this makes a huge difference to the outcome of your brushes. And so again, this is a
lot of trial and error here so I recommend that you just try it out and then see what the result
is that you're getting. So we can sort of go through all these different settings here and for this brush, I'm going
to choose uniform blending because I wanna show you some
of the other options as well and it works best when you
say you're rendering work to uniform blending. So now what we're gonna do
is tune on the wet edges and then we're also gonna
tune on the burnt edges. And this now creates a super cool effect. Let me clear up my drawing pad and I'm gonna choose a different color so you can see what this looks like. So now the edges of the brush
are ever so slightly darker and this creates just
a really nice effect. And then I also wanna
show you what happens when we change the blend. so now let's draw a few
shapes to start with and I wanna make them overlap
a little bit as well like this and you can see how the overlap,
creates some darker paths. So now, if you changed
the blend mode of this you'll see how in the shapes
interact with each other they create some different colors and now what we're gonna
do is set this to screen and this creates a super nice effect where the edges are really dark and then the inside is lighter and then you can keep painting and this creates a really cool effect. All right, so next step
is that we mix settings and this is how it can
create water color brushes. The dilution determines how much water you're gonna put on your page. And you can already see in
the preview how this creates a really nice water color effect and then charge here determines how much paint do you have on your brush and how quickly it
should run out of color. And then the attack
setting here determines how much color gets put on the canvas if you draw a little bit faster like this and with pull you can determine how much of the color
should get pulled along but for the brush we are making today we are actually not going
to use these settings. I just wanted to show
you that they're here, so that you know to try them out as well. So now we're just gonna
decrease dilution back to zero and then all the other settings are not going to get applied. Now, next step is color dynamics and this is such a cool setting. I really love playing with this and again there's so
many different options, so I very much recommend that you play with these settings yourself but I just wanna show you one
setting that I like to use which is color pressure. I don't like the strokes
colored jitter in this theme. Color jitters too much for
the brushes that I make but I can see how that can be useful for different applications. it's just not something that I use but I do use the color
pressure quite a lot. So you can change the hue for example and I can see already that
the brush changes it's color and it changes it with the pressure, so you can put more pressure
on and it makes it lighter and then you put a little
bit less pressure on and then it makes it a little
darker, which is pretty cool and then another option you have is to bring in a secondary color and now in the preview, it brings in black but when you're actually using the brush you can choose the two colors
that you want to mix together but for our brush we are not going to use
color pressure for now. So I'm just gonna pull it
back to the way it was. And then we have dynamics and this is actually
very interesting as well. So you can achieve some
super interesting effect by changing the dynamics of your brush. So, the jitter is cool because you can see how we can create some more irregular shapes like this. So let's set this to about 39% and then we can also
increase the opacity jitter a little bit and again, this creates
a super cool effects, so we're gonna see it today. And then of course, Apple pencil settings. This is super important. This is what determines the
pressure settings of your brush. So we have to correct the
setting and the setting stroke. This is the setting
that you have to change. So we can set the size and you can see how the
shapes are already starting to change. Now let's clear that pad and
lemme show you what this means. So now I only start with light pressure and as I draw, I'm just
starting to put on more pressure and you can see now how this
creates this super nice effect. And then if we decrease this you can determine the size
change, depending on the pressure that you're putting on your Apple pencil. And then there's lots
more settings as well that you can play with but for the brush that
we are going to make We're not gonna make any of these changes. And then here we have
that brush properties, one of the things I recommend you do is actually change the maximum size depending on the brush
that you're creating you might like it to be able
to go a little bit larger and then also the minimum size. You might not like this to go very small so you can change it here as well. With your opacity settings I usually leave them at maximum but I'm not using opacity in
my brush settings that much and that's why I just
leave it at the default. And then here last but not least, you can also name this brush. So usually what I do, I give it a prefix so that
people know that it's my brush and the prefix for all my brushes is I-P-L for iPad Lettering. And then I'm gonna call this brush avocado and you'll see why in a second. And then you can set your logo here. So let's do that now, let's select my logo
and then type your name and then we can sign it as well like this and now we can tap done. And so now this is that very
first brush that we create but now let's try it out so I've a got a dark
green color, selected here and I'm gonna try it out,
starting around 20% size and I'm gonna draw an avocado and the reason why I called this brush, this name is because I
really feel this is the brush that you wanna use to paint and avocado. Let's see how it looks like. So I'm gonna just paint it in and you can see how this brush has this super nice texture now. So now if you wanna make
this a little bit smoother we can just paint over it and this looks really cool. So now you can use this
brush, not just to paint with but you can actually use
it to smudge with as well. So what you wanna do now is
long tap on that smudge tool. So now you can smudge with the same brush and so we can use those as well. And you can see how
this works really nicely as a smudging brush as well. So now one of the things
I don't like that much about the brush is that it's
quite rough around the edges. So now it's time to refine
the brush a little bit and see how we can make
this a little bit smoother so that we can paint our
avocado a little bit faster. So we're gonna go back to the brushes. We're gonna tap on avocado and now we are going to make some changes. So the first change that we
are going to make is the jitter this creates kind of a sideways motion with your brush strokes. So we're gonna turn this all
the way down to the bottom and then we are also
going to go back to shape and we are going to decrease
that scatter a little bit and what we can do here
is decrease the spacing so that the shapes become a
little bit closer together. And we can see how the brush is already becoming a lot smoother now and then the next setting that we wanna change is the jitter here, I wanna decrease this even so slightly to make it a little bit smoother as well. So now let's see how these
changes have affected the brush. So I'm gonna go back, I'm
gonna create a new layer, I'm gonna try it out again and you can see how this
is already much smoother. So let's see if we can make a bit of a better avocado this time. So we're gonna paint this in and these creates a much
better shape already. Let's try this smudging as well. And this works very nicely. So I'm actually quite happy with this. So now, if you think the edge are still too frazzled for you, the next thing that you wanna try out is actually change their shape source. As you can see that this
brush really creates those jagged edges and that's because of the shape source so if you don't like it so much, you can now go and you can change it to
a different shape source. So maybe let's choose
this crayon here instead and let's see what this does. And you can see already
how the edges of the brush are a lot smoother now. So now let's try that again I'm gonna create a new layer and we're gonna try and
paint our avocado again. And now it's so much smoother. So this is how you can
try out different settings of your brush, try out
different shapes sources. And then of course, if
you don't like the grain you could go in and change it as well. So now this looks pretty
cool, but as you can tell we have some pretty wobbly line, so let me show you how we can fix that. This is something that I really like for my lettering brushes. And you might like to turn this on for your painting brush as well, but that really depends you can also get some weird
effects when you do that. There's the streamline setting here and if you turn this up, then you can really
smoothen out the strokes and you can see the difference just from sliding this
backwards and forwards, how much this has an effect on the smoothness of your stroke. So what I recommend you do is
actually put it all the way to the mix, just to see the effect that
you get when you do that. So now let's try this out and you can see how it's got a little bit of a bounce back effect. And this is probably not
something that you want for your painting brushes, but for the lettering
brushes this is what we want. So now I recommend that you try this out to see which setting that you like. I just wanted to show you
that this is an option and you see now 50% is
probably a really nice setting because now it's much easier to make a bit of a nice
such shape avocado. If you wanted to and to keep your strokes
a little bit smoother. And now over to you it's time for you to
start playing with all that brush settings in procreate and create your own procreate brushes. Now if you find this overwhelming because there's so many different settings I've actually got a whole
course about Procreate 5 where I'm going super in-depth with all the settings of the brush studio. In the course, I'm showing
you how to make a variety of different brushes for
different applications which includes calligraphy
brushes and painting brushes and all sorts of different brush settings that you can use for your own projects. So make sure you're
checking out the course if you're interested in
learning in more detail how to make your own procreate brushes. I really hope you found this video useful. Give me your thumbs up if you like this subscribe to my channel
if you haven't already. And then I'm also going to bloop
up another couple of videos where I'm going to show you
some more procreate 5 features. Thank you so much for watching and I'll see you in my next video.
