Making (Digital) Creamy Acrylic Brushes - Part 2

"Debbie's Field" (detail)

Each parameter chosen in Rebelle Brush Creator helps these three digital brushes produce thicker and creamier marks, like a traditional brush loaded with acrylic or oil paint. Here's how the parameters work, and how you might modify them for special uses.
For an introduction to these brushes and the marks they make, please see the previous post, “Making (Digital) Creamy Acrylic Brushes – Part 1.”

Understanding the Cream 1 Acrylic Brush

The Cream 1 Acrylic brush has these parameters in Rebelle Brush Creator:

So, why these parameters?

1. A traditional synthetic brush can make a rough mark, especially when it is worn down a bit. So, I chose "Flat Noisy 3" for the Shape and “Sponge 2" for the Grain. In Rebelle, the Shape and Grain act like two masks, one above the other, that combine to direct the color into a basic stamp "shape." Note, you might make this basic shape either smoother or rougher by substituting a different Grain—e.g., using  "_01-3 blurred" or "_01-3 blurred lighter" for a smoother mark, or using "Splats" or “Splats-02” for a much rougher mark. Or, you could design your own Grain in photo software!
2. This brush emulates a traditional, rather stiff, synthetic brush: it can be brushed lightly across the canvas and the bristles will bend and splay just a little under pressure. To capture this behavior, I lowered the Pressure Size to 20 and Pressure Opacity to 100. (If these settings were 0, then increasing pressure on the digital pen would have no effect on the size or opacity of the mark.) These positive settings mean the mark gets a bit larger (but not too much larger, since the bristles are short) and much more opaque. The flip side of the latter feature means when you lightly touch the digital pen to the tablet or screen, the mark is very light. Note, you could pull the Pressure Opacity down a bit, but this would make it more difficult to create an opaque mark with the brush.
3. Now, here’s how the “creamy” nature of this brush is created: I lowered the Spacing of the shape down to 5 and left the Scatter at 0 (for comparison, the Rebelle Flat Acrylic brush is set at 10 and 0, respectively). The Spacing determines how far apart that basic stamp shape is placed in the line of your stroke, and the Scatter determines how its placement varies from side to side of the line of your stroke. This brush has a very textured stamp shape, but it hides this by placing those shapes close together. Then, to really smooth things out, I turned on Smudge.  
4. Artists paint with traditional flat brushes on both the flat side and the edge of the bristles, but a digital brush can't emulate that versatility. Currently this brush is set up to paint on the flat side: I set Shape Rotation to "Pen Rotation," which will 'rotate' the basic shape to keep its wide edge perpendicular to the direction of your pen stroke.
5. Traditional flat synthetic brushes vary in width from 1/4 inch (size 2) to 1 inch (size 24). This digital brush can mimic that range on a 200-dpi canvas: it makes a 1/4-inch wide mark when set at size 50 and a one-inch wide mark when set at the largest size, which is 100. On a 300-dpi canvas, the widest mark will be 3/4 inch. (The maximum width of the mark is a function of the Rebelle Acrylic category and cannot be increased by adjusting the individual brush's parameters.)
6. A low setting of 10 for Canvas Texture keeps the brush mark smooth on every sort of canvas. Note, you could increase Texture to around 60 or 70 to create a brush that gives a rough mark on heavily textured canvas.

Understanding the Cream 1 ns Acrylic Brush

The Cream 1 ns brush has the same parameters as the Cream 1 brush, except the Smudge parameter has not been checked; it is turned “off.” (The “ns” in the brush name stands for “no smudge.”) The smudge effect makes brushes lag at larger sizes. So, to paint large areas of canvas quickly, I sometimes use the Cream 1 ns brush (because there is no lag) and then smooth out its rougher marks with a soft Blender.

Understanding the Cream 2 Acrylic Brush

The Cream 2 brush has the same parameters as the Cream 1 brush, except it uses an interesting grain that I borrowed from the Flat Soft brush in Rebelle 2, a previous version of the software. That brush is no longer included in Rebelle, and the grain never appeared in the Rebelle library. So, there is no name for it. I really like this grain because has a very evenly distributed noise pattern, which makes for an even smoother cream brush!

Free Download: Three Creamy Acrylic Brushes 

I encourage you to try these brushes and adjust them to fit your painting style. It's easy to add brushes to Rebelle: just copy the three images below to your computer, and then drag and drop them into the Acrylic brush section of Rebelle (or, use the Import Brush Preset command in the Acrylic brush section).

Cream 1 brush

Cream 1 ns brush

Cream 2 brush

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Thanks for reading!

I hope that you enjoyed this post and that it inspires you to enjoy digital painting. If you find this post helpful, please share it with your friends. And please send me your insights on digital painting and suggestions for Digital Paint Spot.

Bob Kruschwitz