The Pencil Brush, My Beloved

I got quite a few DMs over the weekend on twitter asking about my brushes, and as with anything, your mileage may vary, and digital art isn’t made or broken by brushes, but having them never hurt! Talking about how you use your tools is just as important as talking about what tools you use, so consider this a small breakdown of my process for digital sketching.

I sketch on paper textures sourced from my own old sketchbooks and papers. The one I use most frequently is available in my Sketchbook Paper Pack, and named Off White.

While a true-to-life pencil look is not what I’m actively going for with my sketches, these papers certainly help achieve it.

I do almost all of my work in Procreate, but learned digital art first in Photoshop. Anything I share here in regards to how I use brushes can be applied to any brush, I’m certain!

Okay. Back to the pencil. Below, I have a small idea of my process in sketching and drawing. This is not a how-to-draw demo, and it’s definitely not an anatomy demo – it’s just how I approach drawing using this brush. The page below, and the one above, were both done on a 9″x 6″ canvas at 400 dpi.

01.

• Loose and light
• using brush at 50% size
• this brush does have a tilt dynamic, but I’ve never used it

• Nastiest phase
• building up a little opacity
• still only using brush at 50% size
• use eraser at 25% size, if at all

• start refining
• come in with 15% sized brush
• at no point do I abandon larger brushwork, it just becomes about more careful and purposeful use
• use eraser to hatch and cut back roughs

• hello 4% brush my beautiful little boy ♡
• hatching in detail
• build up opacity, using eraser to bring it back and to carve volume
• jump back to larger sizes for larger forms and volumes
• fiddle until “finished”