- Step 1: Setting Up Brush Tracking
- Step 2: Setting Up and Exploring the Thick n Thin Pen
- Step 3: Creating a Line Sketch
- Step 4: Suggesting Drapery and Shapes with Particle Brushes
- Step 5: Adding Expressive Strokes with Particles
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Step 4: Suggesting Drapery and Shapes with Particle Brushes
Before painting on your sketch, let’s practice a bit with the Particle Brush. Open a new file with a white background that measures 600 × 600 pixels. Use the Size slider in the Property Bar to scale the brush to 75 pixels. Choose a deep purple or magenta in the Color panel. In the Brush Selector Bar, choose the Particles category and the Spring Rainbow Silk variant.
The default Spring Rainbow Silk brush paints with a rainbow of color. To paint with just one color that you choose, modify the brush as follows: Open the Brush Controls > Color Variability panel. By default, the Hue variability (H) slider is set to 100%. Move the Hue slider all the way to the left, as shown in Figure 5.
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Figure 5 Setting hue variability to 0 in the Color Variability panel.
With flowing drapery in mind, paint sweeping strokes with the modified Spring Rainbow Silk. Experiment with varying the pressure on the stylus as you pull the strokes. Light, even pressure lends more control. Heavier, varied pressure causes more randomness and chaotic behavior. The left side of Figure 6 shows my sweeping vertical practice strokes painted with the modified Spring Rainbow Silk.
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Figure 6 The strokes painted with the modified Spring Rainbow Silk brush are on the left, and the shapes painted with the Spring Chain Smokey brush are on the right.
Next, choose the Spring Chain Smokey variant of Particles in the Brush Selector Bar. Make a short practice stroke, using light pressure to begin the stroke, and then gradually apply heavier pressure at the end of the stroke. Notice that the stroke becomes broader and more random with heavier pressure, as shown in the short strokes on the right in Figure 6.