Bundled brushes

Fifty-one brushes ship in eleven categories. This page lists all of them with the values that actually differ — the ones that explain why two brushes in the same category do not feel alike. Values not listed for a brush are the engine defaults.

Every one of these can be tuned in place and re-saved as your own; the shipped definition is never overwritten. See Brush library.

Sketching#

Four graphite brushes. All are grainy and all route pressure into both size and opacity — the sketching set is built to be worked over rather than committed to.

Technical Pencil is the library's first brush and its fallback: a fine, fairly hard, grainy pencil. Soft Graphite 6B is the opposite end — soft-edged, twice the size, the most grain in the set, and a low opacity floor, so it lays broad tone that darkens with pressure rather than a line. Mechanical Pencil is the only one that does not fade with pressure: a hard 3pt tip at 90% opacity with almost no grain, holding a consistent line. Col-Erase sits between the pencils and the inks, a mid-soft coloured lead with moderate grain. Soft Graphite 6B also carries a slight 2% scatter, which is what stops its broad tone reading as a clean band.

Inking#

Four opaque brushes, all at 100% opacity, all closely spaced. What separates them is taper and pressure.

Studio Pen is the general inking line: crisp, tapered at both ends, with pressure taking it down to 40%. Brush Pen is the expressive one — more than twice the size, a long 22pt exit taper, and a pressure floor of 12%, so it swells from a hairline to a broad stroke within one gesture. Fineliner is deliberately inert: no taper, no pressure, a constant 3.5pt line, for work where consistency is the point. Gel Pen keeps a crisp constant-looking line but allows a little pressure variation, falling only to 70%.

Calligraphy#

Three nibs. The distinction is the nib's shape and whether it follows the pen's heading.

Flat Nib is the broad-edge pen: a flat chisel that follows the pen's azimuth, so the stroke thickens and thins purely from the direction of travel. Pointed Nib is the flexible-nib counterpart — round, tapered at both ends, with a very low pressure floor of 10%, so the width comes from pressure rather than direction. Monoline Script has neither: a constant 6pt round line with no pressure and no taper, for lettering that must not vary.

Painting#

Five brushes covering the range from a loaded bristle to a broad wash.

Round Bristle and Dry Bristle both stamp the bristle tip, which carries its own hair bands and dry breaks. Round Bristle is the wetter of the two — higher opacity, a slight scatter to break the edge. Dry Bristle is larger, thinner in coverage, and follows the pen's heading, so the hairs rake in the direction of the hand. Flat Wash is the softest brush in the set at 25% hardness and the largest at 40, with a low 35% opacity: a chisel that follows the pen and is meant to be built up in transparent passes. Gouache is flat opaque body colour — high hardness, high opacity, and the only painting brush that does not fade with pressure. Oil Impasto carries the most grain of the five at 50% plus a 5% scatter, so the mark keeps a loaded, uneven edge. Round Bristle and Oil Impasto also vary slightly in colour from stamp to stamp as they ship, which is what keeps a large area of either from reading as flat.

Airbrushing#

Three soft brushes, all very tightly spaced and all at low opacity — an airbrush is built from many passes.

Soft Airbrush is the softest brush in the library at 3% hardness — effectively a cloud with no rim — and the only one whose opacity falls to a true zero at the lightest touch. Hard Airbrush is smaller and considerably more defined at 35%, for a spray with a discernible edge. Medium Airbrush sits between them and is the only one of the three that also varies its size with pressure. The panel lists Medium third, after Soft and Hard, rather than in order of hardness.

Textures#

Six brushes that break up their own coverage. This is where spacing and scatter stop being adjustments and become the brush.

Chalk and Charcoal are the two drawing brushes here: both stamp their own textured tip over 30% grain. Charcoal is a chisel that follows the pen's heading, so it rakes like a stick held flat; Chalk is round and rotates each dab randomly. Both route pressure into size and opacity.

The other four are separation brushes. Stipple has no tip at all — it is a hard 8pt dot at 90% spacing with 60% scatter and three stamps per step, so it emits clusters of separated dots rather than a line, sized randomly. Spray Paint is the widest and faintest: a 50pt soft tip at 10% opacity flinging six speckled stamps per step, built up in passes like an airbrush but grainy. Sparkle stamps a four-ray star at full hardness, spaced apart, fully rotated at random, with strongly varying size — a scattering of glints rather than a stroke. Grunge stamps the charcoal tip twice per step at full random rotation with a 20% scatter, producing a dirty, uneven, non-repeating mark. Stipple and Sparkle also vary the brightness of each stamp as they ship, so a cluster is never a flat field of identical dots.

Markers#

Three flat opaque nibs. None routes pressure into anything — a marker does not respond to how hard it is pressed.

Chisel Marker and Highlighter are both azimuth-following chisels; the Highlighter is the larger, the flattest nib of the three, the hardest-edged, and the most transparent at 30%, so it lays a broad even band that shows what is beneath it. Round Marker is the plain one: a round nib, no direction sensitivity, moderate opacity.

Nature#

Seven multi-tip brushes. Each stamps one shape from a set rather than a single tip, and the choice of which shape, how it is rotated and whether it is mirrored is what makes a stroke read as foliage instead of a pattern. All seven are at full opacity, and all vary hue, saturation and brightness per stamp as they ship — the leaves are not all the same green.

Leaves (Dense) packs three leaves per step from a six-shape set at close spacing — one pass fills a canopy. Leaves (Sparse) draws from four of the same shapes at double the spacing and one stamp per step, for individual leaves you can place. Foliage Bush is the extreme of the three: four stamps per step at 90% scatter, the widest spread in the library, and no pressure routing at all, so it throws a mass regardless of how it is drawn.

Grass & Weeds and Grass (Pressure Set) share the same four blade shapes and both keep angle jitter very low — grass that rotated freely would not stand up. The difference is the pick mode: Grass & Weeds chooses at random, while Grass (Pressure Set) walks the set by pressure, and its shapes are deliberately ordered thin to broad, so pressing harder selects a wider blade. It is the clearest demonstration of what a pick mode is for.

Petal Trail (Cycle) is the only Nature brush over 100% spacing — its stamps always separate — and the only one that walks its set in order, giving a repeating, deliberate trail rather than a scattering. Flower Scatter does the opposite with the same three petals: five stamps per step, fully random rotation, and the highest colour variation in the library at 14%.

Mirror jitter gives each dab a chance of being flipped, which is why a six-leaf set does not read as six repeated shapes. Foliage Bush and Flower Scatter ship with it off.

Ribbon#

Six brushes that sweep one continuous design along the stroke rather than stamping it. Continuity is the point: a chain is a chain because its links connect.

Chain carries two links in a single repeat — one broad, one edge-on — so it interlocks correctly without needing alternate repeats mirrored. Rope tiles two twists per repeat. Bead String is one bead per repeat on a thin cord, and Stitching the finest of the set at 12pt, a single rounded dash per repeat with a gap after it.

Lace Trim and Stitching ship with tint at 100% because their motifs are near-white and would otherwise be invisible on white paper — tinting makes them take the colour well.

Banner (Stretch) is the exception in the category. Rather than tiling, it stretches a single motif across the whole stroke, so the design's length is the stroke's length; it is also the only ribbon that tapers with pressure, and it carries a 30pt taper at each end.

Texture Paint#

Four brushes that paint with an image instead of the colour well. Three pin their texture to the canvas and reveal it; the fourth carries a copy in every dab.

Paper Wash is a broad soft brush revealing a paper tooth at moderate strength — two strokes over the same spot show the same fibres, because the texture belongs to the canvas rather than to the brush. Canvas Weave does the same with a tight woven texture at a strong +0.80 tooth, so the weave genuinely governs where ink lands rather than only tinting it.

Cross-Hatch is the one to understand. Its tooth is negative, at −0.95: ink follows the texture's dark areas instead of its bright ones, so the brush draws the hatch lines themselves in the colour you have chosen rather than laying colour around them.

Paper Stamp is the only per-stamp brush of the four: each dab carries its own copy of the paper image rather than revealing a canvas-locked one, and with a charcoal tip, a 20% scatter and full random rotation it stamps torn, uneven patches.

3D Scatter#

Six brushes that instance real geometry along the stroke and conform it to the 3D canvas. These do not stamp and they do not sweep — see 3D scatter brushes.

Foliage instances light and dark leaves densely. Flower Garland adds flowers on a fixed repeating pattern among the leaves — mostly leaves with a flower periodically — and is the largest and droopiest of the six. Vine uses the same leaves as Foliage at a smaller scale and lower density, for something slender rather than massed.

Chain and Ribbon are the rigid pair: both leave spin at zero, because interlocking links and a continuous ribbon must not tumble, and both keep colour variation very low. Chain has the lowest density in the set; Ribbon the highest, since a ribbon needs closely-packed segments to read as continuous. Berries spins every instance freely and has the highest colour variation and the smallest elements.

All six align their elements to the path and ship with surface conforming off.

See also#