Digital Art, Procreate, and New Brushes

Procreate Brushes

I downloaded Procreate in the summer of 2021 with a goal of expanding my work to digital art. I remember explaining it to my dad - digital art is a tool, just another medium. It's like oil paint or acrylic. I'm not going to stop making physical art. I just am looking to increase a skillset. I wanted to give myself time to get used to making digital art. I knew there would be a steep learning curve. Procreate comes with a good variety of brushes, and while I had seen a lot of advertisements for color pallets and for new brushes I didn't really feel like that was something that I was going to invest in. There are several brush combinations I like to use in my digital pieces that convey texture (which is very important to me). 

However, when I saw a tutorial on TikTok of Anna Markowitz's watercolor brush set at Digital Art Junky I knew that it was something that I wanted to invest in. 

Digital Watercolor Set 

I made my purchase and immediately started testing out my new brushes. The watercolor brush set exceeded my expectations. It came with a few new color pallets, some textured paper I could import into Procreate, and a variety of different brush types. Here are the top five reasons you should get this set: 

1) Blending brushes and design. The watercolor brushes blend colors together in a way that is far superior to the original procreate brushes - and trust me, I've spent all of my time making digital art trying to blend colors together more seamlessly. Not only does the main brush that I use accomplish this task, but there are other brushes that focus specifically on blending and color washes.
2) The pigment changes consistently with pen pressure. This is one of the coolest features of the brush set. If you apply light pressure, the digital pigment is not as strong. If you apply more pressure the digital pigment is stronger. 
3) Attention to detail. One of the aspects of physical art that I love so much is the potential for mistakes. Watercolor is a fairly transparent and unforgiving medium. I love that one of the brushes in the set is paint droplets. It adds either texture to your painting or a nice touch, a purposeful "mistake." 
4) Vivid color. This is connected to my second point, but it seems as if the color that comes from using this brush set is much more vivid than some of the standard procreate brushes. This is linked to the way that the brushes are more sensitive to pen pressure. 
5) Paper texture. I was not expecting the zip file to contain images of textured paper. There were five different textured paper files that came with the download. I was thrilled when I saw them and immediately began using them. One of the issues that I have with procreate is a lack of texture on the "paper" of the original app. It's why I try to use brushes that convey texture - to overcome that and to make the piece seem more like physical art. The digital bear featured above used the cold press paper file - and I adore it. 

I can't recommend this brush set enough. It's absolutely a new favorite and I can't wait to continue exploring the art that I can make with it.