Spent 8 hours trying to get a custom brush to work right in Procreate

I had this idea for a piece where I wanted a brush that looked like old, gritty charcoal but with a smooth falloff. Figured I'd just tweak an existing one, no big deal. That was a mistake. The grain texture kept tiling in a super obvious way, making the strokes look like a repeating pattern instead of natural. I messed with the spacing, the scatter, the jitter, everything. Watched like three different tutorials from artists I trust, and their settings just did not give me the same result on my iPad. What should have been a 20 minute setup turned into my entire evening, from like 6 PM until 2 AM. I was so deep in the zone trying to fix it that I didn't even start the actual drawing. Has anyone else had a custom brush just fight them for no clear reason? What's your go-to fix when the texture won't behave?

3 comments

3 Comments

the_rose5d ago

Ever start over from scratch? I used to just tweak settings, but a totally new brush base fixed that for me.

the_robin5d ago

Starting over seems like a lot of work for a brush. Can't you just scale the texture source up instead? Might save you an hour.

wyattramirez5d ago

Yeah, the brush engine itself might be fighting you... I've had brushes act totally different depending on the canvas size and DPI. A texture that looks fine on a small, low-res test canvas can completely fall apart and tile like crazy on a big, high-res one. You might have built it on a 2000x2000 canvas but your actual piece is 6000x8000 at 300 DPI, and the grain source image just can't stretch that far without repeating. Try making your test canvas the exact same specs as your final piece. @the_rose is right about starting over sometimes, but maybe start over on the right size canvas first.

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