Texture brushes and still life illustration made by Larissa

Making art in Procreate is fun. Making brushes in Procreate is also delightful. Imagine yourself making your own brush in Procreate and using it to create your work. How great is that? I bet the brush you made contributes to the uniqueness of your work.

Therefore, I decided to learn how to make brushes in Procreate, starting with the easiest type: texture brushes. I would like to share with you my methods of making texture brushes in Procreate. And no kidding, you can make a texture brush by just making marks!

Making a Texture Brush in Procreate

See below my process of making a texture brush by making marks in Procreate.

Create a new canvas of 3000px by 3000px,
I am using the Dry Ink brush from the Inking brushset in Procreate for this example,
Tap on the Dry Ink brush and change the size in Jitter to 60%,
Choose pure black as the color to make the brush. In fact, use pure black to make any brushes in Procreate.

Now let’s set the Drawing Guide to 2D Grid, and bring up the grid size to max.

Start making marks around the center of the canvas,
Make sure your marks don’t touch the 4 edges of the canvas.

Create a new layer and place it underneath the marks you’ve drawn,
Fill the layer with pure white,
Merge these 2 layers together,
Tap on the merged layer and duplicate it once,
Tap on the Transform tool,
Toggle on both Magnetic and Snapping,
Move the 1st layer to the left until its right edge snaps to the middle line of the canvas,
Tap on the 2nd layer, move it to the right until its left edge snaps to the middle line of the canvas,
Then merge the 2 layers together.

Continue making (use pure black) marks around the center of the canvas,
Don’t overlap them with the marks you’ve already made,
Again, don’t make marks on the edges of the canvas,
Duplicate the layer once,
Tap on the 1st layer and move it to the top until its bottom edge snaps to the middle line of the canvas,
Tap on the 2nd layer and move it to the bottom until its top edge snaps to the middle line of the canvas,
And merge the 2 layers together.

Continue making marks (use pure black) around the center of the canvas,
Don’t overlap them with the marks you’ve already made,
Once again, don’t make marks on the edges of the canvas,
Duplicate the layer one last time,
Tap on the 1st layer and move it to the left until its right edge snaps to the middle line of the canvas,
Tap on the 2nd layer and move it to the right until its left edge snaps to the middle line of the canvas,
Merge the 2 layers together,
Turn off Drawing Guide,
See if you still need to make more marks to fill the whole canvas,
Now export your work as a JPEG and tap Save Image.

Now let’s turn the marks we’ve just made into a brush.

In the Brush Library, create a new brushset and give it a name,
Tap on the + symbol on the right to create a new brush,
Tap on Grain and import the image you’ve saved,
And this is crucial: two finger tap on the image once to turn it into a black background with white ink on it.

From here, it’s just simply adjusting numbers in some of the features. In my example, I adjusted numbers in Grain, Stroke Path, Stablization, Apple Pencil, and Properties. Feel free to play with all the features until you are happy with the result. Don’t forget to go to About the Brush to name your brush and sign your name.

Well done on making your own texture brush in Procreate!

Testing Texture Brushes in a Still Life Illustration

I created a simple still life illustration just to test the texture brushes I’ve made. I think it’s good to put the brushes into context to see if they work or not. A great thing about Procreate brushes is that they are fully customizable. You can adjust the features at any time depending on the work you are making.

You can download the brushes I made and used in this video, including the 4 texture brushes and a bonus noise brush: