Organize Your Procreate Brushes

1. Intro: In this class, I will show you how to organize your procreate brushes. I'll provide ideas and suggestions for making the steps more efficient. Hello, beautiful. My name is Trina Brannon. I have a passion for color and for helping others. I'm so excited to be here teaching on skill share with you. I have many identities. Among them, I'm a children's book Illustrator, a surface designer. I license my artwork. I dig traditional and digital creating. I am also a founding contributor to the Alcohol Ink Art Society. For many of my projects, I use Procreate to create the illustrations. I use a finite set of brushes for the entire project I'm working on to maintain consistency. I find it saves time and frustration to have all my brushes easily accessible. If you love Procreate, like many of us do, chances are you have picked a few or a few hundred brushes along the way. It can be frustrating looking for that one brush you used when you started that drawing and now you want to continue. This class will help you organize your brushes so you can easily find that one that you're looking for. The key information you will learn in this class is different ways to organize your brushes that is meaningful to you, how to organize your brushes in a non destructive way, how to stay organized with your brushes. In the resources, I'll provide a brush separator image and a procreate file you can customize for your brush sets. This way, you can organize the brushes that are best for you. Along the way, I'll share some tips to help you streamline the process. I'll recommend you save the new brush sets you create in my, be sure to back up your Procreate files class here on skill share. I show you how to save and recover brush sets and your Procreate files and color palettes. You may find the entire class helpful or only watch the lesson on saving and recovering brushes. In this class, I'm using an iPad and Procreate app. Even if you don't have the Procreate app right now, if you're considering it, you may find this class helpful for general information about the app. For the project, you'll use the steps you learn in class to create a new brush set that's organized in a meaningful way for you. So let's get started. 2. Project: Hello, I'm glad you're here. In this video, I'll talk about your project. When you actually do the steps yourself, you'll get the most value out of the class. It's like learning to drive. You watch someone driving, but you really understand how to drive when you sit in the driver's seat. By executing the steps, you will see the results with your own brushes and get comfortable executing the steps. Follow the steps you learn in class. Decide how to organize your brushes. I'll share some examples and suggestions, create a new brush set and name it, identify your categories and make separators for them. Choose the brushes you want to organize, duplicate and move your identified brushes into the new brush set in an organized way. Please share a screenshot of your new brush set in the project gallery. I'll cover supplies next. See you there. 3. Supplies: Hello, and welcome back. In this video, I will share the class supplies. I'll be using an iPad and the Procreate app. You can use whatever iPad model you have that works with Procreate. The steps are the same. I'll also be using an Apple pencil and my finger. You can do all these steps with your finger. Go ahead and get the separator brush and Procreate template files I have provided in the resource area. Here's how you can download them to your iPad. Go to the Projects and Resources tab of the class and you'll see two resources down here. Select on the first one and save it. We're going to save it to Files, which is directly on our iPad, and we're actually going to open it directly into Procreate. When you select Procreate, the file comes into your Procreate app right at the top. To open the second file in Procreate, first, come back to that page. You may see that the previous little pop up is still there, just tap on X and then select the second file, save in files. And then open in Procreate. You'll see that your Procreate app comes up when you go into a file and select the brush icon, go all the way to the bottom, tap on Imported and you should see that brush file in there. Now we're ready to go to the next step. If you have any questions along the way, please post them in the class discussion. I'll be checking it often. Next, I'll share ideas and suggestions for organizing your brushes. See you there. Mmm. 4. Ideas for Organizing Your Brushes: Hello, and welcome back. In this video, I'll share ideas and suggestions for organizing your brushes. I encourage you to think about how you organize. You may think of it as file management or brush management. For example, do you organize by project name the current project you're working on by brush types such as line outlines, texture or painterly versus flat, by style, gothic realism or abstract, and you have different brushes for the different styles that you create in by subject, landscapes or people, you may use a different set of brushes for each. For example, if you like to organize by type of brushes, you may choose outlines as your brush set name and then separate the brushes by type of line work you do. And you'll have categories for fine lines, thick lines, textured lines, brush sensitive lines, et cetera. Whatever category titles work for you. The choice may be an easy task for you, and you already know exactly how you work. If you're not sure, I encourage you to follow the steps with me using my example in class. You will easily be able to make changes to fit the way you work. One recommendation I do have is to give your brush sets meaningful names and meaningful category names, as opposed to ABC or fav one, pave two, fave three. I knew what was in each brush set when I had only a few sets. After a while, I had to look through a set to see what brushes were in there, and that just took time away from me creating. Next, I'll show you how to create your brush set and category names. See you there. 5. Tip to Easily Move Brushes to a Different Brush Set: Hello, beautiful people. We interrupt this regularly scheduled program for an important update. After I filmed and published this class and received feedback from some of you all, I looked for a better way or more easy way to move brushes from one brush set to another. This is what I found. I was so excited when I discovered this. During the class, I showed you how to grab them and slide them over and move them up and then try to drop them in. Here is another way you can move the brushes that you may find easier. Identify the brushes that you want to move, touch lightly, and you can see I have them. Use your other hand to pull down to the area that you want to drop them in and then let them go. No more hovering over to try to find it. You can just use your opposite hand and keep the brushes over here so you can clearly see what brush set you want to drop into. I hope that helps. I wanted to put this earlier in the class, so hopefully you will not have frustration when you go through the modules as you try to move your brushes around. See you in the next video. Thank you. 6. Create New Brush Set & Categories: Hello, and welcome back. In this lesson, I'll show you how to create your new brush set in category name. I am creating a new brush set that will hold all my brushes for new project I'm Illustrating. Having all my brushes in one set, I will quickly be able to find them making it easier to know which brush I was using. The name of the brush set will be called sprinkles. So I am going to go up to the top and select plus untitled set. I will name it. A tip is to use the microphone instead of having to type it in. I'm going to tap the microphone and name it. Sprinkles and then hit Return and now I have my new brush set set up. Another tip that I want to share is using emojis to help organize. There are several brush sets that I have ordered from other people and for my favorite people that I buy sets from, I'll use a little icon. For example, Lisa Bardot, who uses sunshine as her logo, I will put a little sun before the name of the set that I purchased from her. Lisa Glance is another favorite of mine, and she is famous for her bears. I'll put a little bear in front of the set that I purchased from her. For my brushes, I am an ice cream enthusiast, so I have a little ice cream cone in front of my brushes. Getting back to my project and thinking about my illustration project, I know that I'll need brushes for linework, brushes for color, brushes for texture, and brushes for highlights and shading. Once I get into a project, I'll likely add more brushes or may even remove some brushes. This way of working allows for that flexibility. I'm going to organize my brushes within the brush set using categories with names that are meaningful for me. When you think about this at the beginning of your project, it makes it easier to add brushes to the set in a way to remember where they are. You may also find you want to move brushes around. This way of organizing upfront will just make it easier for maintaining and editing later. I am identifying my initial categories as drawing, highlights and shading, texture, and backgrounds, four categories. These categories will be identified by the brush that we brought in. This is the actual separator within the brush set so you can find the section that you're looking for. So in order to customize this, let's go to the Procreate file that was included in the resources. When you look at the layers, you'll see that there is a layer with a oval background, a text layer, and something called handwritten. I included these two layers so that you could have a choice. You can use the fonts that come with Procreate or fonts you've downloaded, or there's a layer that you can customize the title in your own handwriting. For this example, I'm just going to use the text. So I'm going to change this to my first category, which is drawing. When I selected this layer and then close the layers, you see this light blue box came up allowing me to edit this. When I at the end of the word, I can delete the text that's here and put in the text that I want. I can do that by bringing up the keyboard, show the keyboard, and then I'm going to X, and I'm just going to put in drawing. Because this is going to be my drawing category. Then next, I want to copy this canvas. I'm going to select the actions little icon up here and tap Copy Canvas. Next, what we're going to do is use this image to create a separator. Next tap on brushes and here is the template that you brought in for the brush, slide to the left and duplicate that. When you duplicate it, you'll see that a little one was added here. This was the template, and this is one. I'm going to make this my drawing separator for my new brush set. I will tap on that brush and it brings up the editing mode. Once I'm inside, you want to go to the shape selection because what we're going to do is edit this text and use the image that I just created called drawing. I will edit the shape and then I'm going to import and I'm going to paste because you'll recall that we copied that canvas that had the drawing on it. Now drawing comes up. I'll select Done Select done again and now we have drawing. I'll repeat this process for the next categories. Going back to my Procreate file. Tap off, it still says drawing. Now I need a section that says color. I will tap there to get my cursor inside, back it up, use my microphone, color. For the next separator title, I have a longer title. I have highlights and shading. Once I put that in, what I can do is just make the overall box smaller so that it can fit. Let me go to my wrench icon, copy Canvas, back to my brushes, duplicate, tap to edit, go to shape, edit, import, paste. Now you see my highlights and shading and I can just tap done two times and then out now that I have all of my categories, I'm going to take them all and put them into the brush set that I created. Now, to do that, it's very easy to do them all at the same time. I'm going to select them by sliding to the right and you can see that they change color. I have my drawing, color, highlights and shading, background and texture. Then I'm going to tap on one and pull them to the right, use my other hand to come down to my sprinkles brush set and then make sure that you're in your sprinkles because you'll see it turn blue and then I'm going to drag them all to the right and drop them in. Now I have all of my category titles in my new brush set name, and I want to put them in the order that I'll use them. That's just the way my mind thinks. I'm going to select drawing and pull it to the top. Then usually I do color and next I'll add texture, highlights and shading and I'm going to put background at the bottom. Next, I'll show you how to identify and populate your brushes. See you there. 7. Populate Your New Brush Set: In this lesson, we will identify and populate brushes. In the intro, I talked about non destructive organization. To further explain what that means, I'll talk about two ways you can populate your new brush set. One way is to move the brush out of its current location and into the new brush set. An example is when I actually move the brushes out of the imported section. When we scroll down to imported, you see that the brushes are no longer there. They have been moved to this new sprinkle set that I created. The other way is to copy or duplicate, as it's called, and procreate the brush and move that copied version into the new brush set. This way is considered non destructive as the brush will still be in its original location if needed. For example, I'm going to add a brush that I really enjoy drawing with into the drawing separator. It's one of the original brushes from Procreate, I go into sketching, it's the six B pencil. I'm going to duplicate this six B pencil by swiping to the left and then selecting duplicate, you can see the original is right here and the one that I just created, the copy has this little Tilda. I'm going to select the one that has the Tilda. I put my finger on it and you can see that I've selected it to come out, and then I'm going to go up to my sprinkle set and just hover over it ever so lightly until it pops open. There it is and I'm going to put it under drawing. What I find is if I'm hovering over the brush that's below it, it puts my current brush that I'm trying to drop in above that one. So that's what I found works because it seems to be Procre seems to be really sensitive about when you're moving something around the brush area, where it will drop it. That's why you really want to pay attention for the little Tilda to turn blue for where you're dropping it. Otherwise, you may be dropping it someplace that you're not planning to. And if you do, it's not a big deal. You just select it again and then work with it to get it into the brush that you want. It just takes a little bit of practice, so I encourage you to be patient. So now I have the copy of that 60 pencil that I can use for drawing. Another one of my favorite tools for drawing is in Lisa Bardo's basic tool kit. So I'm going to go down there and go up to the BB Basic Smooth, and I'm going to swipe left and duplicate it. You'll see in this case, the little Tilda showed up, and there was a little Tilda in the original one. The little Tilda means it's an imported brush. And what you'll see in the name is that the number one was added to the original name. I want to make sure that I'm only bringing this one in. I touched on it. I see my little plus and I come up to sprinkles I want to make sure I see my drawing over here, you'll see, and I put it a little bit over this brush and it populated right on top. Now I'm going to continue looking for some other brushes to populate. So for color, I like Lisa Glan's messy box. She has some fun brushes in here that create some really cool texture for coloring. So I'm going to pick this one, this streaky with messy edge, and I'm going to swipe that to the left, duplicate, again, you see there's a one that's added here, and I just want to touch this one because I only want to copy the copied version into my new brush set. I select it and I move it, see the little plus sign, go up to sprinkles I hover there a little bit, and then I move down. I'm a little over texture, and it still I didn't put it within my color section, I'm going to select the color and try to move it above. Then it moved above the pencil. Let's try moving the pencil up. Oops. And sometimes you just have to play with them to find the right spot so that it goes where you want. The thing is you can always move it around if you have an issue. I encourage you to not get too stressed about this because it is getting a feel for where to drop it. Now I have a couple drawing brushes under drawing. I have a color brush. Let's go to texture. Scrolling down to spray paints. There's some texture in here. Now, I'll just point out here you don't see the little tildas because these are native brushes of procreate. That's one way to tell if your brush is something you imported or if it's part of the original set that Procreate had when you installed it on your system. I'm going to choose this flix. I just really love these little dots on here. I'm going to swipe to the left, duplicate and see the little Tilda shows up as well as the little one after the name. Then I just want to get the copied version, so I'm going to press down. Then I'm going to go back up here to my sprinkles. It looks like what happened. I was too far to the left and it pulled it out of my brushes. What happened is it didn't move it out of the original spot. So that's a good thing. I'm going to try it again and try not to go too far to the left. I'm glad all these things are happening to me so that I can explain them to you because you may run into them and you'll know that it does happen, and it's okay. You can go back and find where your brush was that you duplicated it and then bring it to where you want it. I'm going to grab it again and I'm going to go up here to my sprinkles. Try not to go too far to the left, and then I come in here and I'm going to put it below texture, but I don't think I was below far enough. Okay. I got it in between there. Now I have two drawing brushes, a color brush, a texture brush. There's another texture brush that I want to add that I actually created. If I go to my TB brushes, here's the brush that I created. I'm going to duplicate it and then bring it over and get it in sprinkles. That's recent. You see the little star there and it turned brown, comes over to sprinkles and I can pull it down into texture. Next for highlights and shading, there is a brush that I really like that's a soft brush that I want to use. I'm going to go down to airbrushing, and there's several soft brushes in here, but I like the one that says soft brush. I'm going to duplicate that one and tap on it, has the plus, come back up here to sprinkles. And bring it down to highlights and shading. Then for background, there are some brushes that I really like in this watercolor set that I downloaded with a class and it's called scribble brush. This one I'm going to duplicate and grab it and bring it up here and pull it down to my back. Now what I've done is curated this set of brushes for my project, which will make it easy for me to find which brush I was using for outline when I get ready to outline the next image within my illustration, which brush I used for coloring. So there's consistency, some texture. When I'm highlighting and shading, I'm using the same brush and I don't have to go look for it through several brush sets. And then when I create my backgrounds, they will have a similar texture which makes my whole project come together and stay consistent. Next, I'll share a summary and provide you with some resources. See you there. 8. Summary & Resources: And it and in this video, I'll summarize the class and provide you with some resources. Congratulations. You finished the class. You went through all the steps. Now you know how to drive. You now have your first brush set where you can easily find your brushes that you love, and you have organized them in a way that's meaningful for you. In class, we covered different ways to organize your brushes that is meaningful to you, how to organize your brushes in a non destructive way, duplicating and moving your identified brushes into the new set in an organized way. How to stay organized with your brushes. Please take a screenshot of your new brush set and share it with us in the class project gallery. I wanted to share a few resources with you. Lisa Glance and Lisa Bardo are two brush designers that I mentioned, and they are both skill share teachers. Kyle Webster actually designs brushes for Procreate. They are three of my favorite brush designers, and I have purchased and downloaded several of their brush sets. Sinly leave me a review. I'd appreciate knowing what you thought about the class, as well as it lets others know what to expect. Also, please follow me here on skill share so you'll hear about my upcoming classes. Thank you so much for joining me. Take care and stay positive.