Disclaimer: I am not affiliated with any of the tools and software I share; I purchased everything independently.
Hello, art-loving friends and writers. Today, I'm sharing my favorite brushes and essential digital art tools for writing and illustrating children's books. I work on a Mac but usually sketch everything on bristol paper or my sketchbook.
I will also share some helpful advice I have learned along the way.
I love traditional art and favor oils and gouache, especially the looks. I have found that digital painting gives me much more freedom, and I am not as scared of messing up. I am telling you this because I try to emulate the oil and gouache look when I paint digitally. I could write a whole blog post about my favorite traditional artists, but that differs from why you are here. So, let's get right into it.
A little background about me, I am finishing up my BFA in Illustration this year, but I have been painting digital and traditional for a long time. I am what you could call a perfectionist, and for a very long time, I have struggled to love my art styles, yes plural. I finally realized that to love my style and vision, I must stop comparing myself to others and just do what makes me happy. The positive of my different art styles is that I have explored many tools and brushes. I will discuss the ones today specifically for this art style. You know what, though? I will also add some other tools here and tell you what I used them for. I am not holding back any information.
Wacom
I purchased this drawing tablet from Amazon, and I have had the same one for years, and it has never failed me. (Knock on Wood)
Photoshop.
I love illustrating in Photoshop, but I started digitally on my iPad and Procreate in 2015. I did that until about 2021, when I started art school, and many of my digital classes required me to use Photoshop. I ALWAYS paint in CMYK mode for anything that needs to be printed, and RGB for things that are strictly online.
My favorite Brushes in Photoshop are:
Lane Draws
Lane's Painting Pack & The Dirty Ink Brush Pack you can buy it here.
I love love love the Painting pack; it has brushes that emulate the painting style of some of the greats, like JC Leyendecker, Zorn, and Sargent, to name a couple. This pack is jam-packed with the masters and legendary painters. I use this pack because I have a messier and more organic feeling painting style.
I also love the Dirty Ink Pack, but I got that whenever I was trying out and making commissions for comic-style art, so if you lean more toward that style, I highly recommend that for you.
Kyle T Webster Brushes, which I got with my Adobe subscription. I bought the Kyle T Webster Procreate Ultimate pack in 2015 when I first got my iPad, and I also love them.
I have an iPad, but I currently do not use it for illustrations. Something I love about Procreate that I do not have in Photoshop is all the perspective tools; they are truly unique. I found something that helps me in Photoshop and brings me to my following essential tool.
Hej Stylus! V3
This is a one-time payment after a 2-week trial, and it is so worth it to me. You can check it out here.
While many brushes have stabilization, not all do, and this little app lets you control all brush stabilization and offers some perspective guides.
MaxPacks
As I said, I love traditional art's organic look, so I use a paper layer set to multiply in Photoshop. I love the MaxPack Paper Pack. You can purchase it here.
Clip Studio Paint
I also got this software for comic-based art, but I love using it for illustration. What I love about this one is that when you make art, it stays in vector format and doesn't get pixelated like Photoshop and Procreate can. The brushes also have a very interesting and user-friendly pressure sensitivity that doesn't require constantly adjusting the brush size like Photoshop and Procreate. So, I often go to Clip Studio to sketch, create line art, and make little comics. I will be using this to create coloring books and line art.
Blender
Since I told you I would share all of my essentials, I will also let you know that I have taught myself to use Blender; I have made a head reference of all of my characters to help me stay consistent because I struggle with that.
TapRecord
I also love creating recordings of my digital painting, and I use the app TapRecord. You can choose to screen-record only or have your face and voice in the recording. I usually opt for only the screen recording because I have a whole house.
Book Templates
The last thing essential for making these books and illustrations is finding out what size book and margins you need. I have looked this up on KDP, for example. I have also checked out other print-on-demand websites, but I will make a blog post about that when the time comes.