Best free Photoshop brushes 2019

  Creative, News, Rassegna Stampa
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From Kyle T. Webster to Edvard ‘Scream’ Munch, find the best free brush downloads for Photoshop CC here.

Digital Arts recently asked illustrators and artists to tell us their favourite free Photoshop brushes, and we naturally got some great suggestions in worship of the digital art legend that is Kyle T. Webster.

Of course, there are more brush pack options out there than those of Kyle’s as already included in Photoshop CC, the best of which we’ve compiled below alongside your most recommended Webster brush sets of all time.

Read on to find the best Photoshop brushes available for free download as of 2019 – and the very best of Kyle Webster. Contentious stuff, we know, so do get in touch with us via social if we’ve overlooked any of your favourite brushes via Behance, DeviantArt, Gumroad et al. Likewise if you think we’ve forgotten a classic Webster creation, just scream like an Edvard Munch painting and let it all out (there’s some cool digital Munch brushes below).

For floral finesse: Milka Oxana’s Elegant Flower Brushes

We start with the prettiest free Photoshop brushes out there, a botanical collection of 15 Photoshop brushes consisting of roses, lilacs and dandelions, ranging in size from 1500px to 4000px.

Play around with layers and transparency to create a unique flower of your own, and follow brush creator Milka Oxana while you’re at it.

Download free here in .abr format with a simple email sign-up.

For gouache greatness: Matt’s Painting Set for Photoshop CC

Want to paint something like this depiction of Japan’s Kanazawa Old Town by Mateusz Urbanowicz?

Then check out the artist’s all-purpose set for gouache-like painting, which features shading, sculpting and air brushes as extras, along with brushes for adding shape and line details.

The brushes are made to emulate the traditional way animation backgrounds are painted, layering opaque poster colour paints with not-so-sharp brush strokes. Matt says his brushes work best on bigger canvas size files, such as full HD.

Download here and name a fair price on Gumroad.

For inks: Christi’s Itsy Bitsy Inkerz

South Africa’s Christi du Toit makes both sweet art and sweet brushes, with their Itsy Bitsy Inkerz being our favourite and most natural-feeling ink brush around.

Custom made for illustration, design, comics and digital artwork, the four brush set includes two inking brushes and two scattered texture brushes as extras, each named after lines from the Itsy Bitsy Spider rhyme.

Check out Christi’s Behance to see brush samples along with some awesome-looking insects inked with the set.

If you like what you see, you can download Christi’s set from Gumroad – you can be an asshole and download for free, but do the right thing and name a fair price.

For the feel of flora and fauna: Lynn Chen’s 2018 brush pack

California based visual development artist Lynn Chen is another name to watch, and her brush pack from last year is a smash hit on Behance.

Made up of her favourite brushes by fellow artists along with custom made ones of her own, we like the set for having neat foliage and animal fur textures, along with some emulating denim and wriggly worms, as you can see below.

Download the package on Gumroad.

For all: Kyle T. Webster’s best ever brushes

Brush guru Kyle Webster of course has the market cornered in Photoshop watercolour brushes, with his trusted hand now also guiding the brush packs available with Adobe’s forthcoming Fresco iPad app.

When we asked Digital Arts followers for their favourite Photoshop brushes, Kyle’s creations came up almost every time, so find a selection below of his greatest hits, along with comments from the artists on why they use them almost religiously in their work. 

Runny Inkers

Kyle’s Runny Inkers set got votes from both the smashing Priya Mistry and quirky cute art lad Juan Billy.

On the brushes Juan says he likes “the organic texture that it adds to my work.

“My favourite from the set is the Blot Blot Bonus,” he adds.

The above Grand Budapest Hotel tribute is by Kyle himself.

Runny Inkers is available free for Photoshop users as part of Adobe CC. 

Spatter Brushes

UK illustrator and designer Grace J Ward is a big fan of Kyle’s 40 brush Spatter set.

Find below a piece made by Kyle using his wet and wild brushes, which are available free as part of Adobe CC.

Wet Fat Pen

Period, sex and body positive illustrator Hazel Mead is a big fan of Kyle’s Wet Fat Pen.

“It’s a nice way to shade without getting too harsh a line and its reacts well to different amounts of pressure,” she told us on Instagram.

Kyle drew the Batman above – see what you can do with the Photoshop brush via Adobe Creative Cloud.

We also got votes for Kyle’s watercolour, pencil and gouache brushes from Harry Woodgate and Fancy Features.

For realism: Matt Heath’s Photoshop Illustration Brush Set

We were recommended this pack by children’s book illustrator Rowena Aitken, a free set of Photoshop brushes created using an 8B Staedtler pencil and custom settings giving a natural feel and wide variety of textures. 

Download the set here on Gumroad.

For scream queens: The Original Brushes of Edvard Munch 

Did you know Adobe digitally recreated Edvard Munch’s century-old paintbrushes?

Seven of Munch’s original brushes were recreated and made available in Creative Cloud for Photoshop and Sketch users, as helped along with the support of The Munch Museum in Oslo.

The brushes were photographed in 360 degrees using hi-res cameras to capture all the angles. With the 3D representations, Munch’s style was inspected by specialists and combined with data about the brushes physical properties like flexibility and bristle type.

Kyle T. Webster then transformed this data into brushes that have been installed into Adobe’s creative software, as previewed below.

The brushes can be downloaded online here.

Adobe has also provided some helpful tutorials on how to use the paintbrushes, as seen below.

Artists, what are your favourite free Photoshop brushes? Let us known on Twitter, Instagram or Facebook. They could even be your own…

Read next: Adobe Fresco review – we draw and paint with the pre-release of the new Procreate rival

https://www.digitalartsonline.co.uk/features/creative-software/best-free-photoshop-brushes-2019/