How to Use the Brush Tool for Digital Art Online

The three drawing modes

Simple mode is great for clean, precise digital illustration. The stroke is smooth and predictable with no physics. Assisted mode adds path smoothing and stabilisation so shaky freehand strokes are automatically corrected into fluid curves. Expressive mode uses the P5 brush engine for natural media behaviour including pressure, velocity, bristle spread, and texture.

Brush types in Simple and Assisted mode

In Simple and Assisted modes you can choose Round (standard circle brush), Hard Pen, Soft Pen (airbrush), Marker (flat edge), Smudge (blends existing colours on canvas), and Clone (copies pixels from a sampled source area).

Brush types in Expressive mode

Expressive mode unlocks additional brush types: Pencil (textured graphite feel), Charcoal, Calligraphy, Spray, Bristle (individual hair strands), Watercolour, and several custom presets. Each brush responds to pressure and velocity differently.

Step-by-step: Key brush settings

1. 1

   Switch to Draw mode and choose your mode tab

   Click "Draw" in the top mode switcher, then choose Simple, Assisted, or Expressive in the Draw section in the left panel.

2. 2

   Set your colour

   Click the colour swatch in the Draw section to open the colour picker. Choose a colour using the hue wheel and saturation/brightness field, or type a hex value directly.

3. 3

   Set brush size

   Drag the Size slider in the Draw section. Smaller values (2 to 8) produce fine linework. Medium values (15 to 30) are good for sketching and filling. Large values (50 and above) work for painting large colour areas or soft airbrushing.

4. 4

   Set opacity

   The Opacity slider controls how transparent each stroke is. 100 percent gives a solid opaque stroke. Values around 30 to 60 percent allow layering of transparent strokes for a watercolour or airbrush blending effect.

5. 5

   Set hardness (Simple mode)

   In Simple mode, a Hardness slider controls the edge softness of the brush. Hard (100 percent) gives a crisp edge. Soft (0 percent) gives a feathered airbrush edge. Intermediate values give a soft but defined edge.

6. 6

   Enable smoothing (Assisted mode)

   In Assisted mode, the Smoothing slider controls how aggressively the path is corrected. Higher smoothing creates flowing, curved lines even from shaky input. Lower smoothing follows your hand more closely.

7. 7

   Enable pressure sensitivity (Expressive mode)

   In Expressive mode, expand the Pressure section and toggle it on. Map pressure to size, opacity, or both for natural line variation with a stylus or velocity-based variation with a mouse.

Keyboard shortcuts

Press D to activate Draw mode. Use [ to decrease brush size and ] to increase it without using the slider. Press Z while in Expressive mode to undo the last stroke. Hold Space to temporarily switch to the Hand tool for panning the canvas without leaving Draw mode.