Making & using a lace brush in CSP
saw this tweet on twitter,
which actually goes over using file objects to make repeating textures, which is the same method I used to make my lace brush shapes! I elaborated on the process on twitter, and I’m just crossposting this here.
So the first thing is to make a new file object as explained in the tweet, and then if you make use of CSP’s symmetry rulers you can make some complex repeating patterns like this!
The flowers were all done using a 6 line symmetry ruler, and the part at the bottom used a 2 line ruler.
& when you set the file object to tiling, you can set what directions it tiles in, too!
Once you’re all done drawing your pattern, you want to make it a brush tip. You need to set this up correctly! CSP’s brush tip engine works as black = primary colour, white = secondary colour,
so to ensure that the brush changes colour as expected: make sure you’re working on a transparent background, and convert your layer to greyscale before you save it as a brush tip material!
This step is important, if you don’t set the layer to greyscale, it will not change colour, even if it’s in black & white.
Anyway with that done you can make it into a brush tip shape by going to edit > register material > image… Here are the settings you’d want for a lace brush! Make sure to tag it so you can find it later.
Once that’s saved you can make it into a brush,
- go to brush tip and change the material to your new lace tip
- go to stroke, and enable ribbon
- if it’s repeating in the wrong direction, go back to brush tip and change the angle to either 90 or 270 (depends which way up you want it)
And you’re done! But as for actually using it, actually prefer to have my lace brushes using the figure line tool, and to make a vector layer for them!
That way you can adjust the line as you need to create more realistic deformation. This works fine with the brush tool too, but drawing a line with the brush tool will create a lot of anchor points so it’s a little trickier to work with.
Anyway! Here’s an example of me using this method
