Create your own brushes in Sketchbook

With the release of Sketchbook v6 on both iOS and Android, you can now import more brushes and create your own brushes!

While this has been a feature of the desktop app Sketchbook Pro forever, it’s new to our millions of users on mobile so we wanted to pass along some tips on how to add brushes to your Brush Palette, and how to create your own unique brushes to express your style. Importing and creating brushes requires unlocking the Premium Bundle.

Hundreds of free brushes

There are a bunch of free brush sets that you can download for free from our Extras Library.

You’ll need to first download the brushes to your device, and then open Sketchbook and import them through the menu in the Brush Library.

Please note that you cannot just tap on the downloaded file and open it in Sketchbook - you’ll either get a message that there’s no app associated with the file, or nothing will happen at all.

For a step-by-step guide and a video showing the import process, check out our help article here.

You may also want to share brushes between different platforms (such as if you work both on a Mac and on an iPad), which you can do by exporting your brush set and then importing it to the other device.

Create your own unique brushes

Everyone has their own unique art style, and you may want to create brushes that help you express your style more specifically, or to make your workflow easier.

One of the easiest ways to get started with creating your own brushes is to duplicate an existing brush and then edit its properties. Duplicate any brush from the Brush Library menu. Then open Brush Properties and start experimenting!

If you want to create a brush to help speed the process of drawing repetitive features such as hair, fur, scales, grass or leaves, play around with the Shape option in Advanced Brush Properties. For an example, check out some of our brushes such as the Fur Set to get an idea of how it works.

Organize your brushes

You may also want to organize your custom brushes - or the default brushes in Sketchbook - to meet your own needs by creating your own brush sets.

As always, if you have questions about using Sketchbook, please reach out to us at support@sketchbook.com, we’d love to hear from you!