Skip to main content

Oil Painting Brushes

Lesson 19 from: Advanced Techniques with Brushes in Photoshop CC

Lisa Carney

buy this class

$00

$00
Sale Ends Soon!

starting under

$13/month*

Unlock this classplus 2200+ more >

Lesson Info

19. Oil Painting Brushes

Next Lesson: Water Color Brushes

Lesson Info

Oil Painting Brushes

Now right now I just wanna do a little quick little demo. And it utilizes something from the past that I want to show you. So I'm gonna just dissect something. I'm not gonna hand-paint this for you. Just want to show you how it's done, because I want you to start thinking differently. As I said earlier in the workshop, there's a real trend to do painting in movie posters, right now, and film and gaming. I think you're really gonna see a lot of it happening. And what it tends to be is a combination. On the piece here, what you're gonna see it's a lot of smudging like this. But then it's all those paint pieces put on top. So what I'm trying to encourage you guys to do is maybe when you're starting out you're gonna utilize something that you're a little more familiar with. I'll show you what I mean by that. Way back when, when this whole thing started up, and I was like, okay there's filters, there's brushes, and what's the difference? I'm just gonna run through this slighty. All right, o...

il painting filter. It's a little dark, in fact, I'm gonna just, so you can see what's going on, I'm gonna put a lighten curve on top. Your ubiquitous oil painting filter. There's plugins like Snap Art. These are different third party plugins that you can use. You can use a bunch of different settings. I was looking at all this, and I'm like okay what can you do with these brushes, what can you do? But it feels so out of control for me. So what I ended up doing is I said, all right, that's nice, that's the old way of doing stuff, is filters. Why don't I go ahead and do a filter, and then on top of it I'm just gonna start to paint. For me the result, well Jesus I look like I've been smoking for 20 years, and it's like this old lady thing going on, because that's what the oil filter does. On this I'm able to smudge it out. Who needs bags under your eyes? I don't need bags under my eyes. All right. I'm just gonna turn these off, and in fact I'm just gonna merge them so we can get rid of them. And I gonna put white down below. So it's just smudging. We've already talked about this, it's a Smudge tool. It was early days. I did not use the handy dandy why don't you label it so you know which brush tool. So I could not tell you in a million years. I'm gonna guess it was an oil wet. Do you guys remember at the very, very beginning of the course, I had those pictures that showed you different terminology for what the paint looks like? If you looked there's stuff that'll say oil. And you can look at the brush strokes and it'll start helping you figure out what Kyle means when he says oil or brush. You can see how wet it looks? I wrote smudge, so I'm gonna hope it was a blender tool. Blender or smudge? Do you guys remember Kyle calls a blender tool, a smudge tool, a blender tool. I haven't reiterated that enough today. That is a blender tool, to Kyle it is smudge tool to a Photoshop user. They're the same thing, okay? Then what's kind of handy to do, is put eyeballs back on top because people get freaked out when you can't see your eyes. So put original eyes back in. I'm not in way or shape or form, trying to say that this is high art and this is great. I'm just trying to give you guys some ideas of what to do with the brushes. Then what I started to realize is, how I can make this look a little different is, why don't I start painting on top? So I'm gonna put a gray layer here. All right. And I'm not going to drag it into a filter where you can't see it. I am a little old school. What I did is I did a filter. Do you remember we did the Find Edges on the flower to get black and white? Well you can do glowing edges to get white. Find Edges will get you black lines, glowing edges will get you white lines. And I did that to paint. Now why I did that is I was uncomfortable painting that. I hope I'm gonna get to a stage where I can comfortably paint that. But for now it's a filtered sheet and it just real quickly made outlines. Then I was trying some bristle brush blenders. There are bristle ... Oh don't make say it, I can't say it again. Hippity poppity bippity boo Lippity dippity dippy doo There are bristle bush ... I'm sorry I don't have them loaded here right now, but there's some icons you're gonna see here, and the tip heads are gonna be bristle brushes. I'm gonna show you those in the settings, when we take a look at those. So I just happened to use bristle brush blender (exhales) tools. Boy, that's a tough one. And it's just because I just wanted to add a little bit. Then I started using that watercolor. Kyle has a whole section of paint, an entire section, called Splatter. And again, there's too many. There's just way too many. So pick one or two and put them in your arsenal, and leave the other ones away. In fact, you know what, I might recommend on all of these, what if ya'll do this? What if you take two oil paints, two blenders, two mixers, maybe some watercolors, we're gonna through those in just a few minutes, and only have those in your pallette. And start with those, and start figuring it out. Then, once you're really grooving, and you're like, I dig this watercolor, I dig this oil, then go into the oil brushes and really start going for it. All right. Texture on top, let's just cover that real quickly. Let's get rid of that gray for viewing. What's nice about the painting thing, too, is you don't have to do the whole thing. You can kind of cheat and use what's underneath also. Do you remember the dog, we blurred the dog and put it underneath the flower? We blurred the flower? You can do the same thing with painting pieces, too. Or not. So it's not like you have to 150% cover every little single bit of the piece that you're working on. You just kind of give the flavor. So for those of you out there who are used to working with the oil painting filters, in Photoshop, and if you like them, by all means keep using them, just maybe add a little juicy bits on top. So I have made a pattern fill. In my infinite geniusness I did not label it. So don't do this, because I can't tell you what pattern that was. But I can tell you it was a pattern fill. Then I merged it, and I merged it because I wanted to make some changes to it. So don't do that. But it's kind of a nice texture, and as we have said many times below, you can change your blending modes. That allows you to just add a little bit of texture to a piece, which can be kind of nice. Oh look, I used it again and also didn't label it. Wasn't that brilliant? So, I'm sorry I can't tell you what pattern that was. Don't do that. It's bad work habits. Brush your teeth. Totally kidding. Anyway, you get the idea. I'm gonna turn this off and on. This is another finishing touch. We've talked about it a bit before, that you can add textures on top. Then go look at layer styles. Go look and see if you want to add impasto to it. Do you want to add a little more texture? Maybe this doesn't want that. Maybe this kind of piece doesn't want textures on top of it. I don't know, I don't know what style you're looking to create. Maybe a little canvas? And that is where, when we talked about project-based work ... So if you go and look at some art history, or you look at some pieces ... Take the Mona Lisa. Take Rembrandt's work. And actually have a piece of his work up, and do a copy and look at everything. Look at can you see the paint raised and is it lit? Like Van Gogh. You know when you look at Van Gogh's pieces? He's got a lot of paint. If he's got a lot of paint, he's gonna need highlight. How're you gonna get a highlight? Layer style. You're gonna do that impasto thing. That's how you're gonna get the height.

Class Materials

Bonus Materials with Purchase

Brushes Companion Handout
Adobe Stock Contributor

Ratings and Reviews

Sean
 

Knowledgeable Lisa is the best teacher. She makes learning Photoshop fun. Great course. Lisa has a great teaching style. She mixes in a great speech cadence, great voice up and down and pausing, jokes, and is extremely knowledgeable and fun to watch. Awesome course. Really helpful course for getting my feet wet with brushes.

Fotomaker
 

This is a comprehensive overview of Ps CC Brushes, what they do, how they work and how to control, manage & modify them. I found it extremely useful to learn about the functionality/features that Ps CC brushes can provide even though I'm a photographer and not an illustrator or painter. I will never ever be able to employ everything Lisa explained & demo'd in the class - she covered a wide gamut of info. But she served the purpose, in this class, of being essentially what I'd call an 'idea sparker'. Once you see how she works with brushes and you find out how you can adapt (or create) brush tools to suit your personal artistic style the options for creativity are unlimited. I might re-title this class "Oh the Places Brushes Can Go" (apologies to Dr Seuss and his classic graduation gift book 'Oh, the Places You'll Go...'). Keep in mind a few things about this class (& back away from it and your credit card if you don't note a few key facts...): (1) It is called 'Advanced Techniques' - it is for intermediate to advanced Ps users, not newbies unless you're a child prodigy who picks things up really fast, (2) This is not a 'Paint with Lisa' class - we don't all paint a butterfly like a color by numbers together. Rather we learn about Ps brushes, how they work, what they look like and how to modify them and change their dynamics for different types of artistic/retouching/post-processing uses. Each person will have to experiment - there's no one 'this is it' formula that can be provided, (3) Lisa talks and thinks fast and has a pretty amusing patter too (she's clearly very intelligent!) - so be prepared to hit the Pause button. She repeatedly advises during the class, don't overload your brain with all there is to absorb with regard to Ps Brushes. Take breaks to try the info she shares & see what works for you before going on to a different section of the class. Don't buy this class thinking you'll whizz through it in 15 minutes & figure out how to complete a job you've committed to deliver in 2 hours, (4) There's a large packet of material that comes with a purchase of the class (descriptions, definitions, brush settings, drawing examples, etc.). Item #4 is the only thing I'd ding this class on. While the handout material contains lots of really really useful info it is - sadly - microscopic print. The text is exceedingly difficult for my poor old eyes to read. I value that there's plenty of white space on the pages to write notes as Lisa talks - I've done so prodigiously. But the print in that accompanying brushes class guide needs to be larger. I honestly wish I could enlarge the print in some way (unless it is a PDF that I can alter & I haven't figured it out). If there is a way to re-print with larger type font sizes someone please let me know! Bottom line: I highly recommend this class to more advanced Ps users who want a comprehensive overview of Brushes and working with them. It's definitely not a class for someone who wants a linear, step x step, "do this then do that" type of recipe class. As I've noted above, it's best as a way to learn about richly varied Ps tools you may have only had superficial exposure to previously; and get enough new knowledge to make you dangerous (and, dare I say it, boldly creative!).

Skye Taten
 

Lisa is the BEST teacher!!!!! Everyone should take this class!!!!!!! This class is utterly phenomenal!!!! Lisa is so knowledgable and so very talented. She is incredibly smart, super funny and so very helpful. This class contains so much valuable information, and at this price it's a complete steal. This class has forever changed my life!!! I'm so happy to have a new skill set. Thank you Lisa from the bottom of all of our hearts you are completely incredible and have touched all of our editing in photoshop lives forever!!!!! You are so very talented thank you so much for sharing your incredible skills and knowledge with us, you are a true beautiful talented soul. xoxo, Skye

Student Work

RELATED ARTICLES

RELATED ARTICLES