Core skills: Rebelle

If you’re not happy with the brush attributes in Rebelle 2, change them! Martin Hans child shows you how, and alters the canvas properties, too

If you’re not happy with the brushes in Rebelle, edit them, says Martin Hanschild.

Traditional painters have long been able to choose from brushes of various sizes, shapes and characteristics to achieve different effects in their illustrations.

Similarly, most art programs come with brush editors that enable you to adjust your tools according to your own needs and preferences. In a lot of cases you’re also able to import custom brushes created by other artists from around the world.

Turning our attention to Rebelle, the ability to create and customise brushes in the program was limited compared to other art programs. I’d go so far as to say that the absence of a brush editor was a significant weak point in this otherwise great app.

Version 2 of Rebelle now comes with the Brush Creator, which brings it into line with the competition. I’d recommend making use of it: your painting process will be improved and your art will become more varied and richer. Here, I’ll explain how to use Rebelle’s new brush editor.

The second part of the article is on configuring the canvas. This makes it possible to add texture to your art, making it more visually interesting. I’ll also show you how you can use canvas texture even more creatively, not just as a background surface.

You can adjust the Pressure for the brush’s Size and Opacity separately. The various Shape settings, including Spacing, Scatter and Rotation, enable you to achieve a more varied and random brush stroke. Play around with these settings to create brushes...

The Properties panel gives a preview of the selected brush. Click to open or close the Brush Creator. The preview of the new brush is created automatically when you update it in the Brush Creator.