Using the Oil Brush tool

You can use the Oil Brush tool to simulate a dense medium that blends color by mixing with a thick medium, rather than through an overlay function. You can load the Oil Brush tool with multiple colors. You can smear and blend colors by mixing them with oil that is already on the canvas.

There are a number of options for managing the reloading of the Oil Brush tool head between strokes. You can

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reload the brush with a solid color

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reload the brush by sampling from the Mixer page

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reload the brush with its current contents and optional amounts of color from the Mixer page

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leave the brush unloaded, and dip into the palettes or canvas after each stroke

Paint strokes applied by the Oil Brush tool are wet in terms of how strokes interact with other strokes by smearing or mixing together. For more information see To dry or wet an Art Media layer.

Oil Brush tool options

Edit workspace

Oil Brush tool options include

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Shape — defines the shape of the brush tip

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Size — defines the size of the tool head in pixels

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Thickness — defines the aspect ratio of the tool head. This setting is active only when the Fixed angle Head Tracking option is chosen.

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Rotation — defines the angle of head rotation in degrees

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Head Tracking — determines whether the tool head bends around the path of the user’s stroke, or remains at a fixed angle

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Head Loading — defines the percentage of material on the brush at the start of the stroke

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Viscosity — defines the rate at which the material on the brush is applied, and thus the length of the stroke before your paint runs out

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Firmness — defines the amount of splay in the brush, how the rendered line gets wider with more pressure, and how well it penetrates the surface on to which it is painting

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Bristle size — affects the underlying noise function for texture and application of paint

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Auto Clean check box — cleans the brush and reloads it with fresh paint at the start of a new stroke

When unmarked, the brush head is not cleaned at the start of the stroke. Instead, the dirty head has a small amount of the current color added to whatever dirty head state exists from the previous stroke.

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Clean button — cleans the head and start the next stroke with fresh paint or pigment

The Auto Clean check box and the Clean button are only available with the Oil Brush and Palette Knife tools.

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Trace check box — allows the current Art Media tool to select the pigment or paint color by sampling the data below the center of the brush regardless of the layer type.

Important! When you hold down the mouse button to begin the stroke, note that a single sample is performed and the resulting color is used for the duration of the stroke.