Customize the pixel brush marks of Painterly brushes

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Once you select a brush that resonates with your creative vision, you can change the brush color, size, and transparency to achieve the desired effect. Whether you seek bold and pronounced lines or delicate, intricate details, adjusting brush size can dictate the breadth and impact of your strokes. Meanwhile, experimenting with transparency can enhance your design by adding an extra layer of depth, creating subtle transitions between overlapping elements, incorporating overlays, or infusing ethereal effects into your artwork. When you modify brush settings without selecting a brushstroke, CorelDRAW saves the changes as the default settings for new documents. You can reset brushes to the factory defaults.

Color

You can change the color of a selected brushstroke by choosing an outline color from the Default color palette, Document palette, Color inspector, Properties inspector, and Outline Pen dialog box. For more information about choosing colors, see Color. You can also set the default color for brushstrokes. To enhance the Natural-Media appearance of strokes, some brushes draw with more than one color. Color variability is achieved through a progression of colors, transitioning from the main color to darker or lighter tones within the primary hue.

Brush size

Before you create or select a brushstroke, the Brush size control on the property bar shows the default size for a selected brush. Drawing a new brushstroke will use this brush size. If you adjust the brush size when no brushstroke is selected, the chosen size becomes the new default for the brush.

When you select a brushstroke, the Brush size control shows the size of the selected brushstroke. Changing the size in the control changes the brush size of the selected brushstroke, but does not affect the default for new brushstrokes. Selecting multiple brushstrokes with different brush sizes and adjusting the brush size on the property bar uniformly resizes all strokes.

Changing the size of a selected brushstroke

Brush size is measured in the units of measurement (for example, pixels or millimeters) specified in your document settings. Changing the size of a brushstroke is different from resizing the brushstroke with the selection handles. Proportional resizing of a brushstroke by using the corner handles of the bounding box leads to a 100% change in the brush size. For example, scaling the brushstroke to 200% doubles the brush size, while reducing it to 25% shrinks the brush size to 1/4 of the original. When resizing a brushstroke non-proportionally by using the middle handles, the brush size changes by half of the applied percentage. For instance, resizing the brushstroke by 50% results in a 25% change in the brush size. The resizing range of an object is constrained by a brush's minimum and maximum size. Rotating and skewing brushstrokes does not affect the brush size.

Brush transparency

Transparency lets you control the opacity of paint applied with a brush.

Decrease transparency for enhanced solid color coverage (left) or increase it to unveil underlying image areas (right).

You can set the transparency level before creating a brushstroke; this transparency level then becomes the default for new brushstrokes made with this specific brush in any document. Alternatively, you can modify the transparency after creating a brushstroke. Brush transparency is distinct from the transparency you apply to objects by using the Transparency tool . The two types of transparency are adjusted separately, and changes to one do not affect the other.

To set brushstroke color

 

To	Do the following
Change the color of a brushstroke	Select the brushstroke with the Painterly Brush tool, Control-click a color on the default color palette, and click Set Outline Color.
Set the default color for brushstrokes	Click a blank area on the drawing page to deselect all objects, Control-click a color on the default color palette, and click Set Outline Color. In the Change Document Defaults dialog box, enable Graphic, and click OK. For more information about managing default object properties, see Manage and apply default object properties.

You can also change the color of a brushstroke by selecting the brushstroke with the Painterly Brush tool and doing one of the following:

To set brush size

 

To	Do the following
Adjust the size of a brushstroke	Click the Painterly Brush tool in the toolbox, and click the brushstroke to select it.
Set the default size for a brush style	Click a blank area on the drawing page to deselect all objects. Click the Painterly Brush tool in the toolbox. Open the Brush picker on the property bar, and click a brush style.

CorelDRAW may need to rebuild the brush after you resize it; therefore, you can expect a short delay.

To set brush transparency

 

To	Do the following
Adjust the transparency of a brushstroke	Click the Painterly Brush tool in the toolbox, and click the brushstroke to select it.
Set the default transparency for a brush style	Click a blank area on the drawing page to deselect all objects. Click the Painterly Brush tool in the toolbox. Open the Brush picker on the property bar, and click a brush style.

To reset brushes to the factory defaults

Resetting brushes to the factory defaults also restores the default application, document and tool preferences.

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