2. Challenge: Create digital elements using custom brush strokes. Participants can experiment with blending modes and opacity to develop unique designs.
Focus: mimic traditional painting techniques.
Hello&Welcome, Creative Designers,
Brush Stroke Art Challenge: Let Your Creativity Flow!
Welcome to the second round of the LDT challenge, Brush Stroke Art, where we’re diving into the world of digital artistry! You can create stunning digital elements (and this includes papers of course) using custom brush strokes while mimicking the charm of traditional painting techniques. Experiment with blending modes, adjust opacity, and play with color layers to craft something truly unique.
Here’s How to Get Started:
- Choose Your Brushes: Explore watercolor, oil, acrylic, or pastel chalk styles. Each has its own shading flow:
- Watercolor: Start light and layer darker tones.
- Oil/Acrylic: Build from dark to light for depth.
- Chalk Pastels: Be flexible; either light-to-dark or dark-to-light works beautifully.
- Check out Adobe’s guide to creating and modifying brushes [here](https://helpx.adobe.com/photoshop/using/creating-modifying-brushes.html).
- Explore Marisa’s tutorials in the “Working With Brushes” section.
Grab Some Tools:
- Browse this [selection of brush stroke tools](https://www.digitalscrapbook.com/search/all/brush%20stroke?search_term=brush%2520stroke&search_category=core_search&f%5B0%5D=bundle%3Akit).
- Don’t miss Esperanza Mixto’s stunning plastic card strokes in the [Messy Marks 6 Kit](https://www.digitalscrapbook.com/esperanza-mixto/kits/messy-marks-6-kit-paint-mixed-media-black).
Suggestions:
- Experiment with different blending modes for unique effects.
- Play with opacity settings to layer and build complexity.
Let’s see your brush strokes come to life! Share your creations and inspire others with your innovative designs. 🌟
How to make your own watercolor brushes in PS
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Here is a PDF for you with my fave digitalscrapbook.com site-links
Here is an article with tips for beginners.
Here is a PDF with links to 23 tuts on my blog
Selecting Objects in Ps]Here is a great youtube video on selecting objects:
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Here are two links for extracting and bg removal
I also recommend to check out this channel on X if you are a PS user. I just love their videos that completely lack any frou-frou.
https://x.com/adobetricks
I made us a wrapper, layered TIF 
click image to dl and use for your LDT previews if you like 
I also made a blog post
Hope this is what you wanted I was confused by the papers preview. Did you papers or elements?
Beautiful paint Robin!
These are fantastic, Robin!!!
So super versatile. Thank you for playing along and sharing your work here with us. 
wowwww love so much brushes !!!!! and Bina & Robin, yours are so beautiful
Available on my freebies thread
@Bina: Thanks. Happy holidays!
Paint is in the commons.
My Paper is here in the Commons. I can't figure out a way to post this image here from the commons. I'm not sure if that's possible. Painting is not my favorite because I'm just not gifted in that way, but it was good practice. However, this was all my painting bandwidth.
@Bethany Looking good!
And an easy way to share an image in the commons, you could do this:
Go to the commons page.
Find the image you want to share (for example your paint paper)
Right click, "Copy Image Address"
In your forum post select the Img button to insert an image.
Paste the address and hit ok.
To link it - just select all the text it put out.
Click on the link button (globe)
Paste the link to your page with the graphic (not the image itself).
So it will look like this on your end:
[url=https://www.digitalscrapbook.com/bethany-burgess/designs/painted-paper-dots-and-watercolor-graphic-yellow-green-aqua-blue-pink-white][img]https://www.digitalscrapbook.com/sites/default/files/styles/184/public/s3fs-user-content/graphic-image/user-196491/node-400631/painted-paper-dots-and-watercolor-graphic-yellow-green-aqua-blue-pink-white.jpg[/img][/url]
And it will show this in your post:
Hope that helps!
Very helpful. Thank you, Jessica! I tried a few versions of that, but I didn't know to go to the Commons page instead of the graphic page for the image. I remember the good old days where it was free to do this with Photobucket.
Your paper looks gorgeous, Bethany! Thank you so much for playing along and sharing your fab creation!!! Have you checked out www.imgur.com?
I did check out imgur. I signed up for an account, but it seemed to me like it was put in a feed. I just didn't like that idea so I deleted my account. I explored a couple of others too, but didn't find anything before I gave up.
You could use the private option for your imgur and not have your images in a public display. ❤️
Hi Bina, thank you for this challenge, and I'm not sure if they're the usual accepted way to do paint strokes or splashes or globs...but I wanted to try...honestly, tell me what you feel...good or bad, I welcome all! And also, how they can be improved, what to add or what not to...
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Chitra!! Awesome brushes!
These are SO pretty!! My faves are the oil paint looking ones with thickness and depth - so so beautiful! I'm inspired to try to create some now!
These are beautiful!! I'd love to learn to create the thickened 3d brushstrokes. Do you have any guidance on where I could learn how to do this? I've created brushes before - flat ones like watercolor, but never the really thick looking ones!
Thank you, Kelly!
I made some brushstrokes. I made them to match the February blog train. I'm definitely in the midst of the learning process when it comes to extracting my brushstrokes from the photo in PS, so I'm definitely open to feedback on my extractions!