I love how Photoshop brushes allow you to mimic any art material imaginable: gouache, pastel, oil painting, watercolor, ballpoint pen, you name it, I probably have a brush for that in my arsenal. But as much as I love brushes, I also hate how hard it is to organize them. You’d think that a software that’s been used by illustrators for 25 years would have a straightforward system to organize assets like patterns or brushes, but that’s not the case. Granted, there IS a way to organize things, but it’s so incredibly clunky and unintuitive it puts me in fulminating mode at every attempt. Major, MAJOR pet peeve for an organization geek.

Last week, I had a pretty clear idea in mind of the kind of texture I wanted to achieve for my pointy dog illustration, but the final result hasn’t much to do with it. I’m sure I have the right brush somewhere, but I simply don’t know which one and where. So this week I decided to simply play with brushes while doing my best to give them the beginning of a semblance of organization.

A lot of the brushes I own were created by Kyle Webster, illustrator and Photoshop brushes wizard (incidentally, he’s also a fan of James Ivory’s movie A Room with a View, which made me smile because I’ve probably seen it 30 or 40 times myself). His store is here if you’re interested, and to see what insanely talented artists can do with those brushes, you can have a look at his Twitter account where he posts humbling images on a regular basis.

This week’s drawing was made using mainly his oil painting brushes. Not a pointy dog this time, but a very pink one: it’s Jasper, the dog I made out of wire and fabric a few months ago.

Here’s oil-painting Jasper, with a little work in progress below.

Interestingly, the only way to get that nice blended brush strokes effect is to work on a single layer rather than separated ones, which in Photoshop translates in “living dangerously”. I think I’ll get more of that dangerous living in the next few weeks when testing and organizing other brushes. What I’ll avoid doing is asking myself whether I should have bought all those brushes in the first place.

Meanwhile, I’ll leave you with a picture the original Jasper.