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The watercolor brushes give you a chance to make a connection between traditional art and digital art.
Designing with watercolor effects in one of the most popular concepts in recent years, and has ensured a place both in web design and out-of-the-box photo editing.
Some people argue that replicating watercolor effects in the digital environment is fairly challenging, but designers worked more than enough to disapprove this: a bit of knowledge and hard work can easily turn you into an amazing watercolor designer, so download some awesome tutorials and brushes and get to work!
If you’ve mastered Photoshop, finding the ideal brush won’t be an issue. Still, make sure you check all of them and choose the most appropriate ones, instead of piling hoarding lots on your computer.
After a simple download you can use these free Photoshop brushes to create interesting backgrounds for your websites and make something different from the techi websites that are very popular right now.
These are the watercolor brushes Photoshop needs you to install, so don’t waste time. I’m saying they are the best watercolor brushes, but you have to decide that for yourself.
WG Watercolor Vol2
Brush Set 3
25+ Watercolor Brushes
Mateu7’s Watercolor Brushes
WaterColor .2. Brushes Pack
Watercolor Brushes 2
Watercolor II
Photoshop Brushes
There are brushes for drawing, inking, painting, textures, fx, and everything else I do on a regular basis, all created by me.
Watercolor I
9 HQ Watercolor Brush
Artistic Photoshop Brushes
WG Watercolor Splodges
This is a unique resource pack for watercolor effects lovers. I’m releasing 22 high resolution splodges and drops Photoshop brushes. Each watercolor brush is characterized by lots of beautiful details (shades, contrasts, enhanced edges).
Watercolor Splatters
Download this set of 32 high resolution splatter brushes! Created with artist-quality watercolor paint on cold press watercolor paper. Includes three high photo textures.
Watercolor Brushes by Okamy Rain
Watercolor brushes by Kahara
WaterColor EXTREMUM
This HUGE pack contains 41 (resolution about 2500px) brushes compatible with PS 7 and up!
Brushed Ink Brushset
Watercolor Brushes Vol 1
Go Media Spills & Splatters
Spills and Splatters is a set of 7 huge 2500 pixel brushes. Most Photoshop brushes you get are low-res and cannot be used for print work. So Go Media is putting an end to that!
Free Hi-Res Watercolor Photoshop Brushes
Hi-Res Brushes
Hi-Res Watercolor Brushes. Brushes range from 1440px – 1924px.
Watercolor Brushes
SimpleSmudges .2. Brushes Pack
WaterColor Reloaded
Watercolour Splatter
15 High-res Watercolour Splatter brushes. Most are about 2000 – 2500px in size. The paper texture shows through and produces a nice effect not seen in most splatter brushes.
06 WATERcolor
Six watercolor brushes for photoshop 7 and higher.
Free Hi-Res Watercolor Photoshop Brushes Pack #1
The smallest Brush in this set is 1989px! I was limited by CS2 to 2500 pixels, so that is as big as they get. The set contains 18 brushes.
Watercolour brushes set 2
A pack of 20 hi-resolution watercolour brushes perfect for textures, overlays, and even poster making. The smallest brush in the set is 1931 px, with most of them hovering around 2300 px.
Free High-Res Watercolour Photoshop Brushes Set 1
This first of two sets of super high res, 2500px Photoshop brushes are perfect for distressing your artwork and designs for that hand made feel. Included in the file are 7 separate brush strokes with whispy flicks and varied tones.
26 free destroyed watercolour PS brushes
Free High-Res Watercolour Photoshop Brushes Set 2
Watercolour Strokes Brushes
This Brush Set includes 14 high resolution brushes. They’re all between 1597px and 2500px large. For Photoshop version CS1 and above.
Free High-Res Photoshop Brushes: Grungy Watercolor
There are 10 in the set, and I also included a zip file with PNGs for non-Photoshop users.
Watercolour Brushes Set 2
25 high resolution watercolour brushes. Resolution between 1500px to 2500px. File size approximately 42Mb.
Watercolor Brush Pack #1
This is a collection of 10 Watercolor Photoshop brushes. It was designed especially for use in texture creation. Included in the brush pack are paint drip brushes, paint splatter brushes, and other water color textures.
SM watercolor brush
The set has 12 free Photoshop watercolor brushes at a resolution of 2300px which results in an .abr file of the size 27.3Mb.
Splatter and Watercolour Brushes For Photoshop
3 sets of 21 high-quality brushes, with the average size of 2500px or 2200px. These brushes were created for Adobe Photoshop CS, CS2 and CS3 and also work with GIMP 2.4.
Free Hi-Res Watercolor Photoshop Brushes Set II
These brushes are more complex than the previous set and were painted on a higher quality paper, so the end result is in fact, much better.
Watercolour Brushes Set 1
26 high resolution watercolour brushes. Resolution between 1480px to 2500px. File size approximately 50Mb.
Photoshop brushes – which one will you need?
Generally speaking, Photoshop brushes are tools applied to draw different shapes and lines using strokes and various colors.
Once you’ve selected the right brush, you can draw with it with only one click on the mouse.
You can also hold it down and then pull the cursor where necessary to mark all areas with one stroke.
How can Photoshop brushes help you?
Even if it is called a brush, this Photoshop tool has many more roles then replicating paints and similar physical media. Thinking about it, brushes can be applied for lighting, patterns, textures, and so on, which makes them the most versatile and handiest resource experienced designers use to add value to their projects.
Installation procedure
Installing brushes reminds of installing actions, and is therefore very simple. These are the steps you should follow:
- First, download the zipped folder where the brushes are contained, and unzip it to extract the content. Inside, there will be a file named .ABR brush.
- Transfer the .ABR file to the Photoshop window, either clicking on Edit -> Presets -> Preset Manager, and selecting Brushes in the menu (and loading them afterwards), or by dragging it directly inside the window.
That’s how the entire procedure looks like. As soon as you’ve loaded the brushes in your Photoshop window, hit ‘B’ and select it, and a dropdown bar will open so that you can select the brush you want to use.
Instructions
Once you know which brush you want to us, pick it and start clicking with it. As we explained before, a single click will be enough to place the brush stroke, but you can also hold the button, dragging the cursor to explore more interesting effects.
At the beginning, the size of the brush will be very big, and in order to skip repairing the damage it can cause to your project, adjust it in advance. You can use the options in the same dropdown bar to resize it, or to change the opacity, mode, or any other setting.
Watercolor Artwork – The basics
Watercolor, or aquarelle as some like to call it (a Latin diminutive for water), is the common name for painting techniques using water-suspended pigment colors. Traditionally, these colors are applied on paper based materials, but the current trend is to use them even on plastics, bark paper, leather, papyrus, fabrics, canvas, and vellum.
The paper, however, is a specifically prepared one, containing cotton for a better texture and a minimal distortion. In their initial for, watercolors are translucent, and become luminous only after they’re added pigment fillers. If you add Chinese white, on the other hand, they will look more opaque.
Painting with watercolors is one of the most challenging art techniques, and there are tricks and procedures so specific that you wouldn’t know about them unless you’ve decided to specialize in this type of art.
It is nothing like acrylic and oil painting, meaning that colors are not fixed on the painting surface and the painter must consider the complex and active role of water in the process, as well as the condition and absorption power of their paper background.
Unless they’ve checked it properly, there is a big chance water will mess with their outlines and show traces once the paper is dry.
As you can see, drying is the biggest problem in watercolor painting, and that’s all because there is not a 100% precise way to predict and leverage water behavior. The odds to stay in control of it or manipulate it are even smaller.
As for the tools, watercolor painting is usually performed with brushes, but you can also follow the example of some modern artists and try out scrapers, sticks, sponges, or sprays. Another very interesting trend to follow is to mix watercolor work with acrylic painting, monotypes, crayons, chalk, pencil, collages, or even lithography.