Open Paraplex

Brushes and drawing

The brush draws freehand strokes with the character of real tools: tapered paint, soft watercolor, grainy pencil, dry charcoal. Each stroke is a layer of its own, so you can recolor it, change its brush later, and animate it drawing itself on.

The same wave drawn with each of the nine brushes: Paint, Bristle brush, Watercolor, Calligraphy, Marker, Ballpoint, Pencil, Charcoal and Crayon

Draw

  1. Press B, or click Brush in the dock.
  2. Press and drag on the canvas. Let go to finish the stroke.
  3. Draw as many strokes as you like. Each one becomes its own layer: "Brush stroke 1", "Brush stroke 2" and so on.
  4. Press Esc or click Done to put the brush away.

A stroke is one step for undo, so ⌘ Cmd+Z takes back the last stroke whole.

Note

New strokes are a dark slate gray, which is easy to lose on a dark background. Change their color in the Stroke section. See Restyle a stroke.

Choose a brush

Press and hold Brush to open its family, and choose one:

BrushFeels like
PaintTapered and organic
Bristle brushStreaky, drying out along the way
WatercolorSoft, pooling at the edges
CalligraphyA flat nib: thick and thin with the direction
MarkerFlat, darker where strokes overlap
BallpointEven, with a little pressure
PencilA grainy edge
CharcoalWide, dry and skipping
CrayonWaxy grain

Clicking Brush brings back the last brush you used.

The brush bar

While the brush is out, a bar above the dock shows its settings.

The brush bar: the brush list, Freehand and Anchors, Smoothing and Done, numbered
  1. The brush list switches brushes without leaving the bar.
  2. Freehand draws as you drag. Anchors draws click by click instead, like the pen; Enter closes it into a shape.
  3. Smoothing irons out the wobble in your hand: 0 keeps every wiggle, 100 fits the fewest, smoothest curves. 50 is a good middle. The pen shares the setting.
  4. Done puts the brush away.

With a drawing tablet, the pen's pressure sets the stroke's width as you draw: a light touch draws thin, a firm one up to twice as wide. A mouse draws an even width.

Restyle a stroke

Select a stroke and open its Stroke section. Everything here can change after drawing.

The Stroke section of a brush stroke: Width and Color, Brush, Roughness, and Grain with its settings, numbered
  1. Width and Color. Both have a diamond, so they can animate.
  2. Brush gives the stroke a different brush, or None for a plain line. Custom stamp uses a picture of your own as the brush tip: a PNG, SVG, WebP or JPEG under 400 KB.
  3. Roughness: how ragged the edges are. Calligraphy has Nib angle instead, the angle of its flat tip.
  4. Grain lays a texture over the stroke: Wood, Clay, Paper, Concrete, Plaster, Brushed metal, Leather, Grunge, Cardboard or Rubber. Grain lies runs it along the stroke or holds it still over the canvas; Grain size and Grain amount tune it.
A wave painted with the Paper grain, its texture woven through the stroke

The rest of the section, Ends, Corners, Dash, Points and Trim, works the same for every line. See Strokes.

Draw a stroke on over time

To make a stroke appear as if someone is drawing it, animate its Trim:

  1. Select the stroke. Put the playhead where the drawing should start.
  2. In Stroke › Trim, set the second number (the end) to 0, and click its diamond.
  3. Move the playhead later, and set the end to 1.

The stroke now draws itself from start to end.

A wave drawing itself on from left to right

See Animation basics for more on keyframes.