How to Make Your Own Procreate Brush
By the Brusher team — we make the brushes, so we know how they install · Updated April 2026
Making your own Procreate brush turns any shape, texture or drawing into a reusable tool — a custom stamp, a textured pencil, a foliage scatter, whatever you need. Every brush in Procreate is built from just two ingredients: a Shape source (the silhouette of the mark) and a Grain source (the texture that fills it). Once you understand those two, the whole Brush Studio makes sense.
This tutorial walks through building a brush from a blank canvas, from creating your source image the right way to dialling in the settings and saving a shareable .brush file.
You'll need
- ✓Procreate on iPad
- ✓A shape source (a photo, scan or drawing)
- ✓Optional: a grain texture for surface detail
Shape source vs grain source
Before you touch a setting, understand the two images every brush combines. The Shape is the outline of a single stamp of the brush — a circle gives you a normal round brush, a leaf gives you a leaf stamp, a splatter gives you a spatter brush. The Shape is what Procreate repeats along your stroke.
The Grain is the texture that shows inside that shape — paper tooth, canvas weave, noise, or nothing at all for a clean brush. Think of the Shape as a stencil and the Grain as the ink you dab through it. Almost every brush you love is just a clever pairing of these two.
Build your brush, step by step
- 1
Create a new brush set and brush
In Procreate's brush library, tap the + at the top-right and choose Create new brush — Brush Studio opens with a fresh, blank brush ready to define.
- 2
Make your source image
Work on a square, 1:1 canvas and draw the mark in white on a transparent (or black) background — Procreate reads white as the visible part of the brush and black as empty. Keep edges crisp, then export as a PNG with transparency.
- 3
Import your Shape
In Brush Studio open the Shape tab and tap Shape Source → Edit → Import to load your PNG. This sets the silhouette of every stamp the brush lays down.
- 4
Import your Grain
Open the Grain tab and tap Grain Source to import a texture that controls the surface detail. Leave it plain for a smooth brush, or import paper or canvas for a natural-media feel.
- 5
Dial in the settings
In the Stroke Path tab set Spacing (how far apart stamps sit) and StreamLine (smoothing). In Apple Pencil map Pressure to Size and Opacity so the brush responds to how hard you press. Adjust Taper and Jitter to taste.
- 6
Test on the canvas
Use the drawing pad on the left of Brush Studio, or tap Done and scribble on a real canvas. Go back and tweak Spacing, Flow and pressure until the stroke feels right.
- 7
Save, name and share
Name the brush at the top of Brush Studio and tap Done. To share it, swipe left on the brush in your library and tap Share to export a .brush file others can import.
What kinds of brushes can you make?
Once you understand Shape and Grain, the same seven steps make almost anything. A stamp brush comes from a single crisp silhouette with high Spacing — a leaf, a star, a logo — so each tap places one clean mark. A textured drawing brush pairs a soft round shape with a paper or canvas Grain and low Spacing for a natural pencil or charcoal feel.
A scatter brush — think foliage, confetti or stars strewn along a stroke — is a stamp with high Spacing plus Jitter and Rotation added in the settings. And a texture stamp for backgrounds is just a large grungy shape you drag across a whole layer. Every one of these is the same recipe with different sources and spacing, which is why building your own quickly becomes second nature.
Tips for better custom brushes
- 💡High contrast wins: a crisp black-on-white (or white-on-transparent) source imports far cleaner than a soft, grey, low-contrast image.
- 💡Start from an existing brush you like — duplicate it, swap the Shape or Grain, and you skip most of the setup.
- 💡Lower the Spacing for a smooth continuous stroke; raise it to turn the same shape into a stamp or scatter brush.
- 💡Save often-used custom brushes into their own set so they don't get lost among the defaults.