Alexis Kestler
Hey there! As a fellow iPad art enthusiast, I know how vital it is to have a set of brushes in Procreate that really bring your unique artistic vision to life. The default Procreate brushes are great, but nothing beats having customized brush tools specially designed to match your style.
Lucky for us, there are tons of incredibly talented artists out there creating stunning free Procreate brush sets to help us on our digital art journey. I‘ve dug through and curated 11 of my favorite free brush resources that you absolutely need to bookmark and try out.
These brush sets run the gamut from grungy charcoal sketches to flowy watercolors, intricate linework to expressive oil paint textures and more. I‘ll give you the lowdown on each set‘s highlights, so you can grab the freebies that best fit your creative goals. Let‘s dive in!
Why Custom Procreate Brushes Are Essential
Before jumping into the free brush sets, I wanted to touch on why it‘s so important for iPad artists like us to load up Procreate with lots of custom brushes. Here are some of the biggest benefits:
1. Time Savings
Building brushes from scratch in Procreate is extremely labor and time intensive. Getting free custom brush sets allows us to skip right past the tedious setup and get straight to creating.
2. New Artistic Possibilities
Premium brush creators are masters at mimicking traditional art tools and textures in the digital space. Their brushes let us easily replicate looks that would be difficult to achieve otherwise.
3. Grow Artistic Skill
Experimenting with high-quality brushes made by others exposes us to new techniques and styles we can incorporate into our own work.
4. Mimic Natural Media
Custom brushes can closely emulate the real world look and feel of various traditional art media like watercolor, charcoal, ink pens, etc.
5. Special Effects
Many brush sets specialize in cool artistic effects like grunge textures, ink bleeds, color gradients, stippling, etc. These let us create visual interest fast.
6. Try Before You Buy
Free brushes allow us to experiment and find what works best for our style before investing in premium commercial sets.
7. Reverse Engineer Techniques
Studying how talented creators constructed their brushes helps us level up our own artistic knowledge.
For all these reasons, building your Procreate brush collection with free sets is a must! Now let‘s explore some stellar free resources to get started with.
1. Retro Supply Co.
The Lowdown: Retro inspired brushes with brilliant gouache and ink textures
Brush Styles: Gouache paint, ink splatter, chalk
Why They‘re Great: Retro Supply‘s freebies have a super trendy handmade aesthetic while also mimicking paint and ink beautifully. The Dry Gouache set has 40 natural media brushes specially optimized for iPad. There‘s a great range of expressive marks from chalky mattes to bold opaque strokes.
The Ink Splatter set is amazing for adding organic speckled texture across your art. And the Chalk Dust brushes are ultra-realistic for a weathered vintage look. Definitely don‘t sleep on these freebies!
Download: https://www.retrosupply.co/collections/free
2. Brusheezy
The Lowdown: Massive brush library with niche Procreate sets
Brush Styles: Watercolor, acrylic, ink, charcoal, abstract
Why They‘re Great: As one of the largest brush databases online, Brusheezy has an incredible 17 free Procreate brush packs spanning tons of styles. They really go deep in niche categories like comic inking, ice textures, pressed flowers, and more. If you have a specific art style in mind, Brusheezy likely has a targeted free pack to match.
The Abstract Shapes set has 100 unique hand drawn marks great for graphic linework. The Dust & Scratches brushes add cool distressed textures. And the Traditional Comic Inking pack has the perfect tools to make comic style illustrations.
Download: https://www.brusheezy.com/brushes/17-procreate-brushes
3. The Sweet Crafts
The Lowdown: Intricate lettering, watercolor and calligraphy brush sets
Brush Styles: Lettering, watercolor, acrylic, ink, chalk
Why They‘re Great: The Sweet Crafts really lives up to its name with some beautifully crafted brush sets in both .brush and .brushset formats. They have intricate lettering and calligraphy brushes great for iPad hand lettering projects.
The Watercolor Freckles brushes are amazing for adding bright pops of organic texture across watercolor works. And the Chalk Dust brushes have a perfectly natural matte and opaque quality. The Sweet Crafts‘ attention to detail really shines through in these thoughtfully designed free brush sets.
Download: https://thesweetcrafts.com/resources/free-downloads/free-procreate-brushes/
4. Cass Art
The Lowdown: Realistic painting brush textures for oils, acrylics and more
Brush Styles: Oil paint, acrylic, palette knives, powders
Why They‘re Great: Cass Art specializes in fine art painting supplies, so it‘s no surprise their free Procreate brushes have an incredible lifelike quality. The thick oil and acrylic brushes respond just like the real deal with customized fluid dynamics, blending, and color mixing.
There are great splatter effects, glazing brushes, ergonomic palette knives, and soft powder tools for smoothing textures. If you want to mimic painting digitally, these are some of the best free textured brushes out there.
Download: https://www.cassart.co.uk/cassartcreate/tipsTechniques/digitalResources
5. Tattoo Brush Pro
The Lowdown: Highly specialized tattoo design brushes for flash sheets
Brush Styles: Blackwork, dotwork, ink, sketching, shaders, liners
Why They‘re Great: For a very niche style, the tattoo brushes from Tattoo Brush Pro are tough to beat. They‘re thoughtfully designed to mimic tattooing tools and techniques. You get loads of options for both outline work and textured shading.
The brushes have authentic properties like tapered shape, bleeding, and ink dispersion so your designs look like professional tattoos. There are also sketching tools to map out your flash sheets before detailing. If you draw tattoo designs, don‘t sleep on these specialized freebies!
Download: https://www.tattoobrushpro.com/free-tattoo-brushes-for-procreate
6. Retro Supply Co.
The Lowdown: Super customizable modular brush system
Brush Styles: Inking, painting, sketching, texturing
Why They‘re Great: Retro Supply‘s big claim to fame is their modular brush system that lets you mix and match brush tips, textures, dual tones, and more. Even with the free brush sets, you get tons of customization options to find your perfect brush.
The free sample packs give you access to their high quality brush components like pencil tips, ink splatters, paint strokes, erasers, and more. You can blend and edit them to make exactly the brush you need for super flexible creating. Definitely check out their premium brushes if you fall in love with the modular system!
Download: https://www.retrosupply.co/collections/brush-studio
7. True Grit Texture Supply
The Lowdown: Super realistic natural grunge and grain textures
Brush Styles: Grunge, rust, dirt, grain, grime
Why They‘re Great: As the name implies, True Grit lives up to its reputation with some gorgeously gritty free texture brushes. They excel at distressed surfaces like rust, peel paint, cool grunge, and natural dirt.
The textures have an impressively layered handmade feel that reacts beautifully to stylus pressure and angle. There‘s also a great Paper Pack with scanned paper, wood, and cardboard textures. If you want to add ultra-realism to your digital art, don‘t skip these freebies.
Download: https://truegrittexturesupply.com/collections/free-downloads
8. Cass Art
The Lowdown: Dynamically textured dry media brushes for sketching
Brush Styles: Charcoal, graphite, colored pencil, pastel, blending
Why They‘re Great: In addition to their painting brush sets, Cass Art also offers some exceptional dry media brushed focused on drawing and sketching. The Soft Graphite set has incredible dark to light gradients and powdery blending.
The Charcoal brushes capture the most delicate wispy strokes like the real thing. And the Color Pencils have that unmistakable waxy saturated sheen. I love how Cass Art nails the precisefeeling of sketching traditionally.
Download: https://www.cassart.co.uk/cassartcreate/tipsTechniques/digitalResources
9. Freepik Freebies
The Lowdown: Diverse brush collection covering classic art styles
Brush Styles: Watercolor, ink, acrylic, charcoal, pastel, neon
Why They‘re Great: The Freepik team compiled an awesome set of Free Procreate Brushes pulling the best from their designer community. With styles ranging from expressive watercolors to detailed ink pens, there‘s an impressive variety to choose from.
Great for getting loads of classic art media brushes in one mega pack. I especially like the Painter‘s Toolkit which has splatters, blenders, erasers and more to augment your works. Overall an excellent generalist brush starter pack!
Download: https://freebies.freepik.com/free-procreate-brushes
10. Laughing Bird Software
The Lowdown: Specially crafted textured brushes for concept art
Brush Styles: Concept art, textures, nature elements
Why They‘re Great: The brush maker Laughing Bird Software is a popular Procreate teacher and focuses on brushes tailored for concept art and illustration. Their free sample packs have unique nature-inspired brushes perrfect for fantasy works.
I especially like the textured Splash Brush which has a dynamic dripping effect like paint flung from a brush. There‘s also great brushes for foliage, rocks, water, fire, cliff faces and more. These are super handy for environment concept art!
Download: https://laughingbird.net/freebies/
11. Kyle‘s Brushes
The Lowdown: Natural watercolor and airbrush brushes
Brush Styles: Realistic watercolor, airbrush
Why They‘re Great: Kyle‘s Brushes specializes in digitally recreating the look and feel of working with real watercolors. All their sets like the free samples have a true lifelike unmatched quality. The brushes feature bleeding, wet diffusion effects, gravity pulls, and amazing water ripples when paired with their custom Procreate watercolor palettes.
For airbrush fans, the Soft Airbrushing set here allows amazingly detailed gradients perfect for coloring, shading, and highlighting your work. Don‘t miss these brushes if you want to take your iPad watercolors to the next level!
Download: https://www.kylebrush.com/go/free
How to Import Brushes into Procreate
Now that you‘ve got some awesome new free brushes, let‘s make sure you know how to get them into Procreate on your iPad:
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Download and unzip the brush sets to a location on your iPad or cloud storage that you can access from the Files app.
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Open Procreate and tap on the brush icon at the top to open the Brushes panel.
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Tap the "+" button at the top right and select Import Brushes from the menu.
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Choose the brush files from where you saved them – they‘ll have a .brush or .brushset file extension.
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The brushes will be imported into your current brush library so you can start using them!
I‘d recommend making a new folder in Procreate brushes and organizing your free sets together for quick access. Now it‘s time to get creating and see what these awesome new brushes can do!
Closing Thoughts on Finding Your Perfect Procreate Brushes
With the incredible range of styles covered in these freebie sets, you‘re bound to find brushes that speak perfectly to your artistic vision. I‘d encourage grabbing several packs that interest you and playing around to see what works best.
Testing brushes on a variety of ideas and pieces is the best way to find which tools feel right in your personal workflow. Don‘t be afraid to tweak and customize them too by adjusting settings like size, opacity, nib shape, texture, dual tones, and more. Procreate gives us tons of options to really make brushes our own.
At the end of the day, your brush collection should empower your unique creative voice rather than box you into a certain style. That‘s the beauty of digital art – we can constantly grow and customize our toolkits to match our artistic journey!
Let me know if you end up finding any awesome new free brushes in your explorations that I should check out! I‘m always down to talk shop and swap Procreate tips with a fellow iPad artist. Wishing you the best in your artistic adventures!
