Welcome to my tutorial on making your own custom brushes. Custom brushes are useful because they make sure you don’t need to re-do an effect every panel. You can download really good ones from deviant art for explosions etc but my tutorial will show you how to copy an effect and make a brush of it.

1) First off, choose a picture and download it, I’m using one of Coolhands pictures from OOTDL. Zoom in on the bit you want to copy using the zoom tool.




2) Draw around the bit you want to copy (If there is multiple parts to the brush you want, draw around the first bit) and then hit enter.




3) CTRL+C it and then go to Start>New you will be prompted for Dimensions. Now you want this as small as possible so I go for 60 Width and 50 Height.




4) Set the background layer to screen and then put opacity down to 0.




5) Create a new Layer and call it Brush




6) Paste the part of the picture you copied onto this layer. It may be too big so you may need to re-size it using the scale tool. (If you were making a brush from scratch you would make it on this layer). Now is the moment to repeat steps 2 and 6 is your brush is made of multiple parts.




7) Now go to File>Save instead of adding a .JPG suffix add a .GBR suffix. Then save it in a easy to access folder.




8) Exit Gimp and open the file location. CTRL+C the brush and then go my computer.

9) Click on Windows (C>Program Files (x86 on mine)>Gimp (2.0 on mine)>Share>gimp>2.0>Brushes and paste in the file. You will be prompted for administrator privileges, click yes.




10) Open up Gimp again.




11) Go to the brush tool.



12) Go to brushes down below the layers options. Your brush is now available to use.