Explore Brush Settings in Procreate (Basic + Advanced)
Understanding brush settings will instantly improve your linework, textures, and overall control—whether you’re refining a clean flat sketch or experimenting with fabric textures.
This post will walk you through both the basics and a few advanced options—so you can start customizing your tools to your creative vision.
🖌 What Are Brushes in Procreate?
Brushes in Procreate are digital tools that simulate pens, pencils, paint, textures, and more. Each brush is made up of two things:
Shape (what the stroke looks like)
Grain (the texture within the stroke)
When you draw, Procreate repeats this shape and texture really fast to create a continuous stroke. That’s why some brushes feel like soft pencils, while others mimic fabric or watercolor.
There are thousands of brushes out there—before we dive into settings, let’s start with how to access and explore the brushes themselves.
🔍 Exploring the Brush Panel
To open the Brush Panel in Procreate:
Tap the paintbrush icon at the top right of your screen.
This opens the Brush Library, where you’ll see a long list of brush categories on the left, and individual brushes on the right.
How Brushes Are Organized:
Categories are grouped by style and use. For example there are brushes for sketching, inking, and painting. These are system brushes—the default set that comes pre-installed with.
If you've imported custom brushes, they’ll appear in their own folder, usually at the top of the list. For example, my custom fashion brushes include everything from stitching and shading tools to pencil textures, paper backgrounds, and figure templates all downloadable in my Procreate for Fashion Design course.
You can tap and hold on any brush to move it to a different folder, or double tap on a brush name to rename, delete, share, or duplicate it.
✏️ Basic Brush Settings to Know
You don’t need to dive into the technical side right away. Here are the main settings to pay attention to in Procreate’s interface:
1. Brush Size
Adjust with the top left vertical slider.
Controls how thick or thin your stroke is.
Great for switching between fine outlines and bolder strokes.
2. Opacity
Adjust with the lower left vertical slider.
Controls how transparent the brush stroke is.
Lower opacity is helpful when shading or sketching loosely.
3. Pencil Sensitivity
Procreate responds to how hard you press with the Apple Pencil—this is called pressure sensitivity.
Light pressure = thin or faint lines
Heavy pressure = thicker or darker lines
This feature makes your strokes feel more natural and expressive, with variation in line weight.
⚠️ A Few Important Notes:
Some brushes are intentionally pressure-independent.
For example, the Uniform Pen from my Fashion Brushes doesn’t respond to pressure at all—it was designed to produce a clean, even line every time. This is especially helpful when drawing details like seams, plackets, or where you want consistency in your sketch.Sadly, not all styluses support pressure sensitivity.
Not all styluses support pressure sensitivity. The Apple Pencil Pro does, but the USB-C Apple Pencil and many third-party styluses do not—so check before you buy if dynamic line variation matters to your work.
🔧 Advanced Settings: Entering the Brush Studio
The Brush Studio is where all the magic happens in Procreate. It’s the control center for every brush—where you can adjust settings to create anything from a delicate watercolor wash to a chunky knit texture to a precise stitching brush.
And yes—you can even create a brush from scratch just by adjusting sliders in different sections. But be warned: there are a lot of settings in the Brush Studio, and it can feel overwhelming if you’re new.
Let’s keep it simple and focus on the key settings that are most useful for fashion design. By learning just these, you can:
Create your own brushes with confidence
Modify existing brushes to suit your style
🔑 Most Useful Advanced Settings for Fashion Design
Here’s where to find them, what they do, and how they help with fashion sketching.
All advanced settings can be adjusted by opening the brush panel (the paintbrush icon) > tapping on the brush name to open the Brush Studio.
1. 👐🏽 Spacing
Where: Stroke path > Spacing
What it does: Controls the distance between each "stamp" that makes up a stroke. Lower spacing = smooth, continuous line. Higher spacing = visible gaps.
Why it’s helpful:
Perfect for stitching brushes—adjust to make stitches closer or farther apart.
Great for button brushes—space them evenly without drawing each button. Adjust the slider to control the distance between each button.
Works for beading or decorative trims—adjusts the spacing between each elements.
The Fashion Brushes for Procreate include ready-made stitching, trim, and other tools that make the most of this setting.
2. 〰️ Streamline
Where: Stabilization > Amount
What it does: Smooths your strokes so they appear cleaner.
Why it’s helpful: Great for drawing flat sketches, precise details, or fluid drape lines. Helps eliminate hand wobble so your lines look more intentional.
3. ⭐️ Shape Source
Where: Shape > Shape source
What it does: Determines the actual “tip” or shape of the brush. You can import your own image here.
Why it’s helpful:
Allows you to create stamp brushes for croquis, garment templates, or brand motifs.
You can stamp a full fashion figure in one tap, then sketch over it—huge time saver.
The Croquis Kit gives you ready-to-use fashion figures you can stamp right into Procreate, so you can focus on designing.
4. Grain Source
Where: Grain > Grain source
What it does: Controls the texture that fills your brush strokes.
Why it’s helpful:
Essential for adding fabric textures (like denim weave, linen, or knit stitches).
You can import print patterns to quickly test surface designs on your sketches.
5. 📏 Scale
Where: Grain > Grain source > Scale
What it does: Changes the size of the texture inside your brush.
Why it’s helpful:
Lets you resize the scale of your print or fabric texture.
If you’ve ever used a print or fabric brush and thought, “This looks too small/too big,” adjusting the grain scale is what you need.
You can try adjusting scale with my free Fabric + Print Brush Set, which includes linen, denim, florals, and more.
6. 🔍 Maximum & Minimum Size
Where: Properties > Brush Behavior > Maximum size/ Minimum size
What it does: Sets how big or small the brush can get. This will affect the values in the brush size slider (Procreate interface > left side bar)
Why it’s helpful:
If you have a pattern brush that needs to cover large areas, increasing maximum size means you can fill a garment with fewer strokes.
For detail brushes (like fine stitching), lowering maximum size keeps them from accidentally becoming too thick.
⚠️ Common Mistake to Avoid
Don’t overwrite your original brush.
If you’re experimenting, tap “Duplicate” on your brush first. That way, you can tweak freely without losing the original version.
🧵 Recap
Procreate’s brush settings let you tailor your tools to match your design vision. Start by getting familiar with size, opacity, and pressure. Then, when you’re ready, experiment with Brush Studio—especially grain scale for better textures and print control.
You don’t need to know every setting. A few small adjustments can make a big difference in how confident and precise your sketches feel.
🧰 Want to Try This with Fashion Brushes?
You can try this using my free Procreate fabric and print brushes—they’re beginner-friendly and perfect for experimenting with layers and texture scale.