I’ve been admiring some beautiful illustrations and examining the techniques the artists use to add details to their work. One popular shading method I’ve noticed is particularly prominent in apparel design and illustrations with a retro vibe is the use of stippling, where fine vector textures are added to build up tones and shade in areas of darkness. After seeing how effective this technique is, I created my own set of Illustrator scatter brushes to provide myself and my readers the tools required to create this effect. Download this free pack of 8 stipple shading brushes to easily paint grungy details onto your artwork with Illustrator’s brush tool.
These free stipple shading brushes for Adobe Illustrator are perfect for adding grainy details to your illustrations. This popular shading technique gives your artwork a vintage tattoo or retro style comic book effect by building up tones with tiny vector textures. There’s 8 different scatter brushes available, ranging from light grain to heavy stipples with variances in spacing so you can find the best brush for your project.
How to use the Stipple Shading brushes
My favourite technique for using these stipple shading brushes is with a Clipping Mask. Use the Pen tool to trace an area of your illustration on a new layer, then activate the Draw Inside mode from the bottom of the toolbar.
Grab the brush tool, then select one of the Stipple Shading brushes from the library. Go ahead and paint over your artwork to build up the tones with lots of tiny vector textures.
You can increase or decrease the size of the stipples by adjusting the stroke weight, which helps control the density and grain size to suit your project.
Download the Free Stipple Shading Brushes 17mb
Check out my Free Stipple Shading Brushes for Photoshop too!
Each brush in my Stipple Shading Photoshop Brushes pack has been saved with the appropriate brush settings to automatically rotate and scatter as you paint to ensure an even distribution of dots. The brush tips range from a light distribution of dots to gradual changes in density to produce fade effects. My favourite technique is to use the Lasso tool to form a mask around the area of your illustration you want to apply shading to, then paint the stippling effect within the mask on a new layer.
Man! Wow, this is awesome. Always wondered where illustrators get these patterns. Thanks so much for sharing these! Plus the draw-inside tip was a killer. I honestly didn’t know about that. Keep it up, Chris. Downloading this now…
My pleasure, Eli!
That Draw Inside tip helps save time messing with Clipping Masks. Here’s a few more tips you might find useful: http://spoon.graphics/1FaRVKW
Thanks for sharing that other article Awesome! So gooooood I’m gonna tweet it.
Hi Chris, thanks for this awesome freebie! I adore illustrations by Nathan Yoder so this is just what I’m looking for.
Hi Chris,
I could just not be looking into very much, but I had a quick question. Once I brush inside the shape, how do I expand the result into outlines? The usual expand appearance and expand don’t work… at least not on my computer. Thanks!
– Logan
This is just an awesome work you have done chris! You always makes us wonder through sharing your expert skills in different ways..
Thank you so much for sharing all this! I’m a multimedia arts student and these are a huge help to make my projects stand out. God bless you, man!
You have single-handedly interested me in learning Illustrator, my friend!
These are so cool! Thank you!
Su
Very awesome brushes for adobe illustrator, I will use these, Thanks.
Can’t wait to use this :)
thank you so much Chris for sharing this awesome work.
thanks
These are brilliant and very useful. Thank you.
As usual, a very good freebies and technic … Thank you Chris … You’re definitely one of my best sources of ideas …
Thanks a lot Spoon!!! you have such an amazing stuff here!!
Nice! im fan of your work
Awesome, thank you very much!
Thank you!
Thanks, Chris. Can’t wait to give these a go. Truly appreciate the share …
Thank you so much! This is going to be really useful!
Thanks man! I love using this already.
Great gift and a great tip on how to use it.
Thanks always for all your helpful posts :) God Bless!
Wonderful! Would they work in photoshop too?
Great! I needed this!
Wow! Love ol’ fashion ‘grain’ – super excited to work with this using your great tips -many thanks!
Just moved away from Photoshop to Illustrator for most web design works, this brushes could not have come at a better time. I am sure i will be using them in many of my works. Thanks for sharing.
Thank you, just what I needed…
that is great thank you Chris
this is new for me
I am one of coreldraw user, having problems with many dots or too many objects.
Hopefully i can bear to learn illustrator :)
Chris, what you are doing and sharing is fantastic. I am self taught and your tutorials keep opening new features. Not sure if this is the place but I am struggling to find the righ info on working with path and inside them in the way you do. …..any pionter welcome. I tend to draw scan live paint expand copy areas and fil…but your way gives greater depth/ control. Thanks again
These are great, thank you.
Thanks Chris, there are terrific. Playtime!~
Hi Chris, fab tools!!! …and thank you so much for sharing. One question, they are not valid for the CS6 version, right?
I believe they should be! I included a few different files in the download. Let me know if you can’t get them to work.
Yes Chris, you’re right, I had chosen the wrong file :P Thanks again.
These………RAWK!! Can’t wait to use them!!
Thx, Chris!!!!