PS I Love You: Argyle Accents (Brushes)

When I saw these argyle tights and these cute creepers in the November issue of Fudge Magazine, my first reaction was: WANT! But, I have enough shoes already and a drawer full of tights (that I never wear anymore). Still, those tights are really cool. I like the single argyle pattern and if I were to buy those tights, they’d have just the right amount of argyle for my hobbit legs. In fact, that single argyle stripe got me thinking…. It would be nice to have a Photoshop brush to make single argyle patterns that could be layered on top of each other for numerous effects.

In the tutorial below, I’ll show you how simple diamond shapes can become versatile argyle brushes. I’ve gone a bit OCD and made a whole bunch of brush presets. Members, please feel free to download the set. And if you’re not a member — no worries! These are really easy to make and I’m happy to show you how to make your own argyle brushes.

One more thing, I don’t get into the individual settings for each brush preset in this tutorial — there are way too many possibilities. However, please check out my Confetti Brush Screencast where you can watch me play with a lot of these settings. Also, I go through many of the basics in the the first brush tutorial I made about Dotted Brushes.

Let’s Make Diamonds:

We’re going to make two brushes: a solid diamond brush and the outline of a diamond. If you have ALL the Photoshop shapes installed, you might already have a solid diamond shape in your library and you can easily turn this into a brush. However, if you don’t have a diamond shape, it’s really easy to make one. There are many ways you can do this. You can create a diamond shape with the pen tool or the polygonal lasso. In the tutorial below, I’m going to start off with a square.

By the way, after we make each shape, please remember to define it as a brush.

Define the brush (Photoshop):

Edit Menu >> Define Brush >> Name Brush >> OK

Related Brush Tutorials

I have other brush tutorials where I show some of my favorite brush settings. If you’re new to Photoshop brushes, you might wanna check these out!

• bunting flag brush
• confetti brush
• tinsel brush
• dotted brushes (brush basics)

(Fudge Magazine: November 2011, page 90)