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Painting with the Brush and Pencil Tools

The Brush and Pencil tools paint soft and hard-edged strokes, respectively. A Brush stroke is antialiased, while a Pencil stroke isn’t. Both tools normally paint using the foreground color, and can paint a line of any thickness. To paint with either of these tools, click on the canvas and drag with the mouse button held down.

A stroke of the Brush  tool is soft and blends into the background, as shown below:

The stroke made by the Pencil  tool is hard, with no bleeding.

Stylized tracings are popular, and they’re a good way to practice painting when you’re just beginning. To create a stylized tracing, you paint on a blank layer on top of a layer containing an existing image. Later, you can delete the background image you traced.