To change brush in Procreate, tap the Paint Brush icon in the top-right toolbar to open the Brush Library, pick a brush set on the left, and tap a brush on the right to make it active. To change how that brush behaves, tap it a second time to open Brush Studio, adjust its settings, and tap Done. The Smudge and Erase tools each have their own brush selection, so you change them the same way from their own icons.

How to select a different brush

1. Tap the Paint Brush icon in the top-right corner of the canvas.
2. In the Brush Library, choose a brush set from the left-hand list (Sketching, Inking, Calligraphy, and so on, plus any sets you've created or imported).
3. Tap a brush in the right-hand list. It highlights, and the library closes when you tap back on the canvas.

Brushes live in sets. If you can't find one, it may be in a set you haven't opened, or in the Imported set at the bottom of the list. The + button at the top of the set list creates a new set, which is useful for keeping a small, project-specific kit.

Change the Smudge and Erase brushes

Procreate treats painting, smudging, and erasing as three separate tools, each remembering its own brush:

• Paint Brush icon: the brush you draw with.
• Smudge icon (the finger): the brush used to blend and push pixels.
• Eraser icon: the brush used to remove pixels.

Tap the icon for the tool you want to change, then pick a brush from the library. Erasing with a textured chalk brush, or smudging with a dry-media brush, is a common way to get more natural edges without touching your painting brush.

Change brush size and opacity

Switching brushes doesn't always mean switching the brush itself. Often you just need a different size or opacity.

• Use the top slider in the left sidebar for brush size.
• Use the bottom slider for opacity.
• Between the two is the Modify button, a small square that can be assigned to shortcuts such as QuickMenu, depending on your gesture setup.

Procreate saves size and opacity per brush. If you set your ink pen to a small size and then switch to a chalk brush, the ink pen will still be small when you return. That's convenient when you alternate between a line brush and a wash brush, and annoying if you forget you changed something.

Change what a brush does in Brush Studio

When people say "change the brush," they often mean editing the brush itself. Brush Studio is where you do that.

1. Tap the brush you want to edit so it's selected.
2. Tap it again to open Brush Studio. (Alternatively, tap the + in the Brush Library and choose to create a new brush from scratch.)
3. Choose an attribute from the left-hand menu.
4. Adjust sliders and toggles in the Settings panel. The Drawing Pad shows a live preview.
5. Tap Done to save, or Cancel to discard.

Brush Studio exposes 14 attributes, covering stroke path, stabilization, taper, shape, grain, rendering, wet mix, dynamics, Apple Pencil behavior, and more. You don't need all of them. These are the ones that tend to matter in production sketching:

• Stroke Path > Spacing: Low spacing merges stamps into a smooth line. Higher spacing separates them into a dotted or stippled stroke.
• Stabilization > StreamLine: Smooths wobble. Higher amounts suit clean inking and calligraphy. Lower values keep a more hand-drawn feel. Very high values can make short strokes feel sluggish, so test them.
• Taper: Controls how a line thins at its start and end under pressure. Useful for brush-pen style ink lines.
• Grain > Scale: Changes the size of the texture inside a stroke. If a textured brush looks too coarse or too fine against your canvas resolution, this is usually the fix.
• Properties: Set limits on the brush's properties.

Any numeric slider can be tapped to type an exact value, and where a setting supports it, you can tie it to Apple Pencil pressure or tilt (and barrel roll on Apple Pencil Pro).

Duplicate before you edit

Changes to a brush persist until you reset it. Before experimenting, swipe left on the brush in the library and tap Duplicate. Edit the copy, then rename it under About This Brush in Brush Studio. You keep the original intact, and you can end up with several variants (a fine liner, a heavy liner, a soft shader) built from the same base.

Reset a brush

If a brush has drifted into something unusable, open Brush Studio, go to About This Brush, tap Reset brush, confirm, and tap Done. Not every brush has a reset point. Some third-party sets include one, and for a brush that doesn't, reinstalling the set is the fallback.

Switch brushes faster while drawing

Opening the library every time interrupts your flow. Procreate gives you a few quicker routes.

Use the Recent brushes shortcut

Tapping the brush icon surfaces recently used brushes, which makes toggling between two or three brushes a quick two-tap move. If you only ever alternate between, say, a pencil and a paint brush, this may be all you need.

Set up QuickMenu actions

QuickMenu gives you a radial menu with customizable slots:

1. Open Actions (wrench) > Prefs > Gesture Controls > QuickMenu.
2. Choose how you want to invoke it (for example, tap or touch-and-hold on the Modify button).
3. Open QuickMenu on the canvas and press and hold an empty slot to see the list of actions.
4. Assign Previous Brush to jump back to the last brush you used, or Select Brush to pin a specific brush to a slot.

Previous Brush is great for a line/color pair. Pinning specific brushes is more predictable, because Previous Brush doesn't display a name and you can lose track of what you'll land on. Gesture setups vary slightly between versions, so if a tap just dismisses the menu, try touch-and-hold on the empty slot.

Import or install new brushes

Brushes arrive as .brush files (a single brush) or .brushset files (a collection):

1. Download the file on your iPad, or open it from Files, email, or cloud storage.
2. Use Open in or Share and choose Procreate.
3. Procreate imports it automatically. A .brushset appears as a new set at the top of your library, while a single .brush lands in the Imported set.

To remove a brush, swipe left and tap Delete. To remove a whole set, tap the set name and choose delete, then confirm.

Troubleshooting: when the brush won't behave

• Wrong tool selected: If you pick a brush and the stroke erases or smudges, you chose it under the Erase or Smudge tool. Re-select it under the Paint Brush icon.
• Brush looks different than before: You or a previous session changed size, opacity, or a Brush Studio setting. Reset it or switch to a duplicate.
• Lines feel laggy: StreamLine or stabilization may be set high on that brush. Lower it in Brush Studio, or check the global smoothing under Prefs > Pressure and Smoothing.
• Pressure feels off for every brush: Adjust the universal pressure curve in Prefs rather than editing each brush individually.
• Imported set is missing: Look at the very top of the library for sets, and at the bottom (Imported) for single brushes.

Choosing brushes for animation and motion boards

If you're designing in Procreate for downstream motion work, a few habits keep your art easier to animate and composite:

• Keep a dedicated set for the project: one clean line brush, one fill brush, one texture brush. Fewer choices means more consistent frames.
• Prefer brushes with predictable edges for elements you'll later separate into layers. Heavy grain and wet mix create beautiful pages but can complicate matte extraction.
• Duplicate and name your variants by purpose ("Ink_Fine," "Ink_Bold") so collaborators can match your look.
• Work at a canvas size that matches your final delivery resolution, since grain scale and spacing depend on canvas size.

Where Styleframe fits after the sketch

Procreate is a drawing tool, not a motion tool. Most animators and motion designers use it to establish a look: key illustrations, style frames, texture studies, and storyboard panels. The next step is turning those stills into moving footage while keeping the look intact.

Styleframe is an AI video and motion tool.

Your brush decisions in Procreate stay visible all the way through, and the final comp is still yours.

Quick reference

Once you've set up a small project brush set and a QuickMenu slot or two, changing brushes stops being a menu hunt and becomes part of how you draw.

To change brush in Procreate, tap the Paint Brush icon in the top-right toolbar to open the Brush Library, pick a brush set on the left, and tap a brush on the right to make it active. To change how that brush behaves, tap it a second time to open Brush Studio, adjust its settings, and tap Done. The Smudge and Erase tools each have their own brush selection, so you change them the same way from their own icons.

How to select a different brush

1. Tap the Paint Brush icon in the top-right corner of the canvas.
2. In the Brush Library, choose a brush set from the left-hand list (Sketching, Inking, Calligraphy, and so on, plus any sets you've created or imported).
3. Tap a brush in the right-hand list. It highlights, and the library closes when you tap back on the canvas.

Brushes live in sets. If you can't find one, it may be in a set you haven't opened, or in the Imported set at the bottom of the list. The + button at the top of the set list creates a new set, which is useful for keeping a small, project-specific kit.

Change the Smudge and Erase brushes

Procreate treats painting, smudging, and erasing as three separate tools, each remembering its own brush:

• Paint Brush icon: the brush you draw with.
• Smudge icon (the finger): the brush used to blend and push pixels.
• Eraser icon: the brush used to remove pixels.

Tap the icon for the tool you want to change, then pick a brush from the library. Erasing with a textured chalk brush, or smudging with a dry-media brush, is a common way to get more natural edges without touching your painting brush.

Change brush size and opacity

Switching brushes doesn't always mean switching the brush itself. Often you just need a different size or opacity.

• Use the top slider in the left sidebar for brush size.
• Use the bottom slider for opacity.
• Between the two is the Modify button, a small square that can be assigned to shortcuts such as QuickMenu, depending on your gesture setup.

Procreate saves size and opacity per brush. If you set your ink pen to a small size and then switch to a chalk brush, the ink pen will still be small when you return. That's convenient when you alternate between a line brush and a wash brush, and annoying if you forget you changed something.

Change what a brush does in Brush Studio

When people say "change the brush," they often mean editing the brush itself. Brush Studio is where you do that.

1. Tap the brush you want to edit so it's selected.
2. Tap it again to open Brush Studio. (Alternatively, tap the + in the Brush Library and choose to create a new brush from scratch.)
3. Choose an attribute from the left-hand menu.
4. Adjust sliders and toggles in the Settings panel. The Drawing Pad shows a live preview.
5. Tap Done to save, or Cancel to discard.

Brush Studio exposes 14 attributes, covering stroke path, stabilization, taper, shape, grain, rendering, wet mix, dynamics, Apple Pencil behavior, and more. You don't need all of them. These are the ones that tend to matter in production sketching:

• Stroke Path > Spacing: Low spacing merges stamps into a smooth line. Higher spacing separates them into a dotted or stippled stroke.
• Stabilization > StreamLine: Smooths wobble. Higher amounts suit clean inking and calligraphy. Lower values keep a more hand-drawn feel. Very high values can make short strokes feel sluggish, so test them.
• Taper: Controls how a line thins at its start and end under pressure. Useful for brush-pen style ink lines.
• Grain > Scale: Changes the size of the texture inside a stroke. If a textured brush looks too coarse or too fine against your canvas resolution, this is usually the fix.
• Properties: Set limits on the brush's properties.

Any numeric slider can be tapped to type an exact value, and where a setting supports it, you can tie it to Apple Pencil pressure or tilt (and barrel roll on Apple Pencil Pro).

Duplicate before you edit

Changes to a brush persist until you reset it. Before experimenting, swipe left on the brush in the library and tap Duplicate. Edit the copy, then rename it under About This Brush in Brush Studio. You keep the original intact, and you can end up with several variants (a fine liner, a heavy liner, a soft shader) built from the same base.

Reset a brush

If a brush has drifted into something unusable, open Brush Studio, go to About This Brush, tap Reset brush, confirm, and tap Done. Not every brush has a reset point. Some third-party sets include one, and for a brush that doesn't, reinstalling the set is the fallback.

Switch brushes faster while drawing

Opening the library every time interrupts your flow. Procreate gives you a few quicker routes.

Use the Recent brushes shortcut

Tapping the brush icon surfaces recently used brushes, which makes toggling between two or three brushes a quick two-tap move. If you only ever alternate between, say, a pencil and a paint brush, this may be all you need.

Set up QuickMenu actions

QuickMenu gives you a radial menu with customizable slots:

1. Open Actions (wrench) > Prefs > Gesture Controls > QuickMenu.
2. Choose how you want to invoke it (for example, tap or touch-and-hold on the Modify button).
3. Open QuickMenu on the canvas and press and hold an empty slot to see the list of actions.
4. Assign Previous Brush to jump back to the last brush you used, or Select Brush to pin a specific brush to a slot.

Previous Brush is great for a line/color pair. Pinning specific brushes is more predictable, because Previous Brush doesn't display a name and you can lose track of what you'll land on. Gesture setups vary slightly between versions, so if a tap just dismisses the menu, try touch-and-hold on the empty slot.

Import or install new brushes

Brushes arrive as .brush files (a single brush) or .brushset files (a collection):

1. Download the file on your iPad, or open it from Files, email, or cloud storage.
2. Use Open in or Share and choose Procreate.
3. Procreate imports it automatically. A .brushset appears as a new set at the top of your library, while a single .brush lands in the Imported set.

To remove a brush, swipe left and tap Delete. To remove a whole set, tap the set name and choose delete, then confirm.

Troubleshooting: when the brush won't behave

• Wrong tool selected: If you pick a brush and the stroke erases or smudges, you chose it under the Erase or Smudge tool. Re-select it under the Paint Brush icon.
• Brush looks different than before: You or a previous session changed size, opacity, or a Brush Studio setting. Reset it or switch to a duplicate.
• Lines feel laggy: StreamLine or stabilization may be set high on that brush. Lower it in Brush Studio, or check the global smoothing under Prefs > Pressure and Smoothing.
• Pressure feels off for every brush: Adjust the universal pressure curve in Prefs rather than editing each brush individually.
• Imported set is missing: Look at the very top of the library for sets, and at the bottom (Imported) for single brushes.

Choosing brushes for animation and motion boards

If you're designing in Procreate for downstream motion work, a few habits keep your art easier to animate and composite:

• Keep a dedicated set for the project: one clean line brush, one fill brush, one texture brush. Fewer choices means more consistent frames.
• Prefer brushes with predictable edges for elements you'll later separate into layers. Heavy grain and wet mix create beautiful pages but can complicate matte extraction.
• Duplicate and name your variants by purpose ("Ink_Fine," "Ink_Bold") so collaborators can match your look.
• Work at a canvas size that matches your final delivery resolution, since grain scale and spacing depend on canvas size.

Where Styleframe fits after the sketch

Procreate is a drawing tool, not a motion tool. Most animators and motion designers use it to establish a look: key illustrations, style frames, texture studies, and storyboard panels. The next step is turning those stills into moving footage while keeping the look intact.

Styleframe is an AI video and motion tool.

Your brush decisions in Procreate stay visible all the way through, and the final comp is still yours.

Quick reference

Once you've set up a small project brush set and a QuickMenu slot or two, changing brushes stops being a menu hunt and becomes part of how you draw.