Wasted $90 on a premium brush pack that was totally overhyped

I bought this fancy brush set everyone on Instagram was raving about. Paid $90 for 12 brushes that were supposed to be game changers for my digital painting. Turns out they're just basic round brushes with different names, nothing special. The free default brushes in Procreate do the same thing honestly. Has anyone else fallen for expensive brush packs that didn't deliver?

3 comments

3 Comments

gavin_allen481mo agoMost Upvoted

Right? I fell for that ONE pack that was supposed to be "the ultimate painter's toolkit" and it was literally just five brushes with slightly different opacity settings. The big selling point was this ONE brush that was "perfect for blending" but it's just a standard airbrush with the pressure curve tweaked. Procreate's default round brush and the wet acrylic brush do EVERYTHING those packs promise, just takes a minute to learn them. I got so sick of it I started just making my own brush sets in like twenty minutes, way better than any $50 pack.

jason_stone121mo agoMost Upvoted

Exactly though I gotta push back a LITTLE on the "twenty minutes" claim. Making a GOOD custom brush set from scratch takes way longer if you actually want something that works well. You can throw together a basic round brush in twenty minutes sure but getting the pressure curve right and the grain scatter and all that stuff takes some real tinkering. The default Procreate brushes ARE shockingly good once you learn them. I spent months downloading packs before I realized the stock brushes could do 90% of what I needed. But those paid brush packs always hook you with that ONE brush that looks amazing in the demo then falls flat on actual artwork. Making your own is definitely the move but don't undersell the time it takes to get them dialed in.

gibson.oliver1mo ago

Making my own brushes was the only thing that finally solved this problem for me.