When I started using Photoshop for image editing, some ten years ago, I thought brushes were dull. Sure, very useful for retouching a bit here, and colouring a bit there, but, frankly, I never gave them a second thought.

It’s only when I started playing with digital scrapbooking that I realised Photoshop brushes opened up a world of creative possibilities. No, really—look. This was made just by using brushes, two colours and a texture.

And this by using brushes, a handful of colour and one background paper.

The thing is, I found out that, beyond the handy but rather uninspiring Photoshop brushes, you could make your own; that that home-made brushes could not only be used to ‘draw’ or ‘paint’ digitally, but also to achieve art-stamp-like effects; and, best of all, that making your own brushes was hugely easy.

Here is simple way. Start with a copyright-free image. It may be a picture you took, something you drew or an image in the public domain. Because I am very much into Renaissance women, I started by copying Botticelli’s Venus, and scanning my drawing at a high resolution (I used 600, with a view of resizing it once scanned).

I then made the image Monochrome by choosing Image→ Adjustment→Channel Mixer, and ticking the monochrome box at the bottom left hand corner of the Channel Mixer window. You can also achieve this by choosing Image_> Adjustments→ Desaturate. The image is now in several shades of grey.

For a good brush, we need the contrast to be much stronger, so I choose Image→Adjustment→Brightness and Contrast and play with the Contrast until I achieve a suitably clear image.

Time to turn your creation into a brush. To do so, the image’s biggest dimension (in this case, its width) needs to be no longer than 2500 pixels. Your image may already be smaller than that. Mine isn’t, so I choose Image→Image Size and, making sure that the Constrain Proportions box is ticked, I change the width to 2500. The height will automatically change to keep proportions intact.

Now comes the magic moment. Go to Edit→ Define Brush Preset. The window that comes up will ask you to give your brush a name. Do so, to make it easier to retrieve it. Hit OK, and hey presto! You have a brush.

But don’t go trying your new brush just yet. While it has been added to your current brush selection, pesky Photoshop has a way of losing it forever unless you save it. In other words, if you hit brush reset, or if Photoshop crashes and resets the brushes of its own accord, you’ll lose your carefully crafted brush—unless you save it. And there’s nothing more painful than losing a beloved brush—trust me, I know from personal experience. So how do you go about saving your brush?

That’s where it gets slightly trickier—but not too tricky. Pull out the brush window by choosing Window→Brushes. Click on the little arrow next to the word Brushes on the top left hand corner. A menu will drop down. You can do either of two things now—choose Save brushes, which will simply add your new brush to the Photoshop default set; or create a new brush set. The latter is a useful option if you have created a lot of brushes and want to save them all together as a set (e.g. a Renaissance women set).

If you are going for the first option, just choose Save brushes from the dropdown and give your set a name—eg. I called it default plus, because I know it has all the default brushes plus the new one I have just created. If you want to create a new brush set, select all the brushes you want in your set (you do so by hitting the ALT key and cutting out all the brushes you don’t want in the set) then choose Save Brushes from the dropdown, give your set a name (I called it my custom brushes) and hitting Save.

If you have chosen the first option, your brush window will now show all the default brushes plus the new one you have just made. If you have chosen the latter option, it will only show the brushes from the new set, but don’t panic. You can always get your default brushes back by hitting Brushes→Reset Brushes.

OK, now that all has been saved, it’s time to play! Choose a colour with the colour picker, open a new canvas and try your new brush.

Let’s assume you liked this and now you have the brushing bug. How much more can you do? The answer is loads—your creativity is the only limit.

For example I followed all the same steps as before to turn this flower photo into a brush, but added a few extra layers.

I thought that the flower alone, while nice wouldn’t quite cut the mustard as a brush. Maybe adding a touch of ephemera would make it more interesting—so I filled the flower with an old book page (which is easily done by adding the old book page in a new layer above the flower, then choosing Layer→Create Clipping Mask).

I played with the layer’s opacity and blending mode until I had enough detail of the book showing through without covering the flower altogether. Then I used the Photoshop sketching filtres (Filter→Sketch) to create a highly contrasting, monochrome image. In this specific case, I used the Photocopy and Stamp filtres.

As a finishing touch, I turned the image into a brush, and saved it as before.

Et voila! A new creation is born.