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Brushes, shapes and raster drawing

Raster drawing places marks directly into a layer’s pixel grid. Brush size, opacity, geometry and compositing determine which samples change.

Finish a botanical drawing, inspect each mark.

Loading the experiment…

A gesture grows into a leaf; overlapping strokes build coverage. Use any control to take over.

What to try
  1. Choose an ink and add a stem or leaf to the botanical study. Arrow keys move the cursor, Space stamps and Enter draws a short gesture.
  2. Lower opacity and overlap two separate strokes; then choose a shape or erase part of the drawing.
Open in the Lab ↗

What to look for: A wider footprint touches more pixels. Two separate translucent marks build more coverage where they overlap; the footprint diagram shows that accumulation.

How it works

A pencil is useful for hard pixel marks. A brush spreads a stroke over an area; opacity controls its contribution to the existing layer. Repeated translucent strokes accumulate. An eraser reduces coverage rather than painting the background color, so lower layers can show through.

Lines, rectangles, ellipses and text begin with geometric instructions but become pixels when committed in this editor. They no longer have editable vector handles. Fill replaces a connected color region; the eyedropper samples a color without changing pixels. Selection and Move determine where subsequent work happens.

Use it in the Lab

Use a separate layer for lettering or a shape you expect to reposition. Pencil and integer zoom suit crisp pixel work; broader translucent brushes suit underpainting and texture. Save a project before flattening.

Limits & distinctions

Text and shapes are rasterized at the document resolution. Enlarging them later can soften edges. The example is a drawing surface, not a font-layout or vector-path editor.

Sources & references

Guide updated