Uploaded May 2020 | Updated September 2026, 5 days ago
For those of you who are freehand artists and illustrators, you may find yourselves working with brush strokes and pen tools more frequently than someone like me who does logos and branding. Sometimes the default options just won’t do though, so in this tutorial I’ll be demonstrating how to create custom brushes in Inkscape and use them in your work.
Believe it or not, Inkscape doesn’t have an actual brushes feature. However, you can do something similar by copying shapes to your clipboard and using the Draw Freehand Lines tool (which I’ll be referring to as the Pencil tool for the rest of this tutorial) to stretch those shapes along a path, which is pretty much exactly how brushes work in other applications.
Want to learn more about how Inkscape works? Check out the Inkscape Master Class - a comprehensive series of over 50 videos where I go over every tool, feature and function in Inkscape and explain what it is, how it works, and why it's useful: logosbynick.com/inkscape
Intro song: "In Da Mood" by Combustibles, used with written permission
For those of you who are freehand artists and illustrators, you may find yourselves working with brush strokes and pen tools more frequently than someone like me who does logos and branding. Sometimes the default options just won’t do though, so in this tutorial I’ll be demonstrating how to create custom brushes in Inkscape and use them in your work.
Believe it or not, Inkscape doesn’t have an actual brushes feature. However, you can do something similar by copying shapes to your clipboard and using the Draw Freehand Lines tool (which I’ll be referring to as the Pencil tool for the rest of this tutorial) to stretch those shapes along a path, which is pretty much exactly how brushes work in other applications.
Want to learn more about how Inkscape works? Check out the Inkscape Master Class - a comprehensive series of over 50 videos where I go over every tool, feature and function in Inkscape and explain what it is, how it works, and why it's useful: logosbynick.com/inkscape
Intro song: "In Da Mood" by Combustibles, used with written permission
