Pencil Tool Properties

The Preview area lets you see a preview of the selected or customized stroke. You can click on the Show Extended Properties arrow to display advanced customization parameters.

Defines the maximum size of your drawing tool. This parameter defines the width of the stroke.

Defines the number of control points added to the centre line. The fewer the control points the smoother (but less faithful) the line.

You can adjust the start, end, and joint style of a pencil line.

• Start: Lets you select the style of the start tip, which is the first tip you drew. You can choose between Round or Flat style.
• End: Lets you select the style of the end tip, which is the last tip you drew. You can choose between Round or Flat style.
• Join: Lets you select the joint style. The joints are where the line curves abruptly. You could also define the Join style as the corner style. You can choose between Round, Mitre and Bevel style.

Harmony provides a variety of pencil presets and thickness stencils and also lets you create and save your own. It is a good idea to create and save pencils with precise sizes and parameters when you draw and design for efficiency and consistency.

A thickness stencil saves the thickness information across the length of the line. When drawing with a thickness stencil, the pressure sensitivity of the tablet is discarded. A thickness stencil can be used while drawing, or applied afterwards.

You also have the possibility to apply different textures to your lines by either using the default presets or importing your own —See About Pencil Line Texture. .

You can export the pencil presets that you have created and import those that others have created. This is a good way for you and project collaborators to keep a consistent look for the project.

Allows to create a new preset.

Allows you to delete your custom presets.

Allows you to rename a custom preset.

Allows you to import a set of XML Harmony presets previously exported via the Export Brushes command.

Allows you to export Harmony presets to backup or import on a different computer.

Allows you to display the presets as small square thumbnails, large square thumbnails or a list of stroke preview.

When drawing on vector layers, the Draw Behind mode lets you paint behind existing art. By default, strokes appear over your work until you release the tool.

As you draw in the Line Art layer, the Automatically Create Colour Art option instantly creates the corresponding strokes in the Colour Art layer.

When enabled, the Auto-Flatten mode automatically flattens the new lines created with the existing artwork as you draw in the Drawingview. Brush strokes will flatten with brush strokes and pencil lines will flatten with pencil lines.

When using the pencil tool, you can automatically close strokes with an invisible stroke.

It is recommended to keep this option enabled when drawing with the Pencil tool.

The Line Building mode is very useful when drawing long lines and curves in small increments with pencil lines or the Line tool. As the pencil lines are central vector lines, it may be difficult to align the line tips perfectly to create a uniform stroke and close all gaps.

In this mode, you can draw lines in small increments and the tips are merge into one single stroke.

The Auto Adjust Thickness tool is useful when you want to render a portion of a line thicker. When tracing a drawing on paper, you will often go back to a section of a curve to make it thicker to add dynamism to the line. Using the Auto Adjust Thickness tool, you can draw highlight strokes over the section to make thicker. Once you release the pen or mouse, the line becomes thicker following the shape and curve of the original stroke. This way is much faster and smoother than using the Pencil Editor tool. You do not have to add extra points and adjust the position and Bezier handles.

The default overlay colour is light yellow. If this colour is difficult to see because of the background or drawing colour, you can adjust the colour.

The Line Pushing Mode option lets you draw highlight strokes over existing pencil lines. You can reshape the curves. Depending how you draw the pushing stroke over your line, the highlighted section will be reshaped in one direction or the other.

The default overlay colour is light yellow. If this colour is difficult to see because of the background or drawing colour, you can adjust the colour.

Defines the minimum size of your stroke as a percentage of the maximum size. If you do not have pressure sensitivity from a pen table, the minimum size value will be ignored.

You can add a pencil texture to your preset preferences.

Adds a new custom pencil texture to the list.

Harmony provides a variety of pencil texture presets and also lets you create and save your own.