Stencil Brush

The Stencil Brush tool allows you to repaint vector drawings. When this tool is enabled, your strokes will only be applied to any existing pencil or brush strokes in the Drawing view and not add colour to empty areas. This is useful for changing the colour, shading or applying texture to your vector drawings.

TIP You can protect sections of your artwork from the Stencil Brush by locking your colour palettes.

For more information about locking your colour palettes, see Protecting Colours.

The Stencil Brush has the following two modes:

  • Overlay Brush Mode

  • Repaint Brush Mode

To select the Stencil Brush, do the following:

  1. Select and hold the Brush tool.

    A dropdown menu will appear.

  2. Select Stencil Brush.

Overlay Brush Mode

The Overlay Brush Mode is used to colour over or apply textures to a section of an existing artwork by manually painting over the lines or shapes. The Overlay Brush Mode acts like the Brush tool, but will only show within the boundary of an area that is already painted. It uses the artwork on the selected layers as a mask for the creation of new strokes on the current layer.

The strokes made with the Stencil Brush in this mode can be deleted, translated or adjusted without affecting the original artwork below.

This mode can support both textured brushes and semi-transparent brushes. In both cases, it will blend with the colours below. This is the feature that will allow your textures to feather out. Additionally, by repeating strokes, the Overlay Brush Mode will be additive and the transparent strokes can be stacked, building to your ideal opacity to achieve your desired effect.

  1. Select the Stencil Brush.

  2. In the Tool Properties window, click and hold the Brush Stencil dropdown menu.

  3. Select Overlay Brush Mode.

With the Overlay Brush Mode selected, you are capable of both using the Overlay Brush Mode on a single Drawing layer, or you can perform a multi-selection on multiple layers at once.

  1. Create a new empty Drawing layer on the Timeline.

    NOTE This layer should be above the layers you want affected by the Overlay Brush Mode.

  2. Select your new empty Drawing Layer.

  3. Holding Shift, click the last Drawing layer you want affected.

  4. Select the Stencil Brush.

  5. In the Tool Properties window, click and hold the Brush Stencil dropdown menu.

  6. Select Overlay Brush Mode.

  7. Select your colour. Set your texture and desired opacity.

  8. Paint.

Repaint Brush Mode

The Repaint Brush Mode is used to repaint a section of an existing artwork by manually painting over the lines or shapes. This is useful when the vectorization triangles are not placed as you would like or you simply need to repaint a section of a segment. The Repaint Brush Mode acts like the Brush tool, but will only show within the boundary of an area that is already painted.

Unlike the Overlay Brush Mode Mode, the Repaint Brush Mode flattens automatically. The silhouette of the original artwork will not be changed; however, a new shape will be created to replace the section which has been repainted.

TIP If you repaint semi-transparent artwork, your artwork will not become more opaque than it already is.
NOTE The Repaint Brush Mode will not support transparencies nor effects.

  1. Select the Stencil Brush.

  2. In the Tool Properties window, click and hold the Brush Stencil dropdown menu.

  3. Select Repaint Brush Mode.