Customizing Your Own Brushes And Tools
(Or: How to Go Mad Scientist, Ditch the Brand-Name Bullshit, and Build Weapons for Art That Leaves a Scar)
Every time I see someone pay $40 for a brush just because it says “master series” or “synthetic squirrel,” I want to slap the receipt out of their hand and send them into the wild with a razor blade, some tape, and a stick. Listen up: the most iconic, aggressive, and unforgettable art wasn’t made with catalog-perfect tools. It was made with junk, with scraps, with bits and pieces that made other artists stare and mutter, “How the hell did you do that?”
If you want to make art that’s yours—art that’s raw, textured, unrepeatable—you need to start customizing your own brushes and tools. And if you’re still stuck thinking it’s “cheating,” remember: all the greats did it. Rembrandt, Turner, Pollock, Basquiat—they all built, cut, mangled, or stole their favorite tools.
Here’s the full, filthy, hands-on guide to customizing your kit, getting weird with materials, and never letting your brush tell you what kind of mark to make again.
1. Why Factory Tools Are Overrated (And Why DIY Matters)
Brand loyalty is for the bored: Companies sell uniformity. Great art comes from chaos, not conformity.
History is on your side: The oldest cave art was made with chewed twigs, animal hair, feathers, even bare hands dipped in spit and soot.
Your marks are your fingerprint: A brush that’s too “perfect” makes art that looks like everyone else’s. You want a signature? Build your own damn pen.
2. Step-By-Step: Customizing and Creating Brushes
A. The Frankenstein Brush Hack
Salvage Mode:
Grab old brushes, hair that’s fraying, cheap dollar store packs. Cut them at an angle, shave them jagged, bundle multiple tips with rubber bands.
— Fan out for drybrush texture.
— Slice unevenly for erratic marks—think grass, hair, or chaotic shadow.
Fusion:
Mix synthetic and natural bristles. Glue in a few pieces of string, animal hair, or plant fiber. Test. Repeat until the marks get wild.
Duct Tape Wizardry:
Build “brushes” out of chopsticks, Q-tips, sponges, brooms, sticks, leaves, even steel wool. Tape them to a stick or brush handle.
— Dip and test on scrap paper—no two marks are ever the same.
B. Digital Customization (for the Stylus Addicts)
Photoshop/Procreate Brush Hell:
— Scan weird marks you make with DIY brushes on paper.
— Turn them into brush shapes, play with scatter and pressure settings.
— Layer textures and opacity to get that “real” chaos.
Hybrid Tricks:
— Tape paper, bubble wrap, mesh, or cloth to your stylus. Let it “drag” across your tablet for analog feel.
3. Ingredient Hacks: Tools You Never Thought to Try
Combs and Forks: For wild line textures.
Feathers and Twigs: Perfect for unpredictable, hair-thin lines and scratching.
Steel Wool or Sandpaper: Drag for destructive highlights or to “age” a surface instantly.
Toothbrushes: Flick ink or paint for blood spatters, stars, or static.
Palette Knives, Credit Cards: Scrape, scumble, carve. Don’t buy one—cut one from an old gift card.
Survival strategy:
Never throw out broken tools. Half the best marks in my work came from a brush that lost its ferrule or a pen that bled itself dry.
4. Building the Brush: Quick-Start DIY
Snip off a lock of your own hair (or a pet’s—don’t ask).
Tape or glue into a split stick, pen body, or bamboo skewer.
Wrap tight with thread and finish with a dot of hot glue or resin.
Test it in ink, paint, mud—hell, try ketchup if you want—on paper, canvas, or walls.
Document the “accidents.”
— The best discoveries come when your homemade tool refuses to do what you expect.
5. Care and Feeding of Frankenstein Tools
Clean gently—don’t soak unless you want instant decay (sometimes you do).
If you use glue or tape, re-bind as needed.
Label your monsters if you want to remember what made that crazy mark (I never do; chaos is half the fun).
6. Confessions from the Trenches
I’ve painted with a stick I found in the gutter, a feather I stole from a crow, and a toothbrush that once cleaned my bike chain.
My favorite inking tool was a split coffee stirrer held together with Super Glue and spite.
Once, I taped three dead pens together and used the Frankenstein creation to make an entire comic page—jagged, messy, alive.
The moral? No tool is sacred. The only rule is whether the mark it makes is honest, raw, and yours.
7. The Final Dare: Break Your Own Rules
You want your work to stand out? Build the tools no one else dares to use. Hack, burn, tape, glue, tie, or break your way to a signature nobody else can fake.
Because the only brush worth using is the one you made yourself—
the one that’s wild, unpredictable,
and just a little bit dangerous.