Here’s the first tutorial I’ve been brave enough to narrate. Here are the steps you’ll see me go through in the video…….

1. Photograph your subject.

I brought some black card with me on a walk and placed it behind some flowers to photograph them. You can do this at home with any object you wish to make a brush from. Brushes are made from black and white images so I recommend you use either a black or white background.

2. Bring your photograph into Adobe Photoshop®.

You can download a free trial from Adobe.com.

3. Duplicate the background layer.

(CMD + J on a Mac). Turn off your background layer (the one with the padlock) by clicking on the eye icon to the left. Now we can experiment with our image knowing if we make a mistake we can always go back to the background layer and make another copy.

4. De-saturate the image (turn it black and white).

Click Edit, click Adjustments and then scroll down to click de-saturate.

5. Crop the image.

I cropped in to isolate the flowers I wanted to make the brush from, you may not need to.

6. Levels Adjustment Layer.

We use Levels to amplify the blacks and whites making sure there's good contrast between the two.

7. Clean up.

Add a blank layer on top of all your layers and with a soft brush set at 100% opacity take the colour black and paint all around the edge of the frame and any areas that you don't want in your final brush. If you miss the edges of your canvas now you will end up with harsh straight lines around the edge of your finished brush which will be disappointing.