Founded by Dustin Lee, RetroSupply Co. is one of the most prolific resources for midcentury-inspired graphic design assets. Dustin established the studio and creative market as an avenue to sell realistic textures, brushes, fonts, layer styles, and print effects for digital artworks and graphic designs.
Dustin has been enamored with midcentury design elements since his youth, when he’d spend time at older relatives’ homes. His uncle had a collection of various relics from the 40s, 50s, and 60s, including comic books, cone-top beer cans, and hardware boxes. As a young adult, Dustin stayed with his grandmother at her home, a place that was packed with memorabilia from days long since passed. While he was there, he explored these midcentury treasures and set out to find ways to accurately recreate their effects digitally.
To begin the process, Dustin scanned product boxes and worked to replicate their aged textures. He also discovered that by using real-world objects like wood, ink, and paper, 60-year old wax oil crayons, foil, garage grime, and coffee and oil spills, he was able to craft realistic distressed effects that add a truly antique appeal to contemporary design projects.
Over the years that have passed since RetroSupply Co. began, Dustin has worked with a full team of designers, illustrators, and other visual creators to design and release a body of work that continues to grow. For graphic designers who regularly work with midcentury design, RetroSupply Co. is a must-have resource for design assets.
One of their most recent releases is The Dry Brush Pack for Procreate. Exclusive to the iPad, Procreate is a powerful digital illustration tool for creative professionals. Procreate comes with more than 130 brushes in its standard library, but The Dry Brush Pack for Procreate from RetroSupply provides illustrators with “the only dry brushes you’ll ever need.”
This collection offers 15 distinctive brushes that were designed to perfectly emulate the classic dry brush appearance loved by commercial artists and illustrators everywhere. The brushes in The Dry Brush Pack for Procreate work well separately or together to create that signature dry brush look often found in children’s books and mid-century commercial illustrations. The complete set includes classic dry brushes, extra dry brushes, dry washes, brayer, grit, shaders, pencils, and more.
When RetroSupply Co. set out to create this pack, they had professional artists and illustrators try their hand with them. The feedback they provided helped RetroSupply Co. to tweak each brush to absolute perfection.
The brushes in this collection are perfect for book illustrations, posters, commercial artwork, editorial illustrations, and even “low brow quirky retro art.” Working in Procreate, illustrators can select 2-3 brushes to create different and distinctive illustrative styles with dry brush work – digitally!
The Classic Dry Brush is a general purpose dry brush that’s not too heavily loaded with “paint” but not too dry, either. It’s ideal for adding texture to landscapes. If you’re looking for more grit, Gringo Grit is the perfect brush for adding some down-and-dirty patina and age to illustrated objects.
The Blunted Pencil is a soft pencil that’s perfect for initial sketches. For more finished line work, you can use its “diverse powers of pressure sensitivity” to create a variety of line widths and textures for visual interest.
The Sketcher Pencil is the perfect starter pencil. The fine point enables the illustrator to block out ideas without too much getting in the way as the details intensify on the screen. Dusty’s Grit Liner is kind of the outcast of the group, one that’s handy for adding more dimension and texture to your work.
The Badlands Brayer is an incredibly diverse brush that emulates a little more wetness without too much paint. RetroSupply Co. said this brush is “perfect for everything from California sunsets to bullet-riddled fences.”
Sand Stripe is another brush that’s strictly for adding visual interest and texture. This brush was designed to add wispy details (think horsetails, hair, grassy plains) but used in an enlarged setting, it’s great for adding wood grain textures.
The Dry Wrangler brush applies paint from a super dry and stiff fine-bristled brush. The Dry Wrangler is great for adding shading, texture, and subtle aged distress and weathering. If you’re looking to create the appearance of aged paper and parchment, this brush is ideal.
Thin Crayon is a brush that was actually based on an unreliable crayon. This brush is designed to create imperfect line details, so it’s perfect for anywhere you need to add broken lines to your work.
The Magic Wash brush begins with an ultra-light faded grit to a paint-filled dry brush as the pen pressure increases. It’s great for sweeping grainy lines or to add subtle distressing to illustrations or text.
Sun Baked Freckles is a workhorse brush that’s designed for shading and texturing. Toothy Filler enables you to fill in large areas while giving a textured bit to the edges.
The Dry Wood brush acts much like a wet brush that’s been unloaded on the paper, giving you the same texture you’d achieve through one perfect stroke between a loaded paintbrush and a completely dry one.
The last two brushes in this collection are shaders. The Dry Brush Shader adds an “almost magical looking depth and shadow” with its classic dry brush look, while the soft pencil shader is designed for adding more subtle, gritty shading.
If you work in Procreate, The Dry Brush Pack for Procreate is one you’ll want to add to your toolbox right away.
RetroSupply Co. currently offers more than 120 products through YouWorkForThem. If you enjoy working with midcentury design aesthetics, visit their portfolio to check out the rest of their work and bookmark it so you have it close at hand for your next design project!
The Dry Brush Pack for Procreate was published by RetroSupply Co. on May 15, 2019.
