You are currently viewing The best hair brushes for Procreate (review + (free) downloads)
Tags:

The best hair brushes for Procreate (review + (free) downloads)

I went on the ultimate quest to find the best hair brushes for Procreate in 2022 and here’s what I have found:

The best hair brushes for Procreate in 2022 are the realistic hair brushes pack by Laura H. Rubin. These brushes are also included in one of the most popular brush packs for realism and are bought by over 2000 people with an average of 4,9/5 stars.

Keep reading to find out:

  • Which native brushes that come with Procreate are best for hair
  • Which free downloadable hair brushes are best for Procreate
  • Which realistic hair brush pack is best for Procreate

This article may contain affiliate links at no extra cost to you. AF links help support this blog so that it can exist and expand for years to come!

The best realistic hair brush pack for Procreate

After testing multiple brush packs and single downloadable brushes I’ve narrowed the best ones down to the 20 Hair Brushes for High Realism by Laura H. Rubin. Let’s do a review!

The best Procreate brush pack for realistic hair are the ”20 Hair Brushes For High Realism” by Laura H. Rubin. This brush pack contains 20 individual hair brushes, including:

  • A ”Hair Brush”
    • The best brush I’ve found to draw flyaways and single strands
  • 18 hair strand brushes
    • 2 of which are with glow
    • These brushes create lots of strands of hair in one brush stroke
  • A ”Tiny Hairs” brush
    • This brush is great for short-length rough hair like a beard or fur

Who is Laura H. Rubin?

You might have heard of Laura, the creator of these brushes. With over 752,000 Instagram followers she’s one of the biggest and most popular artists on social media.

Her digital art consists of realistic emotional portrait drawings. Just look at all of those (hair) details!

Wonder how she did it? For one, she creates all of her brushes on her own.

And she now has made them available to the public!

Here is a swatch card of all of the 20 hair brushes in the 20 Hair Brushes for High Realism brush pack:

best hair brushes procreate
procreate best hair brush

As you can see these brushes are a nice mix of different strands. I find the Hair Brush (number 1) helpful to draw outlines of the hairshape, including flyaways.

Number 10 for example is the one I use for eyebrows. Number 6 is my go to for the first layer of hair.

Here’s an example of how Brush Strand 10 looks like in a painting:

You can view the brushes in action at the top of this article. (I recommend watching this video on desktop or on full screen because the tiny details are too small to see otherwise).

Shoud I buy the 20 Hair Brushes for High Realism by Laura H. Rubin?

The 20 Hair Brushes for High Realism are definitely worth your money. I cannot recommend these brushes enough. I use them for all of my portraits and even my stylized illustrations.

If your into realism this brush pack is an absolute must. There’s no Procreate paint session I go without using these brushes.

How much does this brush pack cost?

The 20 Hair Brushes for High Realism cost $15 but it’s now reduced to only $7. You can buy them here:

Loading…

You can also click here to buy the brush pack (It’s the same link as the embedded link above, only it takes you to the Gumroad website instead).

But wait, there’s more!

If you’re into realistic hair brushes you might also be interested in realistic skin brushes.

Laura has also created a brush pack that includes all of the brushes she’s ever made. They’re the same brushes she uses in her award winning digital artwork.

This brush pack is called the Ultimate Brush Set with 102 Brushes. It includes:

  • All of the 20 hair brushes reviewed above + extra
  • Fur brushes
  • Every single brush you’ll need to create realistic portraits
    • Skin textures
      • Freckles, birthmarks, goosebumps etc.
    • Skin pigment
  • + a lot more

I’ve made a review of the Ultimate Brush Set with 102 Brushes which you can find here. Spoiler alert: they are amazing!

The brush pack cost $19 and my only regret is not getting them sooner.

You can shop shop them here:

Buy the Ultimate Brush Set

Laura H. Rubin digital brushes are available for Procreate as well as Photoshop. Make sure to select the correct one before purchasing!

Best native hair brushes that come with Procreate

If you’re on a tight budget I understand you don’t want to spend money. Luckily, Procreate comes with a few default hair brushes.

You find all of these brushes in the brush library.

The hair brushes Procreate comes with are:

  • Fine Hair Brush
    • You find this brush under Touchups
  • Flowing Hair brush
    • You find this brush under Touchups
  • Short hair brush
    • You find this brush under Touchups
  • Stubble
    • You find this brush under Touchups
native procreate hair brushes

All of these brushes are great hair brushes. The only thing I don’t like about them is that they are not streamlined.

This means that when you paint with them the strokes look very wobbly. That’s why I advice you to increase the streamline. To do this, you:

  1. Select the hair brush and then tap it again to go to the brush studio
  2. Select Stroke Path
  3. Increase the streamline
  4. Hit done

Now when you paint you see that the strokes are nicely streamlined.

Another thing to note is that the end don’t taper.

taper brush in procreate

To make the ends taper, you

  1. Select the hair brush and then tap it again to go to the brush studio
  2. Go to Taper
  3. Increase the size, opacity and pressure
  4. Still in the Taper tab, scroll down to uncheck classic taper
    • This makes sure both ends taper! (It’s a problem lots of users have)
  5. Go to Apple Pencil
  6. Increase the size to your liking (watch how much it tapers on your drawing pad)
  7. Optional: set flow to 0 if you want a uniform stroke
  8. Hit done

Procreate hair brushes (free) download

The downside of looking for free downloadable hair brushes is that you can’t always trust that the finished product is what you’re looking for.

Since they are free, you can’t expect the best. However, sometimes there’s that little gem that does the trick.

Here’s a list of free downloadable hair brushes for Procreate:

If you want quality hair brushes for Procreate you need to buy them. Since you pay for them you can expect high end brushes.

Here are 3 more advantages of buying hair brushes for Procreate instead of downloading free ones:

  • The creator of the brushes often include a tutorial
  • If you end up not liking the brushes chances are you can get a refund
    • This is not always the case though, so read the description to make sure
  • Sometimes the owner updates or adds to the brush pack which you then can download for free (happened to me with the Laura H. Rubin brushes!)

That being said, there are other hairbrushes that are worth checking out (not free).

Here’s a list of hair brushes for Procreate:

Here’s a list of curly hair brushes for Procreate:

Here’s a list of downloadable fur brushes for Procreate:

I’ll update these lists as I find new ones.

Curly hair brushes in Procreate

Creating curly hair in Procreate is all about the technique and not so much about a special brush. However, some hair brushes have a rougher surface which seem to imitate curls more than a regular hair brush.

To create curls in Procreate you need a regular hair brush. But you can, however, use a stamp brush that automatically creates curls.

There is not a specific hair brush for curls that comes with Procreate. But you can use the following native Procreate brush to create curls:

  • Fine Hair brush
    • Find this brush under Touchups > Fine Hair
    • Great for any curl
  • Flowing Hair brush
    • Find this brush under Touchups > Flowing Hair
    • Great for any curl
  • Short Hair brush
    • Find this brush under Touchups > Short Hair
    • Great for soft fluffy curls
  • Hard Rain brush
    • Find this brush under Elements > Haird Rain
    • Great for afro hair-do’s
  • Sable brush
    • Organic > sable
    • Great for tight curls

I made sure my strokes didn’t come out wobbly by increasing the streamline. You do this by tapping on your brush in the brush library > Stroke Path > increase Streamline.

hair brushes in procreate
curly hair brushes in procreate



If you want an instant curly hair brush you can create a stamp brush of your own, containing pre-drawn curls. The downside to this is that all of your curls are the same.

Therefore you must make a few stamp brushes for variety’s sake.

However, some brushes are more suitable for curly hair. Curly hair has a bit of a rougher surface so this can be reflected in the brush.

Here are some (free) downloadable Procreate brushes for curly hair:



Mini step by step how to draw curls in Procreate

Whenever I draw a curly hairdo I first draw a line with a regular pencil. This line containts as much loops as I want.

The tighter the curl, the closer the loops are together.

After that, I go over these lines with a hair brush. This creates the following effect:

curly hair brush procreate

When I work on hair in an actual painting I always start with the contour of the hair shape. Then, I use a lighter and darker values to create depth.

  1. Use a medium hard brush to create the shape of the hair
  2. Pick a hair brush (I used Procreate’s Flowing Hair brush) to go over the edges of the shape. I added longer hair on the bottom.
  3. Lighten the value slightly and go over the shape using a variation of a curl explained above
  4. Repeat step 3 with an even lighter value
  5. Pick a lighter value than step 4 and add highlights to make the curl stand out
  6. Pick a dark value (but still lighter than your shape value) and create shadows to visualise depth
how to draw curly hair procreate

I’ll be making a full step-by-step tutorial on how to make curls in an upcoming article, so be sure to get notified when it’s ready!

Frequently Asked Questions about hair brushes for Procreate

Here are some of the most common questions regarding digital hair brushes for Procreate:

Does Procreate come with hair brushes?

Procreate has 4 hair brushes: the Fine Hair brush, the Flowing Hair brush, the Short Hair brush and the Stubble brush. You find these brushes in the brush library under Touchups.

What Procreate brush looks like fur?

The Hard Rain brush and the Sable brush that come with Procreate can be used to resemble fur. You find both these brushes in the brush library: the Hard Rain brush under Elements and the Sable brush under Organic.

I hope you now know which brushes to use for your next digital artwork. If you have any questions you can leave them down below.

Happy painting!

♡ Laura (Not the Laura mentioned in this article :’) )

Leave a Reply