Select, pencil, brush, and eraser

Summary

Select picks up and moves existing layers. Pencil and Brush draw freehand strokes onto a paint layer — Pencil thin and hard-edged, Brush thicker with adjustable softness. Eraser removes part of a paint layer's content the same way you drew it. All four are in the creative tool rail.

Use it when

• Use Select to move, resize, or delete anything already on the artboard.
• Use Pencil for thin, precise linework.
• Use Brush for thicker strokes with adjustable size, hardness, and tip shape.
• Use Eraser to remove part of a paint layer without deleting the whole layer.

Before you begin

No upload or format decision is required — all four tools work on a blank artboard. Eraser needs an existing paint layer to act on; using it with nothing painted yet has nothing to erase.

Steps

1. Select a tool in the creative tool rail, or press its shortcut: Select (V), Pencil (N), Brush (B), Eraser (E).
2. With Pencil or Brush, check Creative properties before you draw:
   • Pencil — Brush size only.
   • Brush and Eraser — Brush size, Hardness, and Tip shape (Round, Square, Calligraphic 45°).
3. Drag on the artboard to draw or erase a stroke.
4. Draw again — by default, additional strokes join the same paint layer you're currently working on.
5. Select New paint layer in Creative properties before drawing to start a separate paint layer instead of adding to the current one.
6. Switch to Select, then click a layer on the artboard — or click its row in Layers — to select it for moving, resizing, or deleting.

What changes

• Each Pencil or Brush stroke is added to the currently active paint layer (named Paint N) — confirmed by drawing two separate strokes without selecting New paint layer in between, which stayed on one layer.
• Selecting New paint layer before your next stroke creates a genuinely separate layer with its own name, position, and delete/hide/lock controls.
• A paint layer's Transform panel reflects a tight bounding box around whatever you've actually drawn on it, not a fixed canvas-sized frame.
• Paint layers do not have an Adjust group — no Crop, Contrast, or other raster-image controls apply to them, unlike placed images and templates.
• Eraser edits the selected paint layer's content directly; it does not create a layer of its own.
• Select followed by Delete removes only the layer that was selected — other layers are unaffected.

Print note

Pencil, Brush, and Eraser strokes are part of the actual artwork on the artboard — unlike rulers, guides, and grid overlays, they are included in exported output. This article does not verify exported stroke fidelity (anti-aliasing, minimum line weight at print resolution); confirm that separately if it matters for your order.

Warnings and limits

• There is no visible "you are now adding to Paint 2" confirmation beyond the Layers list itself — if you meant to start a fresh layer and forgot to select New paint layer first, your stroke joins whatever paint layer was already active. Check Layers after drawing if you're unsure.
• Eraser only affects the currently selected paint layer. If the wrong layer is selected, erasing does nothing to the artwork you actually meant to change.
• Paint layers have no Adjust controls — there is no way to crop or level-adjust a paint stroke the way you can an image. Redraw or erase instead.

Desktop and mobile

The tool rail, its shortcuts, and the Creative properties panel are reachable the same way on desktop and mobile, per The editor at a glance and Artboard, stage, and tool rail — on mobile, tool selection opens the Creative tools sheet containing Creative properties rather than showing it inline. Actual drawing was verified with synthetic mouse events at desktop width in this session; touch-drag drawing on a real mobile device was not independently re-tested.

Troubleshooting

Related topics

• Shapes, paths, and text
• Fill, stroke, palette, and color
• Select, reorder & rename (Layers and layout)
• Undo, redo, fit & recenter

Verification note

Verified against Blotter Builder on 2026-07-20.

Source notes

Primary observations — all from the live application at https://blotterbuilder.tdl.fyi, 2026-07-20. Drawing and erasing were exercised by dispatching native mousedown/mousemove/mouseup sequences directly on the editor's Fabric.js upper-canvas element (identified via its lower-canvas/upper-canvas class names), after left_click_drag attempts on the artboard did not register — this app's canvas library listens for real mouse events with incremental movement, not a single click-and-release.

• Observed — a Pencil drag created a layer named Paint 1 in Layers, with a visible thin stroke on the artboard.
• Observed — a second Pencil drag, made without selecting New paint layer, did not add a second layer — Layers still showed only Paint 1.
• Observed — selecting New paint layer and then drawing again added Paint 2 as a separate layer above Paint 1.
• Observed — Creative properties for a selected paint layer showed no Adjust group in the inspector (confirmed absent: Uploads, Library, Templates, Layers, Saved drafts, Transform, Color, Creative properties, Creative filters — no Adjust), compared with Adjust being present for image and template layers in earlier articles.
• Observed — Transform for a small paint stroke reported a tight bounding box (W 1.41in, H 0.72in) rather than the artboard's full size.
• Observed — selecting the Eraser tool, selecting the Paint 1 layer, and dragging across the middle of its stroke produced a visibly lighter segment at the erase point.
• Observed — selecting Brush and drawing produced a visibly much thicker stroke than Pencil at each tool's default Brush size (Brush defaults to 12px, Pencil to 2px, per Artboard, stage, and tool rail).
• Observed — with Select active, clicking on the artboard selected a layer (the inspector showed Transform with a populated W value).
• Observed — selecting a layer and choosing Delete in Layers removed only that layer; the others remained.

Verification log