Use the Paint Brush Tool to apply brush strokes to your design.
Sprays and Splatters
Oils
Pencils
Masking
Dry Media
Watercolor
Markers
Painting
Whether you want to add lens flare, clouds or smoke to create a fantasy-like composition, simulate splatter or spray strokes to add drama to a scene, or perhaps to turn your photo into an oil or watercolor painting to achieve that classic and timeless look, Affinity Photo 2 comes packed with a plethora of brush choices for numerous creative applications. Additionally, new brushes can be created from scratch or imported (.abr and .afbrushes formats) from a number of sources.
The Paint Brush Tool and other brush-based tools can be used to add brush strokes to your image for creative or corrective reasons. Each category in the Brushes panel contains brushes of varying properties and characteristics and they can be edited to suit individual creative needs.
The appearance of brush strokes are determined by a combination of the chosen brush tool, the Brushes panel and the tool's context toolbar.
To paint brush strokes:
Use the Layers panel to select the layer that you want to work on, or create a new layer.
From the Tools panel, select the Paint Brush Tool or other brush-based tool. (See tip below.)
Do one of the following:
On the Brushes panel, select a brush thumbnail of your choice. The tool uses a soft-round brush by default.
To continue with a previously used brush (current session only): On the Layers panel, select Recent brushes on the layer entry and select a brush thumbnail from the pop-up menu.
Adjust the context toolbar settings.
Select a stroke color from the Color panel.
Drag on the page in the direction that you want the brush stroke to follow.
By default, if you switch away from a brush tool, when you return to it the last used brush will be remembered (even any modified settings), with the Brushes panel automatically scrolling to the brush; switching across brush categories is automatic. You can switch off auto-scrolling/auto-switching in the Brushes panel's preferences if needed.
To use opacity quick keys:
Select a brush tool.
Press a numerical key, or two numerical keys in quick succession, to set the opacity. For example:
Press 4 for 40% opacity.
Press 0 for 100% opacity.
Press 4 and 5 for 45% opacity.
Press 0 and 7 for 7% opacity.
To smooth brush strokes as you paint:
On the context toolbar, enable the Stabilizer option and choose one of the following:
Rope mode—drag the stroke end by a 'rope' that smooths the stroke but lets you introduce sharp corners at increasing Length (radius) values by redirecting the slackened rope.
Window mode—smooths the stroke by averaging the stroke's position over a Window whose size is configurable.
To undo painted modifications:
From the Tools panel, select the Undo Brush Tool.
Paint over pixels which you want to return to their original value.
To erase brush strokes after you paint:
From the Tools panel, select the Erase Brush Tool.
Paint over areas of your brush stroke.
To rotate the brush nozzle as you paint using a keyboard:
Tap the left or right arrow keys to adjust the rotation of the nozzle.
To paint brush strokes:
To continue with a previously used brush (current session only): On the 
To undo painted modifications:
To erase brush strokes after you paint: