Smudge brush

Smudge drags color the way a fingertip drags wet chalk: it picks up the color where your stroke starts and mixes it into everything it crosses. It is the soft answer to the Paint screen’s crisp pixels.

Where it lives

Smudge is a mode of the Pen, not a separate tool. In the paint screen, tap Pen once to select it, then tap it again to open its pop-out:

← Pen ▾

Size

DrawSmudge

The Size row works for both modes: size 1 nudges single pixels, bigger sizes sweep wider.

How it behaves

• The stroke grabs the color under its starting texel, so where you touch down decides what gets dragged.
• As it moves, the carried color keeps absorbing what it passes over, half and half, so a long stroke fades naturally from one color into the next.
• While Smudge is on, holding still is part of the drag, so the long-press eyedropper takes a break. Flip back to Draw to pick colors again.

When to reach for it

Smudge shines on soft things: shading a cheek, feathering a shadow under a brim, melting two sky colors together, roughing up a too-clean edge. For outlines, dots, and anything that should stay sharp, Draw is the better half: crisp pixels are the charm of the style, and Smudge deliberately trades crispness for blend.

Start the stroke ON the color you want to spread. The first texel is the paint on the fingertip.