What are different types of Brushes?

Brush types

There are mainly three types of brushes.

Solid brush - Solid color filling
Hash brush - Filling with Hash lines
Pattern brush - Filling with a patthern image

Brush Win32 APIs

These are raw Win32 APIs for creating a handle to the brush. These APIs take verious attributes of the brush and returns the handle of the brush object.

CreateSolidBrush - Creates a brush with a solid color
CreateHatchBrush - Creates a brush with a hatch pattern and color
CreatePatternBrush - Creates a brush with a bitmap pattern
CreateDIBPatternBrushPt - Creates a brush with the pattern from a DIB
CreateBrushIndirect - Creates a brush with a specified style, color, and pattern

Note: CreateBrushIndirect is a single API create solid, hatch and pattern brushes. This takes a generic LOGBRUSH structure as an input. Style, color, pattern and attributes are the given in different members of this structure. CreateBrushIndirect call thus can replace CreateSolidBrush, CreateHatchBrush and CreatePatternBrush calls.

Device context can associate a brush to the drawing context using SelectObject() API. Brush object can be released from memory uing DeleteObject() call.

Solid Brush

Single RGB color is required to create a solid brush. Thus a single paramater is required. CreateSolidBrush API function cal be called or CBrush MFC class can be used. Brush can be created using overloaded constructor or calling CreateSolidBrush() member function.

class CMyWnd : public CFrameWnd
{
  public:
    CMyWnd()
    {
      Create(NULL, _T("Brush Demo"));
    }
 
    void OnPaint();
    DECLARE_MESSAGE_MAP()
};
BEGIN_MESSAGE_MAP(CMyWnd, CFrameWnd)
ON_WM_PAINT()
ON_WM_CLOSE()
END_MESSAGE_MAP()

void CMyWnd::OnPaint()
{

	CBrush Brush;
	Brush.CreateSolidBrush(RGB(232,166,153));
	
	PAINTSTRUCT ps;
	RECT rect;
	GetClientRect(&rect);
	CDC *dc = BeginPaint(&ps);
	dc->SelectObject(&Brush);
	dc->Rectangle(&rect);
	dc->SetBkColor(RGB(232,166,153));
	dc->DrawText("Brush Demo",10,&rect,DT_CENTER|DT_VCENTER|DT_SINGLELINE);

	EndPaint(&ps);
}
class CMyApp : public  CWinApp 
{
  public:
     virtual BOOL InitInstance()
    {
      m_pMainWnd = new CMyWnd();
      m_pMainWnd->ShowWindow(SW_SHOW);
      m_pMainWnd->UpdateWindow();
      m_pMainWnd->SetWindowPos(NULL,0,0,225,140,SWP_NOZORDER|SWP_NOMOVE);
      return TRUE;
    }
 };
CMyApp app;

Solid Brush output

Hatch Brush

Hatch Brush requires hatch line style and a solid color. Thus two paramaters are required. CreateHatchBrush API function cal be called or CBrush MFC class can be used. This brush is created using overloaded constructor or calling CreateHatchBrush() member function.

/* Hatch Styles */
#define HS_HORIZONTAL       0       /* ----- */
#define HS_VERTICAL         1       /* ||||| */
#define HS_FDIAGONAL        2       /* \\\\\ */
#define HS_BDIAGONAL        3       /* ///// */
#define HS_CROSS            4       /* +++++ */
#define HS_DIAGCROSS        5       /* xxxxx */

void CMyWnd::OnPaint()
{

	CBrush Brush;
	Brush.CreatePatternBrush(HS_HORIZONTAL, RGB(232,166,153));
	
	PAINTSTRUCT ps;
	RECT rect;
	GetClientRect(&rect);
	CDC *dc = BeginPaint(&ps);
	dc->SelectObject(&Brush);
	dc->Rectangle(&rect);
	dc->SetBkColor(RGB(232,166,153));
	dc->DrawText("Brush Demo",10,&rect,DT_CENTER|DT_VCENTER|DT_SINGLELINE);
	EndPaint(&ps);
}

Hatch Brush output

HS_HORIZONTAL	HS_VERTICAL

HS_FDIAGONAL	HS_BDIAGONAL

HS_CROSS	HS_DIAGCROSS

Pattern Brush

Pattern Brush, as the name suggests is a brush with a bitmap pattern. It takes a single parameter of a bitmap handle. CreatePatternBrush API function can be called or CBrush MFC class can be used. This brush is created using overloaded constructor which takes a CBitmap or CreatePatternBrush() member function.

void CMyWnd::OnPaint()
{

	CBrush Brush;
	Brush.CreateSolidBrush(RGB(232,166,153));
	
	PAINTSTRUCT ps;
	RECT rect;
	GetClientRect(&rect);
	CDC *dc = BeginPaint(&ps);
	dc->SelectObject(&Brush);
	dc->Rectangle(&rect);
	dc->SetBkColor(RGB(232,166,153));
	dc->DrawText("Brush Demo",10,&rect,DT_CENTER|DT_VCENTER|DT_SINGLELINE);

	EndPaint(&ps);
}

Pattern Brush output

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