Everyone says to use a light touch with digital brushes, but I ended up going way too heavy on a portrait last week in Denver

Has anyone else found that ignoring the 'subtle layering' advice actually works better for some styles?

3 comments

3 Comments

Go heavy and see what happens, sometimes that extra pressure creates this raw texture that looks more like real paint. The subtle layering crowd has their place, but for certain styles like abstract or gritty portraits, being bold with your brushwork gives the piece way more life. Have you tried pushing the opacity up to 80% and just letting the brush do the hard work?

king.andrew27d ago

Yeah sure, let me just crank it to 80% and hope my digital brush doesn't stage a rebellion lmao. Guess it's time to find out if this thing can handle the heat or just melts into a pixel puddle.

grantschmidt13d ago

I gave this a shot with a landscape piece a few months back, @king.andrew, and the "pixel puddle" thing is real if your layers aren't merged. I pushed opacity to 80% with a rough chalk brush and it actually made the sky look like old dried oil paint. The key for me was to keep my strokes quick and not overthink it, let the digital mess do its thing.