I finally stopped obsessing over brush textures after a pro pointed out my mistake

I used to spend hours downloading fancy brush packs for my digital paintings, thinking that was the secret to making them look good. Last month, a guy in a Discord critique channel told me my forms were flat because I was relying on texture instead of lighting. He spent 10 minutes showing me his grayscale layer setup, and I realized I'd been avoiding the hard part of art all along. Has anyone else had that moment where a simple tip about values changed your whole process?

2 comments

2 Comments

morgan.logan1mo ago

The craziest part nobody talks about is how texture packs can actually hide bad anatomy. I learned that the hard way when I overlayed a cool grunge brush on a figure and the whole thing just looked like a messy blob. Once I ditched the fancy brushes and started doing 30 minute gesture drawings with a hard round brush, my work actually started looking like art instead of a filter experiment. Its like the texture was covering up the fact that I couldnt draw a foot to save my life.

oliviagrant1mo ago

My friend Ben spent six months on a single portrait using fancy brushes then realized the eyes were crooked.