Friday, May 6, 2011

Blog 7 Save your brush details...a weird way...but it works!

 Let me repeat "I experiment with brushes until I settle on one best for the area. I then record the settings for that brush INCLUDING all the numbers in the property bar.  It just isn't good enough to only remember which brush is used...size matters!!"
     I paint photorealism with a twist.  For those of us who are computer photo painters (instead of primarily wet paint artists) the digital brushes you use are your life blood.  Here is an early Brush Guide...when I first started making guides.
Notice... at the time... I didn't write the entire property bar code on the brush guide.  Although the name of the brush was helpful, I soon took the process 1 step farther.  "BUT BUT  you say...can't you save a variant of the brush you used? Why bother with an entire brush guide for each picture??"   Here's why:
    1. Brush size matters.  A small brush has an entirely different effect on a painting than the same brush at a larger size.  Brush guides remember for you.
    2.  A brush may be great for a sky on this picture but painting a Seal belly may be your next picture.  You want to remember not just the brush but where you used it.  Soon you have 16 Grass brushes...some for the hillside...others for a watery area...others for a lawn.  Brush guides remember for you.
    3. Once you've committed your painting to canvas and LOOKED at it...you may see you've missed spots or want to clone an ugly part of the picture away by using a different part of the picture.  But  touchups need the same brush to blend the old and new together. Brush guides remember for you.
    4. Finally, some photo painters, I'm told,  put TIME gaps between one painting and the next.  A brush guide for your last picture will help you start your next picture a month later.
Brush guides remember for you.
     Here's a link to the finished Arched Bridge image among others in that gallery:  http://www.strengthinperspective.com/Pictures-Oregon/ArchedBridges-63/ArchedBridges.html


Please let me know if anyone else makes a brush guide like this.  I'd love to look them up!

1 comment:

  1. Thanks for the tricks. Sorry my bad english, I am spanish

    ReplyDelete