Had a talk with a retired illustrator at a coffee shop in Portland

This old guy named Frank told me he used to do all his art by hand with brushes and ink, and he said my digital stuff lacks 'texture' - meaning it just looks too clean and fake. He pulled out a sketch from 1989 of a city street that had these scratchy lines that felt alive, and it hit me that I rely way too much on smooth gradients and undo buttons. Now I'm trying to add some messy brush strokes to my pieces, but it still feels forced - has anyone else tried to blend traditional techniques into digital without it looking like a cheap filter?

3 comments

3 Comments

reed.elliot20d ago

Frank probably retired because his hands gave out from all that real texture, not because he wanted to gatekeep digital art from his coffee shop throne. You tried adding messy brush strokes and it feels forced because your brain keeps going "undo, undo, undo" every time a line goes slightly crooked. Real traditional artists just lived with their mistakes and called it "character" which is basically just cope for not having Ctrl+Z. Try drawing with your non-dominant hand or using a dried out sharpie on cardboard, that will give you the scratchy chaos you're chasing without the fake filter look.

oscarc1220d ago

Did you see that article about how Renaissance painters basically had no do-overs either, @reed.elliot?

fiona_west2119d ago

Man, but didn't those Renaissance guys also spend years grinding with the same materials before they got good? Seems like they had a lot of practice making mistakes before they learned to "live with them.