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My sister said my digital art looks too clean and it's missing a soul

We were looking at my latest character piece for a project, and she just casually said it looked like it was made by a machine because it was too perfect. I've been using the same brushes in Procreate for like two years and never thought about it. Do you ever worry your art feels too polished and loses its personal touch?

4 comments

4 Comments

kelly6382mo ago

Wait, you used the same brushes for two whole years?

cole_baker2mo ago

I used to think clean lines were the only mark of good digital art. Then a teacher in my second year of college made us do a whole project with only one messed up custom brush. Seeing my usual style next to that rough, textured work was a real wake up call. Now I'll purposely leave in some sketch layers or use a grunge overlay to break up that perfect feel.

morgan.rose1mo ago

I see it differently actually. Clean lines and polished work have their own kind of value and it's not somehow less than rough textured stuff. Plenty of artists I admire make their whole career on crisp vector art or smooth gradients without any "soul" being lost. The whole idea that messy equals authentic and clean equals fake feels like a shortcut to me. Some of the most lifeless boring art I've seen was trying way too hard to look raw and imperfect on purpose. Good art comes from knowing what you want to say, not from which brushes you pick.

wendy1312mo ago

That's a real artist move right there. Breaking your own habits shows you're actually growing. Too much polish can kill the soul of a piece.