tttia, the thing about yours is that your lines usually aren't clean. They have more of an artsy feel to them, running all over the assumed edges, creating that smudgey feel. If you clean up your lines, you can use those softer brushes and get away with it.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Here's an example of clean lines vs undefined ones. Both of these are done with a brush at 0% hardness, and around 15% opacity.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Hope that makes sense.

 

 

 

Incidentally froth, since I am working on my own brushing given folks determination that my brushes are too soft....what brush settings do you use for each stage?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

What hardness? saturation? opacity? etc. Which ones for the initial areas, or highlights etc.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I understand if you don't want to answer..but I would appreciate it if you did!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

For the base 40 opacity and 20 in brush size and hardness 0. For the shadows I keep it and 25 opacity and 4 in size. These aren't discrete values, I usually change it to all different values as I see fit for certain areas, but that was the values that was most commonly used.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Keiphus just explained the blurriness issue. If you look at the first version of this piece the arm appears really blurry, and to the final its a bit more defined, and appears sharpened yet still soft. I just cleaned up the edges. Also to get the colours to blend I smudged areas at around 20 opacity for the skin tones.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Anyway that's just how I personally do things, everyone's got a different way of doing things, I hope that helped.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Thanks for the comments everyone, and jab I'm living on the a 19th century monitor :lol:, so its colour correction is hopeless.