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Thread: Stiffness Strife

  1. #1
    Join Date
    Mar 2012
    Posts
    15

    Stiffness Strife

    Hello Team Artrage! I've tried searching for this issue without success, so forgive me if this has been brought up before.

    The problem really revolves (I think) around the Stiffness settings of the oil brush. I quite like to effect a stippling technique, but I find that if Stiffness is set to anything other than 100%, the brush profile loses its definition and is laid down as a primitive shape without texture. It's quite a tricky issue to describe: the left hand column of stiffness_1_edit.jpg are a series of strokes (brush size at 50%) with a tiny bit of direction, so the stroke retains all its bristle information and starts correctly. To the left are simple dabs, and you'll see that this are crude and without texture or proper size dynamic. Stiffness here is at 78%.

    stiffness_2_edit.jpg are the same stokes, but this time with Stiffness set to 100% - here you'll see both columns are rendering pretty much normally, with the left hand column 'dabs' being as small and textured as you'd expect.

    It's strange behaviour, and screwing around with my Wacom settings doesn't seem to alter anything. Stiffness does seem to me to be the culprit, and has strange effects on brush behaviour on anything less than 100%.
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  2. #2
    Join Date
    Jan 2014
    Location
    Australia
    Posts
    3,402
    I think you need to play around with the loading and stiffness settings - here are examples of settings I use for stipple.

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    June.

    Oh God of homeless things, look down
    And try to ease the way
    Of all the little weary paws
    That walk the world
    today.
    -
    Unknown.

    http://enug66.deviantart.com/gallery/

    [My setup: hp 15in laptop,11th Gen Intel Core i7-1165G7 @ 2.80GHz 2.70 GHz, 8.00 GB RAM, 24in Acer 2nd monitor, Huion Kamvas 20 Pro display tablet, Windows 11, ArtRage Vitae.
    My painting real-estate is extended across three monitors.]

  3. #3
    Join Date
    Nov 2013
    Posts
    1,993
    Higher Stiffness gives you more defined bristles, but the paint properties will matter.

    Yep. Your Thinners are very high, so the paint is quite watery and that means it's very difficult to keep a dab in the exact shape of the bristles. Loading affects how much paint per dab, so higher loading makes for more paint and therefore a more solid, less 'dry' dab. But your main issue is the Thinners there.

  4. #4
    Join Date
    Mar 2012
    Posts
    15
    Apologies, away from home for a few days - yes, Thinners probably plays a part but in truth I do paint with Thinners rather higher than even this. I suspect it's a balance between all the inputs but as the splodge 'defaults' to the maximum brush size it seems the effect can be a little alarming. It's nothing new and has certainly been a behaviour for as long as I can recall I think.

    Many thanks.

  5. #5
    Join Date
    Nov 2013
    Posts
    1,993
    Is it the translucent thinned out look you want? or just not having to switch around the settings constantly? If the former, you could try adjusting layer opacity.

    You may also want to try experimenting with the custom brushes, depending on what you are after.

  6. #6
    Join Date
    Mar 2012
    Posts
    15
    Yes, I think - if you check out my gallery you'll see some old stuff where I was experimenting with building up layers of colour and maybe coming in with something pretty opaque toward the end to add texture. In truth, working with adjusting layer opacity isn't something I've really had in my workflow but it might be worth trying out - I'm a forever dabbler in things. It's one of the reasons I like AR as it kind of throws in an element of randomness, whereas the PS/CSP models tend to be a bit predictable.

    Thank you for your help.

  7. #7
    Join Date
    Nov 2013
    Posts
    1,993
    Glad to help You may just find it easiest to set up custom presets and switch between them while you work, but there are definitely lots of approaches you can take.

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