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Thread: Another Pear - A Test for my SquareMess custom brushes

  1. #1
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    Another Pear - A Test for my SquareMess custom brushes

    Painted this with 2 of my custom "SquareMess" brushes.

    The sketch below was painted from memory only (no reference) as a test for the brushes.

    Click image for larger version. 

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  2. #2
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    That’s excellent DO! You have the balancing act handled between realism and painterly!

    There are two brownish brush strokes below the stem that the square brush, for my taste, stands out a “teency” bit to much but those are the only two two brush strokes that my mind “sees”.

    As a rule now I always wait an hour, come back to the painting and then I create a list of no more than Ten items to fix. If I only find five then cool! I wait until the next day to fix my mistakes. Sometimes I see more. Repaint, then do the same process one more time. I usually never have to go to the third day. If I was that sloppy then the painting is probable a bummer anyway.

    Great painting Mate!

    Robert
    Robert Hopkins

  3. #3
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    Thanks Robert! Really liking the power of the custom brushes. Looking forward to doing a proper piece with them!

  4. #4
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    "There are two brownish brush strokes below the stem that the square brush, for my taste, stands out a “teency” bit to much but those are the only two two brush strokes that my mind “sees”."

    This is interesting as I have been back and forth on this over the past few years. For a quite a long time I didn't want any brush strokes to be viewable then I thought they should be prominent and interesting. Now I am searching for a balance which if I can pull off when a person looks at the work as a whole then brush strokes disappear and instead simply imply form shading and texture, but as soon as one pays attention to any part of the work or looks closely all they'll see are brush strokes. I have a long way to go but my messy brush helps.

    on the subject of brush strokes have you looked closely at
    http://www.simonstalenhag.se/

  5. #5
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    Delicious. From your head is impressive. Great memory. . . or you eat a lot of pears.
    "Not a bit is wasted and the best is yet to come. . ." -- remembered from a dream

  6. #6
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    This is interesting as I have been back and forth on this over the past few years. For a quite a long time I didn't want any brush strokes to be viewable then I thought they should be prominent and interesting. Now I am searching for a balance which if I can pull off when a person looks at the work as a whole then brush strokes disappear and instead simply imply form shading and texture, but as soon as one pays attention to any part of the work or looks closely all they'll see are brush strokes. I have a long way to go but my messy brush helps.
    I agree with everything you have said. Right now, my eyesight is such that I paint 80% of the time with my glasses off so that my eyes are naturally blurred. This helps me to not be able to study the fine details that those brush strokes can show up as. When I clean up the painting using my list I put my glasses back on for the fine details.

    I do love the Square Canvas 2 custom brush (at 34% grain) when blocking in the paintings; to get the values correct. It blends so nicely. Better than the oil brush can blend to get that painterly feel to it. I think Chad Weatherford, and I know Daniel Ibanez both use the SC2 custom brush.

    I have seen Simon's webpage before. He is a total master! The brush strokes are there but the image overwhelms you enough that you don't want to see the strokes. Brillant work!

    Thanks again for sharing a great pear work DO!
    Robert Hopkins

  7. #7
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    Quote Originally Posted by HwyStar View Post
    Right now, my eyesight is such that I paint 80% of the time with my glasses off so that my eyes are naturally blurred. This helps me to not be able to study the fine details that those brush strokes can show up as. When I clean up the painting using my list I put my glasses back on for the fine details.
    THAT is brilliant. I've asked for a "squint simulation" feature in ArtRage the past... a hotkey to temporarily see the entire image blurred by a preset amount. Given the right eyes, your method sounds perfect.

  8. #8
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    a hotkey to temporarily see the entire image blurred by a preset amount.
    I have thought of asking for the same feature too!

    Based on AR's current way of controlling paintings; layer based, I don't think they can perform this feature for us using the overall image. The best we can do is to merge all the layers down to one layer then blur the final layer. I did blur my last painting by one pixel and that helped to soften the image; and it helped to lose the "fine line" details.

    My current inspirations come from this juried Oil Painter: https://www.stephanieamato.com/new-landscapes. Painterly yet realistic. She doesn't need a custom brush!
    Robert Hopkins

  9. #9
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    Created a version with laborious post processing (with third party software and ArtRage) to "fake" a thick paint effect over the canvas. Since the original used only the custom brush, no thick paint was actually present.

    NOTE: With the advent of the custom brush in AR5, blending with paint, and with depth (AR6) has improved markedly.
    My statements in this thread are outdated.

    .......................

    I think it almost works.

    Click image for larger version. 

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    Let me know what you think, and whether this improves the original.
    Last edited by DarkOwnt; 08-27-2020 at 02:19 AM.

  10. #10
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    Thumbs up

    I wouldn't say it improves upon it, it's just different. Good in some ways not so good in others (IMHO).

    Cons: The line that is to the left and below the light glare stands out for me too much not to focus on it. Pears are so smooth that it might be a bad subject matter to use for texture? An avocado would be better (but not as colorful)?

    Pros: I like the texture on the brown table top. I like the slight texture on the bottom right of the pear. That looks real! The shading on the bottom left looks a little better too.

    Suggestion: Find your most favorite artist that does still-lifes with the highest quality image you can find. Google Image search something you really like. Then download it and magnify the painting to get the brush strokes then paint the bejesus out of it! Steve Elliot's latest attempts on his YouTube channel of painting like the Masters has really helped him and his artwork. It helped mine too. Fiddling with the brush settings, either oil or custom brushes make a huge difference to the final outcome. I am currently only painting with the Square Canvas 2 custom brush and the Oil brush. It doesn't always get the textured brush strokes like you are going after but it gives me the broken canvas brush strokes that Monet had in his. He had both dry brush strokes; that the canvas broke up, but he also had globs of textured paint. Maybe I need to incorporate some very heavy oil strokes to show depth in my paintings? I may try that on my latest work of a pit-bull dog painting that I am doing for my daughter.

    Thanks for sharing DO, and giving us the chance to comment on it!
    Robert Hopkins

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