Whenever People Are Like SKETCHING CIRCLES IN SAI IS SO HARD Im Like

whenever people are like “SKETCHING CIRCLES IN SAI IS SO HARD” im like

hi hello !! could you show us your brush settings or have you already done a post on those ?? :0

You’re the first person to ask for my brush settings! :>

I primarily use these four:

I picked up these settings from pixiv/deviantart. 

painting/watercolor/trad art effect with the default photoshop brushes

a quick tutorial for @attributions-share, who was curious about how i did the “trad art” thingy on this piece!

Note : My photoshop is in french. So you’ll have well, french screenshots oui oui

Brushes

We’re using three photoshop default brushes, one for lines and two for painting.

Steps

Brush number one is the one I line with. This is a quick example that showcases my barbaric default linery but i do strongly recommend you go a bit lighter on your hand and make use of pen pressure to make good lines that vary in size!

Then with brush number two I fill the shape with a flat color  on a new layer (do this for every flat color, i recomment one layer per flat) which I alpha-lock when finished.

Then with brush number three I apply my color variations : I paint on the same color layer, brush at lowered opacity. Since the layer is alpha locked no need to worry about coloring outside the borders.

[optional] When that’s done, alpha-lock the line layer and give it slight color variations with the same brush. I like using dark and very saturated colors there

Then download your best high res paper texture and paste it on another layer so is covers all your art, and put the layer on Multiply mode. What that does is make your layer be more or less transparent depending on how much white is in one place. On a white paper image, it will make it transparent but keep the nooks and crannies of the texture.

And that’s it!

Final result :

the morality of this story is that photoshop layer options are your friends

Hey japh, i've been totally uninspired for a while now and every time i force myself to draw i fuck up the anatomy and make myself feel even worse, what do you do when you feel unmotivated or uninspired?

take a step back and leave the thing alone for a bit (maybe watch a show etc) then come back to look at the composition with fresh eyes. If you feel bad about how it is atm look at what it can potentially be rather than what it is at the moment!

and if you mess up the anatomy you can try taking pictures of yourself doing the pose or looking up references to use, then drawing the gestures until you get used to them. You can also try making small thumbnails and mix and match compositions until you find something you’d want to work with!

First off: Thank you both for the nice words.

Now advice time:

So we’re mostly interested is steps 1 to 3 (4 was just for renegadegurski)

Here’s the good news: The texture, which is what I think you want, comes from not making use of any fancy Photoshop tools. It’s all in one layer with the most standard possible brush at 100% and the eraser.

It’s all about starting softly then going over it again a couple of times. Doing it all in the same layer and gradually erasing old lines, as opposed to making a new layer and dumping the sketch in the end, makes the end result feel a lot richer and warmer to me. It won’t aways be the right approach, tho.

Hopefully the step-by-step helps and, as always, have a wonderful day.