My digital paintings lack texture

[Lammebill]

Hi,
I use SAI Paint tool for my digital paintings and one problem I have is that they usually look too soft,airbrush or 3D like. Therefore my artworks definitely lack somehing - I would love to give my artworks a more natural or traditional painting like touch and somehow more rough. I hope you get my idea.

So I wonder if anyone could provide me some tips how to add some texture to paintings without actually using specific texture brushs. So far I tried change the opacity or brush size values but still I don't achieve the wished effect.

I would really appreciate tips that can be used in general an that are not only restricted to PS for example, because I know the Flow value already helps to create different effects though SAI ( what I am using) doesn't contain a flow regulation but only opacity.

I really hope someone can help me, because my paintings always look kind of the same painting wise..

[Andrew Sonea]

Well it would help if you posted some examples of your artwork.

AS for adding texture...textured brushes are obviously the easiest method. If you are really against it, you can try using other brushes to try and manually create texture. Try using very small brushes and experiment with hatching, and stippling and scribble, then try layering various mark making with different colours or values.

Also remember that texture does not appear uniformly across a form. It is very difficult to see texture in shadows, and texture is most visible at the terminator (where light meets shadow). Look at this picture of the moon as an example:
http://www.pa.msu.edu/people/frenchj/moon/moon-7day-1838.jpg

[Lammebill]

Thank you for your answer!Well I am not really against this but I just don't want to depent too much on certain tools.
And now I think I need to correct my former question - actually it is not about detailed textures of a material itself such as wood or stone I don't seek an realistic approach, but it's more about the brush strokes' qualities.
I mean my artworks so far always looked too much like rubber but I want to make each brush stroke stand out more but my problem is that I don't know how.
If I turn down the opacity the strokes become too 'soft' but if I use brush strokes with high opacity they will look will become too much like cellshading.

I have attached one of my own artworks which looks like a rubber duck (is it alright to insert those links here?)

http://lammebill.deviantart.com/gallery/#/d2sbg4l


and 2 artworks that look more like what I would like try to approach to

http://browse.deviantart.com/?qh=&section=&global=1&q=moon+boy#/d226kk5


http://asuka111.deviantart.com/art/The-magical-pigment-shop-58836604

It's those partly rough brush strokes that gives anything a real painting like texture.

I hope if you compare the paintings you will see what I mean!

[Andrew Sonea]

Ah, see posting your artwork shows that this isn't so much a texture issue then. On a side note, you can link to DA like that but I think it is a little frowned upon. It is better to just attach the image directly to this site with the attachment manager.

To me I think you just need to use a high opacity hard brush, and paint with very similar colours in an area to break it up a bit. Maybe I'm not explaining too well.

You seem to be using the same hue, and just changing the value of it to go from light to dark. Read up on some colour theory (huevaluechroma.com) and do some still lifes to understand how hue, value and chroma change depending on the lighting situation. Once you understand that you can try painting at high opacity like that with minor shifts in hue and saturation to get that painterly look.

Of course one of the best ways to learn is to do a study of the type of work you are trying to achieve. Leyendecker is probably right up your alley for this as he has a nice painterly look and paints with flat strokes that up close are really loose, but farther away seem to blend together because he understood value and colour so well:
http://jcleyendecker.blogspot.com/

Do some copies of art that you like and try to apply it in your works.

[Lammebill]

Wow thank you very much!
I think you have pointed out some things I really need to improve.
You are right usually I only change the value to create shades for example so I have been checking other's artworks and I was astonished how much they change the hue too.
That link about colour theory is very useful as well though it will take me some time to get through it.
From now I will try to do some still life paintings to help figure out how colours work, I have definitely underestimated the value of colour theory till now!

Uhm only one last question if you don't mind - I have started to try that eye drop technique to blend colours(you know just overlap 2 colours and eyedrop the newly generated colour between) though I am never sure whether i should use a big or small brush( a too big brush will make it the colours looks softer again, doesn't it?)

[Andrew Sonea]

I'm not really sure by what you mean with colours being soft. I don't think brush size has much to do with it though. If you are talking about losing form then perhaps it is if you are using soft edged brushes as they are harder to control. As a general rule it is better to use as big a brush as possible as it tends to look better and be faster. Start big, then as you progress steadily use smaller brushes.

If you are a bit confused about blending in Photoshop, I found this thread to be really helpful (scroll down a couple posts and there are examples of painting an apple and some onions):
http://conceptart.org/forums/showthread.php?t=107217

[Lammebill]

Alright that thread seems to some useful information too, I don't use PS but I think I can apply that blending technique in other programs too.
A big thanks again! I guess you lead me to the right path to improve myself!