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Used to obsess over tiny brush strokes for hours on my tablet, now I just do big blocky color shapes first
I'd zoom in to 800% and tweak single pixels, you know? Then I saw this guy on YouTube just scribble in the whole canvas with a chunky brush and fix details later. Saved me like 2 hours on my last character portrait. Anyone else ditch the perfectionist approach for something messier?
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lopez.quinn25d ago
oh man, that eye thing hits way too close to home... I literally have 14 layers of just eyeball attempts in my trash folder right now. the blocky method feels wrong at first but it's like your brain stops fighting itself and just lets the picture happen. what really helped me was setting a timer for 10 minutes and not letting myself zoom in at all, just big shapes and smudges. the loose stuff does have more energy for sure, even if it feels scary messy at first. sometimes polish is just a fancy word for overworking something till it's dead inside, you know?
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Dude, the zooming in thing is such a trap. I used to do that too, spent two hours on just one eye once. But the blocky method works because your brain fills in the details subconsciously, right? Like when you look at an impressionist painting up close it's just smudges but from far away it's a whole face. The real question is though, does the messier approach actually make your final piece look more alive or does it just save time? I find my loose stuff has more energy but sometimes loses the polish.
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