The best photoshop tip I could give for this is to get a different program.

I’m half kidding here, no matter what you do you will always find that Photoshop has a digital look. Even when you get close the texture still will have that digital look, I spent nearly 2 years trying to get what I wanted it to do. I strongly suggest saving yourself some time and getting Painter or the extremely inexpensive and in my opinion far better simulation software in ArtRage.

That said, if you are willing to settle for photoshop’s digital looking limitations try a mix of adding texture to the stroke, using dual brush with a soft round brush as the second brush, turning on noise in the brush, and adjusting the opacity and flow settings to have some jitter in them. This coupled with pen pressure controls helped quite a bit, but still felt lacking and looking digital to me.

Good luck with your brushes.

I work in Photoshop and I’m a perfectionist! Trying to get away from that and getting more into a traditional art look. People keep thinking I use the smudge or clone technique to do my work, but I paint in Photoshop as I would traditionally, and I’d like my work to reflect that.

Haven’t been able to alter the PS brushes enough to create a decent natural media brush. Might give ArtRage a look.

Bob

Yeah, right now I use on screen blending: no blender brushes. I have a few, but never liked the results and they are resource hogs.

I’ll check out the link. Thanks.

Bob

Hi Crista,

I don’t know if anyone is still following this thread, but I’ll pitch in.

Most people I talk to who have tried digital painting are disappointed with their results. I think it’s because they expect to be able to take their current skills and workflows and apply them directly to the digital world, and obtain the *same* results as they get in their current medium of choice.

Sadly, that’s not quite true, regardless of the software program you use. For sure, the digital medium can “mimic” other natural mediums (oil/acrylic, watercolor, pastels), but it has its own workflow and skillset!

My first attempts at painting were done in the digital world, so I had no pre-conceived ideas on how I wanted my brushes or canvas to behave or look. What I did is study a lot of paintings from artists I admire, and then set off to obtain similar results in the digital world, because that’s what I wanted to do. I studied their brushstrokes, the way the paint interacts on the canvas, how the canvas texture shows through in some areas but not others, etc.

My first attempts at digital painting were with ArtRage. I picked it because it requires very little setup, and you can start painting almost immediately, with pretty good results.

But, I’m a perfectionist, and after a while I found that my results always looked “digital” with ArtRage. I often ended up going into Photoshop to add my own textures and effects to get the more “natural media” feel. As I read through posts on various forums, I also see that many artists go back and forth between ArtRage and Photoshop for ultimate flexibility.

Photoshop is a daunting piece of software to learn, I admit it. I don’t think anyone really knows everything about Photoshop, it’s just to broad and vast, and typically there’s more than one way to obtain a desired effect. The tipping point for me (what made me switch to the Photoshop brush engine) is a video workshop by Jack Davis (former Adobe employee), on how to paint digitally with Photoshop. I think the workshop is still available at CreativeLive (I’m not associated). I watched the workshop, started using the tools and techniques, and never looked back.

I also got John Derry’s Artist Brushes for Photoshop, along with his tutorials, which are more “to the point”. Jack Davis likes to hear himself talk sometimes…

But the point is this: Today, I’ve accumulated over 3 years of experimenting and applying my skills at digital painting. I have built my own set of digital brushes, derived from the ones I purchased above. And I’m always learning! Just last night I finally figured out how to get a Sargent brush to also behave like one of Photoshop’s mixer brushes.

Learning to paint digitally is like any other medium: You have to put in the time. And of course it has to be enjoyable to you, otherwise why do it?

Another thing is printing… Painting digitally is convenient (I’ve done it in an airport once), but how do you display your art? Or even sell it? I typically print my works on canvas. I’ve tried local professional printers (very expensive but very beautiful), then tried online print services (less expensive but sometimes with flaws in the prints, especially large ones), and now I’m connected with a friend of a friend who is printing my works on Neschen Pure White Monet Canvas for 1/2 the price of the online service. I stretch the canvas myself on stretcher bars from the local art supply store, and then hand-embellish them with acrylic gel and paint because printing never gives you that third dimension that paint has, and the printed colors aren’t always as bold.

This has become a very long post, so here’s a summary of the tools and resources I use:

Workshops and tutorials:
– Jack Davis on CreativeLive.
– John Derry on lynda.com

Brushes:
– Some by Jack Davis (I modified most of them for my own use).
– Some by John Derry (Also modified for my own use).
– Kyle brushes (Kylebrush.com). These are absolutely awesome, I got the full pack and even the watercolor and pastels.
– Some stuff from Alex Dukal (canvas patterns, cool brushes and Impasto stuff).

Finally, two big mistakes that people make when painting with Photoshop, that create “lag” in the brushes:
1) They leave the “Sample All Layers” feature checked when using mixer brushes, which is deadly when you’ve got several layers going. The video workshops above show you how to get around that.

2) They paint Impasto style with the layer effects turned on. While other software like ArtRage and Corel can show Impasto as you paint, Photoshop struggles with this because it is essentially a pixel based program, and has to render millions and millions of pixels with each brush stroke. I now typically add my Impasto effects once my painting is almost complete! People would say “but that’s not how real impasto painting is done!!!” and they’re right, but this is digital painting, and as I said before, you work out your own workflows and techniques to make things work, as you would in other mediums when you have a problem.

You can search for my posts and see some of the digital work I’ve done with the Photoshop brush engine. I recall that some of the comments said that it completely fooled them, they had no idea it was painted digitally. But then, I don’t really care that much anyways what people say about my paintings, I just do it because I enjoy it… that’s why we’re all here, right?

Cheers,
Marc

Hi Robert,

Yeah, as you said, brushes in the physical world do things that digital brushes don’t do. But then you could also say that you can do things in watercolor that you can’t do in oil or acrylic. And pastels are yet another beast to master. And in my opinion, so is the digital media. It’s what you make of it, ultimately! The more you experiment with a medium, the better you get at it – but as long as you’re enjoying the experiment! If not, then time to move to a different medium, or take some time off, I say.

Cheers!

Robert, thanks for your feedback!

Yeah, keep experimenting, and if you like the digital media, it’s like anything else, you’ll keep getting better at it the more you paint with it.

I agree that ArtRage is easier to use, but PS is nice to get those extra texture details. Mind you, at that point it’s not really painting anymore, more like image manipulation… Although I often add my Impasto texture by painting them on after my painting is almost complete – it’s a completely different workflow than painting with natural media.

Cheers,
Marc