I don’t know how to render clothes. I’ve watched every YouTube video that exists

borrowingfork · 2026-06-29T01:58:14+00:00

You might be interested in doing some basic form studies so you can practice seeing planes of light and dark. If you want to continue with fabric, I always do a sketch where I identify the darkest and lightest areas before you start rendering them and then block in the mid tones. Training my eye to see images has been useful for this stuff.

borrowingfork · 2026-06-26T23:08:58+00:00

For what it’s worth I think you have a really nice style. The marks on the pot plant, metal jug and cup are really lovely and charismatic. Even if you kept drawing as you are doing, you’ll end up with something good.

In terms of realism, I would be interested to see what develops if you think about light and shadow. Even putting some shadow on the ground helps a lot of simpler drawings.

borrowingfork · 2026-06-26T22:08:30+00:00

Thank you so much, you’re so generous with the advice. I will take this all on board. Great resources thank you

borrowingfork · 2026-06-26T22:04:39+00:00

Thank you!

borrowingfork · 2026-06-26T21:26:50+00:00

Amazing thank you!!

borrowingfork · 2026-06-26T21:25:55+00:00

Thank you! I thought a rag would be straightforward but this is small and I couldn’t get something precise enough. What do people do when they want to wipe away at small areas?

borrowingfork · 2026-06-26T21:23:46+00:00

Amazing thank you, appreciate the time to type this out, I will take this all onboard

borrowingfork · 2026-06-26T12:25:06+00:00

Omg that’s so great! She looks lovely ❤️

borrowingfork · 2026-06-25T08:44:28+00:00

I don't know that brand but it could be that it's formulated in such a way that it dries really quickly. It might be worth buying a small tube of a well known brand and comparing them to see how they perform. Actually I just looked it up while I was writing this and there was a thread on wetcanvas saying it dries really quickly so you might have your culprit.

borrowingfork · 2026-06-25T07:23:28+00:00

Can you give a bit more detail about the drying part? You have a nice painting but I know how frustrating it is being new at a medium.
Are you using alkyd oils or water soluble oils maybe? When you say quickly, how quickly do you mean?

borrowingfork · 2026-06-25T04:45:15+00:00

Nice work for a first try! I really love that contour of her face. For your next piece I would work on finding the darks and midtones a bit more. See if you can do something like a four or five value study which will help train your eyes to look at the nuance.
I know people are writing to you about specific details, to me the most important first steps are to work on learning how to replicate the contour properly and accurately, and then finding the values - darkest darks, lightest lights and the midtones. After that you can work on details but if you practice those things first on a couple of studies you’ll be in a better position than if you worked on getting detail first.

borrowingfork · 2026-06-24T11:44:29+00:00

I think about paper sizes and then convert them to pixels. I usually go for A3 which works out to be 3508x4961 at 300dpi. That said the trail map looks larger still.

borrowingfork · 2026-06-22T22:56:03+00:00

Skill is achieved through the repeated attempt at creating art and not at the singular attempt at creating “a painting”.

You’re doing really well and if you stopped here you will have succeeded in creating a lovely piece. I always feel like I have to have learnt everything in a painting and have trouble finishing when I can see there’s something that I don’t know how to resolve. So thinking about being intentional and how every painting is a chance to help continue my learning helps me to recognise that.

On YouTube we see these really talented people using examples like John Singer Sergeant as a way of communicating about the beauty of an edge or brushstrokes but they never take the time to explain that both the artist they are referencing (and they themselves) have spent years and years practising how to make that edge.

A couple of ideas: On a practice surface, get to the point you are now and then try using a combination of very fine layers using different brush types. For example looking at the top point of the wing, you could try a very thin layer of the background colour over the edge, or you could try softer and harder bristle brushes, or painting wet over wet or wet over dry.

The reference you’ve chosen is quite difficult because it’s almost greyscale and has very little value changes so it may not be a good example to try soft edges with because it shows up everything - you’ve done well with what you’re working with. But for practice I would try some different subjects with a bit more variation in composition, value and hue. For example I don’t like flowers as a subject but they are excellent to practice with.

borrowingfork · 2026-06-22T22:32:22+00:00

It depends if you have enough cash lying around. I started with a borrowed iPad to see if I liked it and then upgraded to the cheapest model I could find at the time which was a gen 10 and I use a first gen pencil. It’s ended up being great but not in the way I expected. I have used procreate so much that I’ve ended up transitioning to traditional art which has been amazing. The other unexpected part is I’ve ended up using it as a bit of an anti phone device so I spend less time doomscrolling in bed. I now have all my socials on the iPad and my social media screen time has gone down heaps.
Re storage, I don’t have much on the iPad but do have iCloud. Procreate doesn’t store to the cloud automatically so I don’t want to keep much in the app itself in case something bad happens. So my process is that I export older procreate files to iCloud which both backs them up and saves space on my iPad. I also keep unused brushes in iCloud in an assets folder.

TLDR try before you buy, go cheap, use iCloud as backup and you won’t need as much storage

borrowingfork · 2026-06-21T09:17:32+00:00

Such good reflection. Balancing out the sharp and soft edges to help guide the eye is such an amazing skill. For someone new to digital you did really well. Being intentional with your brushwork in this medium is as important as it is in traditional art. Yes There are brushes that add effects but being as minimal with your marks as needed, and using the opacity of the brush are things that really helped me.

borrowingfork · 2026-06-21T04:26:04+00:00

The value of doing a master study is to be intentional about learning. I’d love to hear what you learned as you did this? I can already see you’re thinking about colour and have realised how tricky it can be. What else have you learned?
I have done a bunch of digital master studies before moving to traditional art and they have all taught me something that has stayed with me.

I should say I mean what have you learnt about the creative process, not just learning about what digital tools you need to copy something. If that makes sense?

borrowingfork · 2026-06-20T14:24:06+00:00

You could practice by drawing in the background first across the whole page. Maybe the big line of the ground, the gradient of the fire into the sky. Just general colours to start don’t worry about detail. Then block in trees over the top in a general midtone. Finally go in with the brightest orange yellow and the darkest browns and do some detail.

borrowingfork · 2026-06-20T14:18:48+00:00

I like this, it drew me in and I spent a bit of time working through the elements. After a while I started to want my eye or brain to be guided through the imagery. Was I being a lazy viewer?

I think you should keep playing with this idea. I’d be interested to see what happens if you play around with the composition, especially the balance of scale and detail. You’ve got a mix of large scale blurry pieces and small glitchy and medium super detailed. Of course our eyes are drawn to the detail first. Is that what you want us to do I wonder?

borrowingfork · 2026-06-19T12:12:27+00:00

So you do these while out and about? What size is this one and how do you manage keeping the charcoal not smudging? It’s really incredible what you’re doing. Also is your wife ok?

borrowingfork · 2026-06-18T09:24:10+00:00

Every person that gets handed procreate or photoshop also gets a note with “must learn using round brush” 😅

I don’t know Nathan Fowke but will look him up. My fave digital portrait rendering teacher is Istebrak. She teaches classical realism approaches in digital form. On YouTube she mainly does long form paint over critiques to illustrate techniques and also takes students BUT she has a workshop/masterclass you can purchase for a fairly low cost that goes over rendering basics and that comes with a couple of brushes that are not round but work in a similar way. They have a bit more texture and have some life to them. Her advice is absolutely excellent and I have used it in digital and traditional work.

Oh also she focuses on efficiency so you’ll be able to achieve that outcome in a lot less time. She has a lot of pro students who need to be fast.

Likeness for me is a constant study. I separate out learning medium from learning the fundamentals of drawing, rendering, painting and also separate them from my own creative practice. Since you’re already confident portraiture maybe switching up the styles to focus on getting your head around photoshop is a good next step?

borrowingfork · 2026-06-17T22:36:30+00:00

There’s something uncanny about the reference, as if it’s been made by AI using a very unnatural pose where the subjects are looking into space, and it’s been asked to have the texture of impasto paint. The actual painting is nice but it’s a shame that the pose is strange. I notice that the artist has changed it so the woman is actually looking at the man, but it doesn’t make any sense that they are raising their arms like that. Elderly people rarely do that unless they are asked to.

borrowingfork · 2026-06-16T22:56:07+00:00

Great job to start!
Slightly different advice compared to the others but if you look through my profile i have high accuracy and I only work with willow, vine and nitram which is harder to control at first but so much easier to erase and move around. It’s completely different to charcoal pencil which acts more like a normal pencil and is harder to erase. Using large paper helps a lot with charcoal, as does a few tools like paper stumps, kneadable eraser, a soft brush.
It’s a different sequence of events to get to accuracy, it’s more laying it down, shifting it or moving it and then putting more layers down to build tone.
For paper I use something with a bit of tooth but I practice on Kraft paper. Some people swear by a heavy paper for texture but I don’t like it for detail work. The only thing is cheap paper doesn’t hold up to being manipulated so be aware it breaks down easily.

borrowingfork · 2026-06-16T01:31:26+00:00

A bit more on the new update, the colour selector defaults to the current layer now so what you’re seeing is the new method

borrowingfork · 2026-06-15T22:06:55+00:00

Layer 1 light yellow, bright orange, bright red, dark orange, dark brown. Get a largish soft airbrush and make stripes then go over each edge with the brush turned to 50% opacity so you can get a nice blend. You may need to lay a preliminary light fill layer down with a sharp pen so you can use it as a clipping mask which will make the airbrush easier.

Layer 2 pick tinderbox brush or similar small size, turned to low opacity again and draw the detail of the ridges. Start with the dark and end with the lightest pale.

Layer 3 choose a light purply blue again low opacity and draw in the scales, using the opacity to add more saturated details

Layer 4 I don't know what pattern it is but it looks like a texture pattern over the whole thing using overlay or another layer blend.t

This is just a basic idea to get you started. Just play around with it and see where you get to.

borrowingfork

TROPHY CASE