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I swore by hard brushes for months until a random artist on Reddit made me try soft ones today
I have been all about those crisp hard round brushes for my character line art. Thought soft brushes were for beginners who couldn't control their strokes. Then I saw this one post where someone shaded a whole face using only a soft airbrush at 40% opacity. I tried it on a portrait sketch last night, and the skin blending was way smoother than my usual hatch marks. Took me maybe 20 minutes to see the difference. Has anyone else had a specific brush type they resisted for no real reason?
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susanm2211h ago
Honestly, I was the same way with soft brushes for shadows. Always thought they made things look muddy and undefined. But now I'm curious, what finally made you actually try that soft brush after resisting for so long? Was it something specific in that Reddit post that clicked for you, or did you just get bored with your usual style? Ngl, sometimes it takes seeing someone else's workflow step by step to really get why a tool works. For me, it was seeing that artist's layer setup that finally made me understand the whole opacity thing.
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brown.susan9h ago
That bit about seeing someone's layer setup is so true. Seeing that artist's opacity slider at like 30% with a soft brush, then building up layers for shadows instead of one heavy pass, that's what made it click for me too. It's not about the brush itself, it's about how you stack the layers, you know?
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