/ic/ - Artwork/Critique

>>2001440
>>2001447
It looks stiff and boring because you aren't thinking of how to make it interesting. I did this in like 5 minutes, it doesn't take much to add interest.

Think of it like a full painting--you still want variety and a focal point and such. You need to add some design to it. Right now you have a flat rectangle with some equally spaced lines on it. It's got the same treatment everywhere.

I saved soem steps so you can see each part of how I approached it. First I felt that the entire thing was just...a flat poop brown with no texture. I wanted the board to have more character to it, like a weathered old piece of wood (you can do a new freshly varnished piece if you want, you need to think the same way but will be painting it differently). So I glazed some texture brushes over the board with some greys and strong oranges. This gave a base texture and some saturation variation (wood often has lots of greys in it).

Then I basically added mroe texture and colours and added a knot in the wood near the bottom for a focal point of sorts. Notice how some lines are very thin and close, some are thick and bold, some textures are very noisy, some are more flat etc. I tried to add as much variation as I could.

The last step was just adding a bit mroe details and then to make is feel less flat and fake I beveled the edges and added some variations to the silhouette so it's not a perfect rectangle.

Hope that helps! Basically it is the same as any problem--add interest and variety to it to make it believable. Think a bit about what woods you have seen in the past and what characteristics they have. If you want to make it even more weathered you can maybe add some paint flecks leftover from an old paint job that has worn off.