/ic/ - Artwork/Critique

>>1813556
He's using 500 hours of work on one picture kind of brush.

A mix of soft and hard brushes.

>>1813556

your stupidity offends me

The magic brush that makes art good

>>1813562
Exactly, but many dont realize that at least half of good art are good tools.

>>1813558
This.

>>1813563
No, a bad worksman blames his tools.

>>1813563
You mean like, 2% are good tools or some shit.

>>1813563
You are joking right? Half?

If you are serious you are wrong. Give a good artists crap tools and they will still give you good art. Good tools help sure, but no where near half.

You know what does help? the 10 years of experience the artist has before you see one of their works and say "what brush did they use?"

With enough time, if you leave an immortal monkey with a laptop, tablet and stylus with Photoshop in a box, there is a millionth upon millionth chance that he will create this exact painting.

tldr:

Do a study, learn how.

>>1813569
"There is a false implication in the saying that "a poor workman blames his tools." It is not true that a good workman can do good work with bad tools. On the contrary, the good workman sees to it that he has good tools, and makes it a part of his good workmanship that they are in good condition."

>>1813574
You're asking about photoshop brushes. That quote relates to traditional painting.
Plenty of artists do good work with shitty tools, Zedig's brushes are fucking terrible, and there was someone here who made a painting using a brush of tehmeh's face.

>>1813576
I really hope you or someone else saved that.

>>1813576
i was just directly refuting the aphorism, not in relation to this topic.

>>1813556
you know that most of the well known pros go nuts about this question because its so frequent and annoying?

you know that guys like jeff simpson actually just use hard round?

they just know the opacity, softness and all other parameters to such a degree they can get out of it what they want.

>>1813573

make that time an infinite amount, and make that chance a 100%. much more impressive.

monkey will paint this exact ruanjia piece. guaranteed.

>>1813572
Give me good brushes, and ill reach in 1 year what masters reached in 10 years, no kidding.

>>1813556

You have him painting right in front of you but you're staring at his paintbrush instead of the painting.

You have all the information right here, you don't need a tutorial or his brushes. Learning technique isn't about brushes and layer styles, it's about the building blocks of putting down paint and how you can stack them in different ways. Analyze the effect you want to achieve, write it down, and think about how he must have layered his paint, and then try it. Did he put down saturated tones and then paint on top opaquely? Did he start with desaturated tones, lay on saturated tones, and then softly paint the skin opaquely towards the light and transparently entering the midtone?

Just stuff like that. You'll learn a bunch along the way with mistakes and experimentation.

>>1813556
Oh young padawans, always worried about the tools instead of the technique.

>>1813590
You probably don't even know what qualifies as a "good" brush, you delusional fuck.

Either way, photoshop brushes of the pros are no fucking secret. Jaime and Ruanjia have had their brushpacks uploaded for free on the internet since forever. Why can't you still paint even remotely as good as them?

>>1813614
You sick fucktarded cunt, tools are everything, thats why today photobashing is so popular, if you have good resources and you know how to use it, you will make it with ease. Gimme brushes and ill show you.

>>1813614
dude remember the saying, 'no rules just tools'...
just tool

rules don't matter. tools are what's important.

and that comes from vilppu, who knows his stuf.

>>1813615
>>1813617
Stop trying so hard, we get it, you are an epic troll.

>>1813618
no, i'm just messin' the other guy is serious.

>>1813618
i am serious you waste of human resources.

>>1813558

He didn't spend more than 40 hours on this. In case he did, the end result is not worth it.

Now about brushes..the only true statement about texture brushes or any other brush except hard round brush is the one that other guy mentioned: it saves time.
every texture can be achieved with hard round brush but it takes time. In fact, obviously you ca draw SAME picture in windows 98 painter. It takes time but you can achieve it if you know what are you doing.

so the real reason for using other brushes than hard round is to save time (so that he really wouldn't spend 500h for this).

if you use same brushes just for the sake of making look your painting cool like Ria's, you are doing it wrong.

Put that image in PS and reduce noise or put over blur filter (SURFACE BLUR!) to get rid of texture.
And the result is what you should aim for and it can be achieved with a single brush (round or square without texture).

AGAIN!! : whenever you will admire some illustration or painting, from old masterpainter or digital painter, put in in PS and get rid of any texture (so it will look like it was made with single brush without texture), then study it.
EXCEPT if you are about to study texture but in this case it makes muuuch more sense to study from nature or photo amd make your own texture.
if you study from other artist too much and trying to copy them, you get all those Mullins, Jaime and Ruan copycats.
and that my friends is lame as fuck.
you wont impress anyone by doing in same style like other artist.
EVERYONE of you have a personal style (which includes the brushes choice too) and it's unique.
if your style is not obvious yet, keep on working (especially on fundamentals) and it will form (a lot of people have very individual style but they don't even notice it some times because they are so used to it)

>>1813621
Well, in that case I feel really bad for you. Here you believe brushes are everything, yet you somehow are too mentally challenged to do a quick google search and download the brushes you think you need to produce great art.

>>1813622
the handling [i don't think /ic/ uses that word for it, brush work maybe?] is very important. and that includes the brushes used. the picture isn't the picture without the texture. if the artist used a hard round he wouldn't of painted it like that. studying the picture without considering how the marks were made is stupid horse fuck and you should be sad and dead for suggesting it, you might as well tell people to disregard the composition or the values.

>1813624
>the picture isn't the picture without the texture. if the artist used a hard round he wouldn't of painted it like that.

just chiming in to say that ruanjia is the least brush-dependant artist out there... jaime jones has trademark brushwork, but even then it's more in the how than in the brushes themselves. but pointing at ruanjia during a brushes discussion is utterly retarded, brushes play zero role in his work.

>>1813622
>He didn't spend more than 40 hours on this
I remember him saying in his interview that he can spend whole month on just one painting. Worth it or not.
And someone probably can make a similar picture in couple of hours with photobashing.

>>1813638
>And someone probably can make a similar picture in couple of hours with photobashing.

God I hate you whiny, defeatist retards so fucking much.

>>1813638

I was expecting that reply because i've read that too. He also said he spend 1 year for one of his pinting.
But don't be fooled. Do you really believe he spend 160 hours for this? (In case he work only 5 days a week and 8 hours a day).
He most probably work for few hours, and then stop for a few days (that kind ofworking is very common in traditional panting). Masterpainters were working for monts or even a whole year or teo on a single painting. That doesn't mean theyspend 1000 hours on painting

>>1813642
but they did spend 4 or 5 hundred hours on individual paintings, probably at least a 1000 on some on big ones like the night watch. 160 hours isn't outlandish, depending on how much experimenting he was doing along the way.

>>1813638
>And someone probably can make a similar picture in couple of hours with photobashing.
They can surely make something in a similar pose and all, but it won't look like this at all. You can't photobash this kind of asian style, luckily people are not this beautiful/perfect in real life, nor does everything look like it was made from marble or something.
Ruanjia style is unachievable with photobashing. Unless you start photobashing Ruanjia works themselves of course.

>>1813677
idk there's probably something you could do with heaps of layers of photographs. would still take a while.

>>1813705
>all those proportion changes
>At that level of detail

Mirin' execution of vision

>>1813705
Where did you find this?

>>1813705
HOLY SHIT WHERE

>>1813705
>omitting steps 2-5

hmmm

>>1813622
>>1813705
TOLD
also some pretty shitty advice you got there.
That painting is porbably one of the most famous and well executed digital paintings that doesn't have any commercial use. So it not being worth more than 40+ hours of work is bullshit.

>>1813638
>>1813642

Ruan works really slowly on his personal work, so it will have taken more than 40, though saying it took 500 is over the top. 160 sounds about right, few weeks of working on it on and off. Also if he kept changing the idea then it will have taken longer while technically being the same canvas.

On brushes, I agree with >>1813635 this dude that RuanJia and his style of painting doesn't matter when it comes to brushes. The whole floaty ethereal thing he has going on is just painted in manually with soft brushes and lots of careful values and colours.

For the anon studying brushwork, good on you, but study who JJ and such studied themselves; Sargent, Sorolla, Leyendecker and so on. And always remember that you can't just have nice brushwork or it looks like shit. So many artists trying that now, focusing entirely on getting JJ-esque strokes on terrible paintings. It might impress casual observers on DA and such, but it won't get you a job, and other artists know what you're doing.

>>1813705
This is awesome. The numbers by the image make me think it was from an ImagineFX or similar tutorial, do you know where?

>>1813706
gave it a go, it's about 10 translucent layers. if i could spend ages on it adjusting things i might get the other 98% of the way lol.

>>1813723
looks just like a badly shot photograph with messed up color balance and nothing like a well done photobash whatsoever, let alone a Ruanjia painting.

>>1813725
well it's not supposed to be well done, only took a couple of minutes. i think it'd get closer with time, but then i'm not a sourpuss on the internet being defensive of an artist i like :p

>>1813730
I don't really see what you are tying to prove with this though. That you can add some ugly color adjustments on top of a photo? Wow, impressive.

>>1813730
you sure do look like an idiot (on the internet!! wow! what an argument!) who doesn't know what he's talking about. -If you're gonna 'prove' that ruanjia is achievable by photobashing, try actually photobashing, not showing up with a bunch of filters over a tween.

>>1813723
You're ignoring the fact that a painting will usually be aranged much more beautifully than any photograph can achieve. If you aren't doing the fight for detail but rather inherent beauty of a peace. Paintings at the highest level win out

>>1813556
I don't understand, what's so special about this painting ? what's all the fuss about ?

>>1813761
I don't see anyone making a fuss about it. It's a 5 or so year old, very nice painting by Ruanjia, he is far better now than he was back then and has created much more impressive work.

>>1813590
OK then get started and prove it. Stop trying to win an internet argument against people that know more than you do (an absurd thought right? That others might know more than you do.) and prove us wrong.

I'll wait for your great art that rivals masters with 10x the experience. Get started.

>>1813590
http://digitalbrushes.tumblr.com/

Bunch of pro brushes are on that blog, take your pick, and make a blog so we can track your progress. You have a year anon.

>>1813786
>You have a year anon
Set up for failure from the start. It takes more than a year to get good at art for the vast majority of people. And even people who get "good" in a year only make great progress but are not actually amazing by that time. They won't be doing stuff at Ruanjia level, that's for sure.

>>1813803
While that's probably the case, anon said that with good brushes they can reach in 1 year what the masters did in 10. They have the brushes, now I'm genuinely interested to see how they progress.

>>1813817
Since they are so naive to think that digital brushes are magical, it is unlikely that they will train themselves in an efficient manner. In a year's time they probably will be only marginally better than now.

>>1813822
>>1813803
No shit sherlock. That's the whole point what people are arguing here. Humoring that delusional retard who claims he can get to master level if he only had brushes doesn't mean anyone else actually believes it.

>>1813822
Well that's what we all expect, yeah. The point is to call them out on what they think is possible, and see if they can actually become a master in a year with good brushes. I and most people here highly doubt that, but who knows. It's to stop this being an argument that they continually use "I could do that if I only had the brush". Now they have the brush, and they have a year to go do it.

>>1813826
>>1813828
Seems silly to make someone waste a year of their time just to prove a point. Why not just point them in the proper direction so that in a year they actually will have done something with themselves.

>>1813624
>equating texture to composition or values
New anon here, but you must be joking to think that surface polish is anywhere near a fundamental attribute of this or any picture. The picture still has it's appeal when viewed from a far enough distance that you can't even make out any of the texture.

Not to mention it is certainly possible to still learn from a master painting while changing both the composition and the values, which is what happens if you do a study of a portion of a painting in pencil. That shit is relative.

>>1813832
Why would you do that, just go on the internet and give good advice?

Does /ic/ have a blind spot when it comes to its heroes? If someone posted this in a drawthread, they'd get get torn to pieces over the anatomy. Just look at that arm.

Why is /ic/ so hypocritical?

>>1813852
People would probs point it out, but people would also gasm themselves over him and his abilities.

>>1813852
They aren't. It's fairly common knowledge that Ruanjia often times has very skewed anatomy and proportions especially in his more unfinished work. Same as Mullins actually. People fap over Ruanjia's insane painting ability, no one has ever claimed he is a master of anatomy or anything. Stop being such a try-hard faggot.

>>1813863
This

The arm is screwy but it's not so bad it breaks the image and everything else in it is 'disqualified'. On his blog he never pretends to be a master of the human figure.

>>1813853
uhm, what abilities ? his stuff looks pretty average

>>1813877
I hope you realize that saying stuff like this doesn't make you look cool and edgy, it makes you look like a complete and utter noob who doesn't know even the first thing about art.

>>1813877
Values, composition, brushwork, rendering, colors... pretty much all the abilities you are lacking that make a painting look beautiful, hence your bitterness and why no one ever says anything good about your shitty art.

>>1813877
>he can't even tell what's good and bad
You've got a LONG way to go, kiddo.

>>1813877

another clown school dropout

>>1813832
>Seems silly to make someone waste a year of their time

Spending a year learning a skill is wasted time?

Also no one thinks that jackoff is actually going to follow through on their idiotic statement that they can do in one year what it took others a decade to do.

Really love his work but why does every male character have the same faggoty feminine animu sameface . Really ruins it for me.

>>1813919
Because he wants to. Now fuck off.

>>1813852
Of all the anatomical problems in that image, you chose the only justifiable one.
You know that in Asia natural elbow hyperextension is really common, right? That's why you see it all the time in animoo fanart, gravure shots etc.
Pic related, it's just a mild case, mine goes way more than that. You can find scarier images by google.

That said, I remember some kind of interview in which Runajia himself said that his anatomy is lacking and he finds himself going over it multiple times and that damages his workflow.

>>1813889
>>1813891
>>1813893
>>1813894

such low standards, and i'm the one who knows nothing about art.

>keep on goofing.

>>1813922
let me add you to this ----- >>1813926

>>1813926
>p-pay attention to me! i'm saying impudent things are something you l-like!

>>1813863
>Stop being such a try-hard faggot.

you're the one with the dick in your mouth. anatomy (and all drawing) is a part of painting ability. any other artist would get eviscerated for anatomy that bad, but /ic/ is full of hypocritical fanbois. like you.

>>1813919

no no, see, if any other artist has sameface syndrome, it's a flaw. But if Ruan Jia has it, it's because he wants to in his divine wisdom. Stop being such a try-hard faggot and suck his dick properly.

>>1813923

The elbow doesn't bother me at all, actually. It's the tiny midget forearm and the bizarre shoulder that's really sticking out to me.

I love Ruan Jia's stuff, but I just think it's funny how the hivemind here goes into ragemode if you point out his flaws. Meanwhile, there's a hate thread for some other artist over much less egregious anatomical problems every week.

>>1813948
just let them be faggots all they want, it seems like they are truly ignorant, remember all the shit, whatever his name was, noah or something, received for his badly proportioned woman ? same here, but i guess it's fine, cause he's chinese, they love chinese food, don't piss them off.

>>1813919
probably because he isn't very good at diversifying his drawing skills. He's very good at rendering, that's what he's good at.

>>1813948
>>1813963

fucking LMAO at comparing ruanjia to noah bradley. now i've seen it all.

also nice samefagging.

>>1813963
The difference between Ruan Jia, painting skills aside is that we know enough about noah to actually hate him

how did we not know about this what the fuck
http://www.3dtotal.com/index_page.php?id=20

>>1813852
Females arms can hyperextend when fully stretched out. I'm sure Ruanjia intended to show this however it doesn't really translate at this angle.. Or I'm trying too hard to defend. Couldn't find better pic than related

>>1813556
>>1814001
there you go, he said Blur's Good brush and Massive Black brushes.

OP here, holy fuck, you are truly cocksucking faggots here. I like his rendering and overall painting skills, but he does make alot of mistakes too. Every other artist is criticized to maximum, yet when Ruan Jia does it everything is fine, geez.

>>1814033
>alot of mistakes

lol. show me some.

>>1813556
I just noticed she has semen on her face.

>>1813919
>>1813852
Just two examples from this thread. Same faces - KR0PR1NZ has the problem with that too, and you smashed him because of that. If there is supposed to be an equality, then Ruan Jia fucked it up too.

Second is just not exactly correct anatomy, but still it's quite good.

>>1814041
That's a tear you dumbass nigga, you can follow it from the duct all the way down you dumbass muthafuckin' nigga. Shit.

>>1814020
I think you're trying too hard, and the arm isn't even the main problem. this is disgusting though.

>>1814036
not op here, but there you go, if you can't see his mistakes, then you are a twat, learn some anatomy.

>>1814047

this is the typical /ic/ retardo giving critique and judging art.

there really is no hope for this board. hope the guys studying here trying to get genuinenly good know how to differentiate between shit and good advice. and i pray to the d/ic/kbutt gods theres not too many guys like you around here... would really polute this place.

>>1814050
can you tell me where I'm wrong pls ?

>>1814060

not worth the time lol. get good at art. stop obsessing over characters and anatomy, and in 4-6 years you could be painting like ruanjia. and lolling at morons nitpicking "flaws" that consist of minuscule anatomical overstatements of form.

>>1814060
The fact that you're baitposting on /ic/ while Ruan Jia is a celebrated and looked up to artist among those who actually know anything.
Nitpicking anatomy of all things is a classic sign of autism. Seek help, kiddo.

>>1814069
>>1814075
hey guys, guess what ? I have a lot of time ahead of me, and i'm already working on it (pretty sure i'm already better than both of you), but i'm a realistic person, i don't suck someone's dick blindly just cause i like his art. learn some fucking criticism and maybe you'll improve. It's time to get that chines dick out of your noodles.

>not worth the time. get good
that low level dodge.

>>1814060
>>1814047

I do agree with >>1814050 , despite what /ic/ thinks this nitpicking bullshit really doesn't matter. I wish /ic/ would stop being so obsessed with anatomy. No one else notices or cares about this shit.

/ic/ needs to focus on being more well rounded artists. Instead of being obsessed with inconsequential minor anatomy issues, people here could really work on different fundamentals like color, which d/ic/kheads are weak at across the board.

>>1814085
>i'm already better than both of you
I love these type of guys. Yeah, bro, I'm sure you're one of the best /ic/ has ever shit out.
kekekekek

You are pathetic cocksuckers, who blindly praise some artist, and dont even want to see his flaws. he said himself, that he has to improve, yet i guess a lot of faggots would say that he doesnt need to, he is good. If you fucktards dont criticize 1 guy at all, dont criticize at all.

>>1814089
>I bet I'm lightyears ahead of you
Engage!

>>1814088
>no one else notices or cares
spoken like a true weeb

anatomy is one of the most important thing for any artist. fuck off, if the anatomy isn't perfect but still acceptable, no one is gonna say anything, but when it is absolutely shit, then yes. you are insulting many artists when you say anatomy do not matter. fucking face faggots.

>>1814104

you are wrong lol. just let it go already.

>>1814117
>anatomy is not important
comedy gold guys

>>1814122
>anatomy is everything
kek

>>1813583

I like to go way bigger with this statement... like

> given an infinity monkeys will write every piece of literature in the history of the world in exact chronological order

postan in a troll thread

>>1814126
>everything
It's like you don't even realize you are mentally challenged.

>>1814198
just let them eat their noodles and let's just share a drink

>>1813923
>>1814047
Well yeah those that you pointed out really are mistakes. I think somebody else already said it, but save for some fanboys or "/ic/-approach haters", everybody recognizes that Ruanjia anatomy is often wonky. The point why nobodies make hate threads about him is that not only he is pretty damn good at everything else but for the little that we know he is humble and recognizes his own mistakes. He improved over the years too. And -sorry /ic/- his style is very eye-catching.
Nobody can realistically become a perfect artist with no weakness, so as far as a flawed human being goes Ruan Jia seems like a pretty cool dude to admire.
Pic related, it's him going through anatomical studies before attempting OP's pic.

>>1814286
Meant to quote >>1813955 there, not >>1813923 sorry.

>>1813556
So i have to spend WEEKS to make something like this? What?

>>1814312
Not necessarily. It was a piece he took the liberty of experimenting with and taking as much time as he wanted. In the process gif it goes through a lot of drastic changes from the start.

>>1813556
it's pretty impressive how much time he can invest in a piece and still make it look good. more than twenty hours and i lose my mind as far as anatomy goes, he's cone a long way

>>1813574
yea, back when disposable cameras with film were a thing, a magazine gave it to photographers to take pictures with, because everyone bitched "i can't take good photos because i have a shit camera"

yea... the photographers came back with good photos because surprise surprise, they know how toy fucking use their tools.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ccGky54sQYc
that guy there uses a piece of fucking metal as a brush and got that result... so seriously, fuck saying "good tools make good people good"
at most when you are talking about a traditional medium, the "good tools" are really just them paying for what they need... sure they could get cheap everything and work around it, or save the time and use good from the get go.

>>1813576
anyone got that pic... really want to see themeh face painting.

>>1814117
next to no one perfects anatomy. all you have to do is get it so there are no glaring flaws and the most people can do is nitpick and there you go you are good enough at anatomy to move on.
unless you have a master of anatomy teaching you it, or you are doing studies, 100% accuracy is not important at all... get 90% there and you are gold.

you got better shit to worry about than a nitpick.

>>1814312
No, you have to spend years

>>1814415
Unless i photobash shit out of it and make it better: )

>>1814312
Many of us have spent weeks on stuff that isn't anywhere close to that. Obviously not constantly working on it. Maybe a few hours here and there a day. Maybe all day somedays. But point is, it's not unusual for this to happen.

>>1814415
if thats what weeks or years of work gets you, why fucking render? it just seems like wasted effort.

>>1814468

Going off of that idea, why draw at all? You'll never be as good as you want to be, and you'll never make an easy living, it just seems like wasted effort.

Maybe he really liked working on that painting. Maybe we really like drawing.

>>1813573

no

>>1813583

they

>>1814131

wont

They will create an infinite number of works that are different than this piece.

>>1814286
where is this from exactly?
could you upload it?

>>1815838
see >>1814001
it has .pdf download

>>1815841
oh! thanks! sorry for the bump, wish sage still worked.

>>1814286
Also, you seem like a really cool dude.
Paint buddies/10

daverapozadickbrush.jpg

>>1815507
spending 40-400 hours on a single piece just seems like a colossal waste to time over drawing it out, and painting it good enough. take a look at this

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-NIvZZ7x3dc

the drawing in the background is apparently only 2~ hours.
personally, thats where i would love to be, but even just a 1/4 as good in that time i would be happy with, dicking around painting something for 40-400 hours... for the results above... fuck that shit if it really takes that long i see no use in it.