DOES YOUR BRUSHWORK SUCK?? Tips & strategies 

*Sees title* *looks at own paintings* yeeeeah...we should really watch this.

a while ago I was like "how in the hell does this guy uses selections to paint, wtf" now I can't live without a lasso tool

Great video!

Let the brush do the work. You don't gotta stress and overwork it. The tree is in your brush, you just gotta coax it out. -Bob Ross

I know I’m commenting 3 years after you posted this, but I felt this was a great and concise tutorial. I love the structure of your video, showing us mature brushwork vs. novice brushwork, and then demonstrating, and a conclusion. You’ve been very helpful as I grow into digital from traditional paint. The thing I love most is how much from digital can be taken back to traditional as well. Thank you for the amazing educational videos!

that was great, I've only recently set myself up with a decent computer, a wacom and photoshop. thanks for sharing

Wow Tyler! It's amazing how good you've become and I love listening to you. I appreciate the time you took at the beginning of the video to try to teach the "eye" for brushwork. You definitely made something click in me, especially when you warped the grass on the picture with the house in a forest. I was like whuuuuaaaa fuuuuuuucc and understood so much suddenly. I am stuck in character design for so many years and try to break out, but everytime I paint a scene I run against a wall. I understand now that I don't apply my knowledge of brush work at my landscapes and scenes. I will take your videos now, starting from this one, and make regular exercises. Thanks so much for providing me a way for development!

Thank you Tyler! This was enormously helpful to me as a traditional artist starting to get into digital art. I never thought of using the selection tool for better control of hard edges and feathering out texture. It's amazing to see how quickly brushwork and textures can be adjusted with digital techniques.

Literally never thought about using the selection tool as a way of constraining texture so it doesn't go where you don't want it to until you brought it up. Added to the facts that it comes with the double feature of letting you use whatever you want AND the triple feature of letting you highlight or call out focal points. Extremely helpful stuff.

Thanks for the advice. It was really helpful! Can't wait to try them out!

Great video. You introduced me to so many great artists whose work I hadn’t seen previously. Thank you!

Thanks for the lessons Tyler, this is a great video,with very usefull tips and clear examples of what to do and not to do with our brushwork.

That tip to just practice on painting nature stuff from reference really resonated with me as a good idea to practice my godawful brushwork. I think I'm gonna do that. I still struggle enough with just sketching though so I'm not sure how far it'll take me. Learning to draw is really freakin hard man.

Ive never seen anyone use the selection tool to add color. Noted!!! Thanks for the tips. I love traditional ink and color pencil. Forcing myself to learn digital... So exciting to see all the possibilities in digital work, but the learning curve is pretty wild. Its learning a new language. Trying to practice daily. Glad I found your channel.

Love seeing your analysis on brush work as I'm also obsessed and mesmerized by it. I look at the work of Even Amundsen and Nick Gindraux way too much! Looking forward to more videos :)

@Tyler Edlin, you're great man, thank you for these videos. Much and deserved respect to you.

This is genuinely helpful. Great advice.

Thanks! This solved my problem! At first, I thought all perspective was the key. But I felt like I hit a wall that I can't pass through. Being a self thought digi-artist, and just by watching materials here on youtube is kinda hard.. Whilst there's so many materials out there, you can't always find the right answer to your questions hence the right questions to your problem.. Your channel is underrated like some of the great gurus out there, but I really, REALLY LOVE YOUR CONTENT. Thanks for helping us.

Really appreciate your content Tyler, another great video. you have pointed me in the right direction. Thank you :)

I learned from this video one aspect of brush work how to put the detail in some areas and other areas leave less detailed.. is that all brush work is.... These free videos do me well until I can take your course!! Thank you for that and the fast response

So glad I found this. I’ve been struggling big time with brush work especially coming from a traditional background. No one talks about brush work or brush strokes and it’s a major component of painting. I find brush work is even more difficult when you’re trying a painterly or alla prima approach.

Hey Tyler, great content thanks for sharing. I took CGMA's architecture design earlier this year but only found this video by chance, it was fun hearing you again.

It actually was very helpful, thanks for your time preparing this material.

TRADITIONAL >>> Richard Schmid, Mark Boedges, Jennifer McChristian, Henry Yan, Zin Lim, Sookyi Lee, Huihan Liu... DIGITAL >>> Wangjie Li, Yizheng Ke, Sung Choi, Swang, Alexander Mandradjiev, Houston Sharp, Wadim Kashin, Yun Ling...

awesome tips! definitely need to take these into consideration especially now that im juggling phototexturing in as well!

This was incredibly helpful, Tyler! Amazing video and demonstrations!

Incredible video, thank you!! Brushwork tips is something I`m always looking foward to get, your insights are hugely apreciated!

Great stuff. I'm just starting up a daunting piece, so this video was super timely. Definitely gonna keep these tips in mind as I work. Thanks!

great advice with great examples and demos. thanks

Thank you so much, such a nice tutorial! Something I wish I'd learned at the art school...

This was extremely helpful, thank you!

Very good video, the examples from your work are very helpful ! Thanks a lot

This is a super helpful tutorial. Thank you.

Great episode on a very nuanced topic.

Thank you! some one finally addressed this problem I know the light but all of my drawing look muddy and I could never figure out why.

your tips are so worthy Thanks a million!!

Very informative, thank you!

Love this. It's definitely going to make a difference in my work!

Thank you so much for this!!!

Just got yourself a subscriber sir. Great video!

Thank you very much. Great points in the video!

Thank you so muchh, even ig im still a beginner i feel like this is gonna be helpful to keep in mind in the long run

Thank you! I love painterly looks at digital painting. This would help me tremendously.

Thanks for a solid video. I like that you showcased a variety of artist styles, staying true to the principle of variety in that way. Each style has its own strengths. Looking back at my own work, I tend to gravitate toward a very precise style very early, and I want to be more loose and impressionistic, at least until later in the process. I want to bring a more Nick Gindraux style to my work, which feels too static and "posed". My backgrounds and foregrounds are also too disconnected, I think because my gradient of brushwork doesn't integrate them well, they feel like actors on a stage in front of a painted backdrop instead of objects in a 3D world they are all part of.

Such a great tutorial and topic, The tips overview at the end really helped push the information home a little more. Thank you for taking the time to create these videos.

Great video, thank you! Can you do more of these videos. I love critique!

I think you're points are good but a little bit all over the place. Might be good to link share the fundamentals at the beginning of the video and explain per subject. Contrast seems to be the major point, subjects being; A)...B)... jadajadajada This will reduce the subjective aspect a lot and give a better overview in general instead of the last 3 minutes being the point of the video.

while i'm not in any of these artist's league, i was happ AF to see szymon's method of making selections on the flat art. i do a similar thing, but i'm happy to see a real pro doing it, because i would have thought they painted all that stuff in. makes me feel less of a chump.

Good stuff! can't wait for the water techniques keep it coming .

Fantastic video! easy to understand. I take so long to paint digitally but i dont use the marquee tool. I will be using that often from now on

Good video but I feel like the lighting for the tree at about 12:20 was great advice. Even to introduce air perspective in that piece wouldve been a nice topic, the colors on the front should be more saturated than the objects in the back. The values of colour didnt work since the values were too similar. Not enough contrasting values . If the Darker colours were darker and lighter colours lighter, it wouldnt look so flat. Anyways just my thoughts :D

Wonderful video! Thanks for sharing your knowledge! =)

This is amazing !!

A lot to think about. Thanks.

Thank you Tyler!

thanks god I found this video! the brushwork-sucks is such a unobservable question that may limit the process, let alone there are few tutorials mention it. thx dude.

Thread resurrection! Awesome critiques on the student work. I am working on a complex forest scene right this moment (albeit in gouache) and I will keep your advice in mind. I ended up doing a lot of the tone work with watercolor brushes as an experiment, trying to get a lot of textures. Its working, although, I wish the brush pens were not so chromatic. But as I'm going to cover over some of it with varying opaque gouache application, the colors can be muted in places where I want them to be. I hope it works.

Liked subscribed thank you for the great insight.

Great stuff man

i'm looking forward to the water video, these are really helpful =)

Wonderful advice, I've been messing around with a more painterly style, and textures always scare me to use! Good advice

Very good! I enjoyed this.

Awesome! Thank you very much!

The way you read Maciej Sidorowicz. Hah I love it.

Thanks for the vid~

So important! Thanks

That's it!!! Thank you very much

that was very helpful thank you

Glad I stumbled upon this

I’d love to achieve an style with broad and very simple brushstrokes just defining with hard brush strokes lights and colors, but I do better painting with mainly soft brushes so my pieces look very vanilla digital, and when I try to use hard or textured brushes I feel like I destroy the piece, I also tend to draw every single detail zooming in a lot because my objective was League splash art but I also want to have different brushstrokes like traditional art.

so much to learn

very usefull, thank you for the video

Fantastic video, Tyler! Thanks for this.

Amazing video, Tyler. Thank you!

I'm watching this with nostalgia, since just 4 years ago you could watch an illustration without having to wonder if someone had poured their soul in it or if it was made by a robot.

Everything you said about Matt's work I said to him too... I feel validated thank you lol. Awesome video though, maybe I'll get better applying it now.

excellent content

The brush dynamics in photoshop themselves can make for cool textures. I really like the saturation and brightness jitter. I notice all of the artists you showed don't use impasto textures. I think that makes it look too clean and digital. I need to drop photoshop and go with some natural painting software because i want more variation without having to muscle everything as much.

Heya Tyler, this was a great video! Also, I really liked the painting in the thumbnail, do you know what or who it's from? Thanks!

Boom Subscribed!

Out of everything (your analysis) your word use is spot on, you describe even in your most basic form as an action to the T..

Man, I use MyPaint so there's pretty much nothing for hard textures and no real selection tool, but dang it works well with what I do... gonna have to figure out my work around to get more variation in my brushwork, because I think it must be a big problem in my stuff. Many thanks for a video like this that can draw attention to it!

In the intro for this video you show parts of several books. Are there any that you would recommend?

thank you

Thanks a lot

Thx... Shared

hahah, as a native Pole, I can say that Biernacki should sound more like "beer-nuts-key". I know the consonants mashups in polish language can be confusing for people who don't know the pronounciation of them. Anyways I've recently discovered your channel and I love all the information I get from every of your vids

Thanks

9:55 Another panel in the journey of a stick salesman!

Basically. Contained chaos

My problem is that I have great brushstrokes that I add to my digital art from looking at the whole piece but then when I zoom in they are awful and sloppy. Like real art the piece looks great from a distance but looking close up which every viewer does the piece is very juvenile. This has made me have to zoom in on every inch of my art to lay down my digital paint and when you are working at a microscopic level you lose focus as to how you are affecting the whole piece. This makes me do the thing that every artist is told to stay away from and that is painting every little detail. So say if I was painting a tree I end up having to paint each and every leaf when I would rather create the illusion of leaves that are only viewed at from a distance. I’m still new to digital art and am great at painting on a canvas, but the two mediums though able to create the same end look have completely different approaches to their application. Another thing is I only have an iPad Pro 12.9” tablet to work on I don’t have the money to buy one of those fancy Wacom digital screens and I only have what Procreate can do. I would love to just paint vague shapes and forms that create an illusion of what I want to show and not have the fact that people dissect my work by going in and looking at every square inch through a microscope which is not how art should be viewed.

Can you link us to the brushes .

11:00 Wow that's frustrating to look at, that piece is clearly very much on its way to being fantastic, with solid composition (save for the bottom-left corner tangent and shadow tangents on the left tree) and pretty great and bold use of perspective (only weak part is the peak of the background arch) and great use of red-green harmony, but the brushwork on the foliage and roots gives a very jarring sense of incompleteness, like they ran out of time. What it really is, imo, is the fact that each "dab" of color on the ground foliage has a clear bottom edge, which kills its read a bit. The underside of the overhanging foliage is also a good place where the artist could have used darker values to distinguish ambient and cast shadows in order to deepen the read on those forms, too, and the roots are a great place to have very tight occlusion to again deepen the read on those forms. Those hanging roots are center-canvas and high detail density so it automatically draws you in but then just loses you in those flat raw circle brush strokes. Give this artist some more hours and they would have been able to finish that to really great quality.

Nice vid

At 10:50 I didn't see the figure in the piece until I really started looking around, there's nothing to make him stand out

ok I have a big question. how can I bring a pice from being done to being truly finished. it was something I was never able to do in class, and still can't. also thank you for the informative video.

thought one of those paintings was actually a 3D image, dang

i like your vid so i gave some advice.Its for your channel's sake i myself dont mind it but quite alot do. Growing a channel take alot more than just content.

What about Lee inhyuk and Wizyakuza?

Unless I've changed the keybindings and forgot about it hiding the selection outline is actually ctr+cmd+H on a mac (not just cmd+H as this video implies)