Pro tip: check your brush size before you start a detailed piece

I spent 3 hours on a portrait last night using what I thought was a 2px brush. Turns out it was still set to 12px from my last project and I was wondering why the tiny eye details looked so clunky. Had to redo the whole face this morning. Anyone else ever waste a ton of time on a dumb setting mistake?

3 comments

3 Comments

lucast8110d ago

2px? That's just your screen getting dusty, not a brush setting...

wren23010d ago

Yeah but 2px isn't really about dust, it's about how the brush tip loads on the canvas. Most people don't realize that at 1px you're basically drawing with a single pixel of pure opacity, but 2px gives you that tiny bit of edge softness if your tablet pressure is set right. It's not just a line width thing either, it changes how the stroke blends with the background. I've seen people bump up to 2px to fake anti-aliasing on pixel art and it actually works okay for small details. Just saying, it's a legit setting for certain styles, not a monitor cleaning issue.

tessap7310d ago

Wait, doesn't the 2px trick also mess with how colors stack when you're doing transparency? I messed around with it for a while on some old pixel art sprites and noticed that the extra pixel of softness actually lets the background show through in a weird way without having to manually dither everything. It's like a cheap way to get that gradient look on tiny details like hair strands or reflections on armor. Definitely not a dust thing, that's just funny that someone would even think that.