A gallery owner in Austin said my digital art was 'too clean' to feel real

I was showing my fantasy landscape piece at a small art walk last month, and this older guy who runs a local gallery looked at it for a long time. He finally said, 'The skill is there, but it's too clean... it needs some grit to feel lived in.' I've been thinking about that ever since. How do you add that kind of texture or imperfection to a digital piece without just using a grunge brush?

3 comments

3 Comments

schmidt.reese24d ago

My old painting teacher used to say a clean brush makes a dead painting.

spencerh9524d agoMost Upvoted

That "clean brush makes a dead painting" line from your old teacher, @schmidt.reese, always bugged me. A dirty brush just makes mud on the canvas after a while. You need to know when to clean it to keep your colors bright and true. A controlled process, not just messy for the sake of it, makes better art in the long run. My best work came from keeping my tools in decent shape.

sandra20312d ago

Lol that gallery guy would hate my stuff then, I'm basically the queen of clean digital art. But @spencerh95 has a point about control, maybe the trick is adding grit in specific spots, like scratches only where light would hit or faded colors in the distance, not just slapping a filter over everything.