Humility

How to decide who is right...

@Red Ochre Thank you, I really mean it. Your positive response has made me feel a lot better. I didn't even realize there was a perspective that would put my drawing in a different more positive light. And glad to hear especially you thought my use of textures was good as thats the main thing I imagine that I could get advice on from paint.net. @Ishi I don't know what you mean by randomness. But okay. I don't think I understand your advice. Do you mind f I ask questions about it? @1-2. Like I normally draw with pencil scan it in then finish in paint.net. Because that helps me a lot with perspective. Since when I draw with paint.net I always find myself having to zoom in to just a small piece of the image. But are you saying I should try to learn to draw completely in paint.net? @3. I've tried using gradients a couple times, though I can't figure out at all how to use them outside of windows and other rather smooth surfaces. I assume you mean the gradiant tool? I guess its because I can't figure out how to get them to work with textures. Like take that road for instance I suppose I should have somehow gradianted it so it got darker or maybe lighter, not sure which, as it approached the horizon line. But I made that road by rendering clouds tightly, leveling it, metalizing it then setting then using color balance. And any number of those steps would have broken the gradiant tooled base color I used. So I just, have no idea how to use gradiants. You have any advice there? @4. I don't understand this tip. You mean like blur it out more? @5. Oh I do that, I think. Assuming you mean tutorials. Like I'll think to myself, "Hmm... whats an easy way to make marble texture" I google "marble paint.net" and sometimes the tutorials are on youtube and sometimes on paint.net's forum. If so then okay! I'll do that next time. Thanks!

Oh thanks that might help.

This isn't actually how I intended it but for some reason while I was compressing the 39+ layers I had it changed.And I couldn't figure out how to compress it without it changing so I said 'whatever' I tried using all of the advice I was given here.

I mean the brush itself.

I'm having trouble with the lag in large images. For instance if I load up a 7000 by 7000 pixel blank canvas and try drawing a curve, a lag will occur and my curve will end up a straight line. Is there a way to make it, like, queue my actions?

I was trying to get some bricks I made with the bricks render to align in a decent way using the layer manipulater thing. And it crashed. Hidden Content: This text file was created because paint.net crashed. Please e-mail this to crashlog4@getpaint.net so we can diagnose and fix the problem. Application version: paint.net 4.0.9 (Final 4.9.5848.30436) Time of crash: 2/25/2016 7:36:47 PM Application uptime: 3.05:30:16.1753450 Application state: Running Working set: 756,144 KiB Threads: 233 Install directory: C:\Program Files\Paint.NET Current directory: C:\Program Files\Paint.NET OS Version: 10.0.10586.0 Workstation x64 .NET version: CLR 4.0.30319.42000 x64, FX 4.6 Processor: 2x "Intel® Celeron® CPU N2840 @ 2.16GHz" @ ~2167MHz (DEP, SSE, SSE2, SSE3, SSSE3, SSE4_1, SSE4_2) Physical memory: 3986 MB Video card: Intel® HD Graphics (v:8086, d:F31, r:14), Microsoft Basic Render Driver (v:1414, d:8C, r:0) Hardware acceleration: False (default: True) UI animations: False UI DPI: 96.00 dpi (1.00x scale) UI theme: Aero/Aero + DWM (Aero.msstyles) Updates: True, 2/22/2016 Locale: pdnr.c: en-US, hklm: en-US, hkcu: en-US, cc: en-US, cuic: en-US Flags: Exception details: PaintDotNet.InternalErrorException: Unbalanced reference count at finalization time (PaintDotNet.Surface) at 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I used a bigger canvas and tried shadowing this time. But I think the shadowing might have been rendered moot due to the foreground.

I did a search for the word 'shadowing' in the tutorial forum and didn't get any results. Suggestions on a shadowing tutorial?

Well I recently had someone tell me that I was pretty bad. And that got me worried. Which is what prompted me to come here and ask for advice. And wouldn't be much point in asking for advice if I didn't take it, even if its not what I expected. @Eli. Thank you, though I'll admit when I look at that one, my eyes just gravitate to the way the hands aren't shaped quite right, her bracelets don't quite sit right on her arms, the piercings don't fall into the right size proportions as they move closer and further away though all that can be improved with practice. My biggest problem is I feel like I should be critical of that background but waver on whether or not its too busy or too simple. Or maybe both or something else. I'm not sure what constitutes a 'good use' of Paint.net's texture tools and whats lazy. I kind of just randomly fiddled with the basic tools until I got something approximating okay. So I'm rather surprised you liked it. I'm not sure what that means. @Drydareelin Okay I'll change them to thumbnails. You mean just do a bunch of tutorials from the tutorial forum? I guess that would expand my knowledge base, I'm used to getting better by simply correcting mistakes. Fixing whats wrong so that didn't occur to me. I sometimes look at the tutorials when I want something specific. Like I used the fractal ice tutorial to try and make the ice on the Cyrohydra body, though I actually substituted the basic tools for the tools it required, mostly because I'm a bit more familiar with them and also because I didn't want a field of ice but a coat of ice on a single object. @pdnnoob. I just well, I have no professional interest, I just like using the drawing to assist me in the stories in tell in my D&D campaign. I used to just write large posts of words trying to illustrate the pictures in my head and that just seemed so inadequate so I started to try and literally draw them out. And I just want to get to a point where there is no embarrassment due to low quality. And right now I think my biggest hurdle is the colors themselves, the textures. I have no idea what I'm doing when I go to apply textures and just randomly fiddle with it until its right, but I feel that it could be a lot better especially if I knew what I was doing. Sometimes I think it would be nice if somehow I could combine the pretty and wonderful textures an umm.. not sure what the word is for it but a lot of people on paint.net make big canvas of pretty textures and abstract designs. I think I would like to somehow make stuff like that and use it for my backgrounds and textures combined with the line art. @Red Ochre. If I go back really for to when I first started drawing, the very first time I picked up a pencil three years ago I see a significant improvement. The improvement in the past two years has been mostly just small things. I use a dry erase board when I want to practice a drawing before committing it to pencil and paper. It saves me a lot of time and money. You think comparing sketches is different than just comparing the final end products? Also as for my sources of inspiration you could say, though more like what I originally started drawing as a basis when I started out. Its really embarrassing, but There is this one episode of the Powerpuff girls, a pretty bad episode altogether, but they went to a city where everyone was drawn in a more typically and realistic style, but there was still a lot of the more typically cartoony designs in it and I just really liked the contrast between the two but in the same place.The hard contrast that was easy to notice but somehow didn't wreck the suspension like what happens when live action is mixed with cartoons. Plus they had lots of pretty back ground colors in that series completely. Another source of inspiration is probably Disney's the Black Cauldron, in that case everything was just so dark and moody and dramatic with practically none of the whimsy of any other Disney film but it still had the Disney artwork.Making an unexpected contradiction I liked. In addition I really like dramatic artwork like the more recent D&D artwork. No Contrast there but it just looks really cool. So I'm not sure exactly what I want, but the idea of achieving contrasting and contradicting elements in my drawings does appeal to me. Simple line art but with those pretty and complex looking textures. Somewhat cartoony features but set in serious dramatic or violent scenes.

You don't open the .dll file, that is the plugin. Thats what you paste into the effects folder.

I don't see the appeal.

My textures for instance are little more than just randomness. And need help.

The first is from two years ago and the last a few weeks ago. As you can see, I've not really improved much in that time, I've gotten better with leg/body proportions but thats about it.. I've decided that in all likelihood I've reached the end of how much mere practice can improve me and I'll either have to start radically experimenting until I find something that works or get some advice. I figure the latter option is smarter. I draw a general idea of the image I want, sometimes its complex drawing but more often then not its just an outline of basic shapes in order to help me get the sizes right as if I try to draw anything with pure paint.net I have no way of keeping the relative sizes of the varying objects in proper proportion as I have to zoom in too close, And then I scan the drawing in and I put in all the colors and details with paint.net. I know I have just about everything wrong but I can't seem to think of what would be right. I would be satisfied just to get to the point where its not somewhat embarrassing The last image was also the image I put the most concentrated effort into and its still embarrassing..

Thank you, this was helpful

So if I took one of those height map plug ins and used noise it would umm... do the jaggedish dent like effect I want? If so is there a recommended plug in of them for this?

I tried searching for a rougher dent program using the word 'rough' but all the plug ins used words I don't understand like 'height map' I am basically looking for something that'll create an effect like dents does but more jagged. Like crumpled metal or rippling muscle. I am hoping to apply the 3d gloss plug in to that to make it look nice and glossy as well afterwards. But first I need a rougher dent plug in. Are there any?

Not a very good first attempt at creating a human shape for filling backgrounds with, rather lumpy, but I'll likely make more as I need them and hopefully get better.

I wanted a cloud shape and it seemed easy enough so i made a cloud shape. Then for an unknown reason I went and made two more shapes, its easy enough to do, but it is tedious. But here are the results. I don't know if its necessary to note but I traced the book case and the lab. Shapes.zip

Thanks, if I find different things I can do with it I'll post it here.

It counts total pixels? And @MJW maybe but its certainly a good tool.

Maybe it was the tolerance issue. As I found at 18 I seem to have all the dark ones now bright green. (I used bright green to better see.) But if I shift it up to 19 suddenly large random chunks revert. Though they don'r look like they should threaten to break the pixel size limit. Maybe its just a priority issue in the code. Because chunks that look identical seem unaffected and if I keep slowly raising the tolerance up chunks keep going from selected to unselected. I think though it froze before because I had just used TR's pixel tool before hand and there was some sort of conflict. As now that I've restarted it, there is no more problem with it stopping.

ceases to have any effect.

Actually not quite exactly for some reason its not having any effect on noise. I mean instead of grabbing the exact desired color and those within a close enough shade of it, it seems to be effecting randomly. And as I slid the bar around it suddenly stopped doing anything.

Just tried it, it works very well. Thanks, will save me quite a bit of time. And it looks like it would even be able to help with the noise. In fact it seems to be exactly what I was requesting.