- Hello there and thanks for joining me.
I'm digital artist, Aaron Rutten
and in this video I'm gonna answer a question
from one of my viewers, and that is:
Does using brush stabilization hold you back?
Well, it depends on how and why you're using it.
For those of you who have not heard of smoothing,
I'll show you really quickly how you can turn it on.
In Corel Painter, if it's not available up
in the properties bar at the top,
then you can look under the General Settings.
It's a very similar process over in Photoshop
with the brush tool selected.
I can get to smoothing from
the properties bar up at the top.
Although Photoshop offers some additional modes
that Corel Painter and many art applications do not.
If you're using something other
than Corel Painter or Photoshop,
it's likely that your application
has a smoothing setting as well,
if you look around for it.
So what is brush stabilization?
Stabilization, or smoothing as I like to call it,
is a brush property that simulates friction
and provides some resistance to the movement
of your pen within the software that you're using.
It does this by making your brush stroke lag
behind the tip of your pen,
it also keeps the stroke stable.
Its primary use is to help drawing on a tablet
feel more like drawing with traditional media.
Stabilization can also be used
to smooth out wobbly pen strokes.
For example, a small amount of stabilization
can be necessary due to the nature
of how a tablet senses a pen.
The tablet uses a grid of sensors to detect the pen,
so you might find that without any stabilization,
the pen creates kind of a stair pattern when you're drawing.
My guess is this happens either because the software
is not averaging the location of the pen tip,
so the line jumps to the nearest sensor on the grid.
Or the sensors are just too sensitive
and it's picking up more of your movement than you'd like.
It could also be a combination of the two.
Nevertheless, you may at least want
to use a low smoothing setting
if you're getting wobbly lines no matter what you do.
Even if your tablet has a very high resolution,
or a lot of sensors, you may find that drawing
on a tablet surface feels a little more slick
than it would if you were drawing
with a pencil on heavy-grain paper.
A paper and pencil would offer some resistance
and that friction would, of course, provide
a degree of stabilization to the lines drawn.
Same goes for a bristle brush loaded
with paint dragging across a canvas.
The friction, the drag of the bristles
and the thickness of the paint
would all cause the brush strokes
to be smoother and more stable.
So smoothing is just digital friction.
It can help your digital art tools
feel more like their physical counterparts.
So what are some other ways to use stabilization?
Digital artists who use a mouse,
find it nearly impossible to use
for freehand drawing clean lines.
So a high smoothing setting
can make drawing with a mouse much more accurate.
The most recent version of Photoshop
has some great smoothing options that work well
for drawing clean, stable lines with a mouse.
All artists are different.
Some of us have steady hands and some of us do not.
So for some folks, smoothing is essential
to enjoying drawing and painting digitally.
And the last use of smoothing deals with digital brushes
that are not based on real-life tools.
Particle Brushes for example, use smoothing
to regulate the movement of particles
within each brush stroke.
So how do smoothing settings affect brushes?
A low smoothing setting will provide
enough stabilization to ensure
that your strokes look natural
while retaining most of the stroke fidelity.
A medium smoothing setting will give
your strokes a little more stabilization,
but it will begin to slow down the strokes as well.
Because of this lag, if you make very quick brush strokes,
they may not match the exact movement
that you made with your hand,
causing the stroke to be a bit inaccurate or over-averaged.
In a sense, your stroke lost some information
or detail by becoming smoother.
So in some cases, you may not want smoothing
because it could actually make drawing more difficult.
A high smoothing setting will slow down
your strokes even more and it'll keep the stroke
from jittering side to side while you're drawing.
This makes it really easy to create nice smooth ink lines,
but again, this is going to feel very unnatural
if you try to use it with quick gestures while sketching.
And finally, an extreme smoothing setting
can even force your strokes to be absolutely perfect.
It works great for drawing smooth curves
and straight lines and circles,
but it would be impossible to use
for quick, loose sketching.
So why is it so important
to be able to sketch and paint loosely?
Well, being able to create quick, spontaneous marks
is the key to getting natural
and expressive freehand drawings.
If there's too much resistance in your marks,
it can subtract from the detail
and character of your drawing.
For example, I'll draw some hair without smoothing,
and you can see that without so much smoothing
I get a little more movement in the hair.
It looks a little more natural.
Whereas if I over-smooth the brush and paint the hair,
it might give me a smoother look
and that might be the effect that I want,
but if I want more expressive lines,
it's better to have the smoothing off or very low.
Here's another example of drawing a rugged tree trunk.
If I have no smoothing or a very low smoothing setting,
I get a lot more little bumps and movements in the bark
because I'm moving my hand and jittering it a little more.
Whereas if my smoothing is set too high,
all those little bumps get smoothed out.
And so even though I'm moving my hand a lot more,
it's not picking up those fine motions.
Another place where smoothing can do more harm than good
is when you're drawing sharp corners like claws and spikes.
When I draw the corner of the spike without smoothing,
it's nice and sharp but if I add too much smoothing
it rounds it off and it makes it hard
to draw nice, sharp points.
And now the question you've all been waiting for.
Do I use stabilization?
Yes.
But the amount I use is tailored to each brush.
If the brush does not benefit from smoothing,
then I turn it off.
I've also learned how to draw smooth curves,
stable lines, ellipses and straight lines
without having to rely on smoothing.
So for me, smoothing is not a crutch,
it's just a way to save time
or make the digital drawing experience feel more natural.
If you work on improving your drawing technique as I have,
you won't need to use smoothing as often.
And it's not difficult to learn
and I even have some tips that I'll link to you
in the description of this video.
And I know you're probably wondering,
should I feel like I'm cheating if I'm using stabilization?
No.
As I mentioned earlier,
stabilization is just digital friction
and friction is a property that is widely used by artists.
There is no right or wrong in art.
If the tools are available, use them if you want to.
Smoothing is just a tool.
However, you should be honest
if people ask you how you draw such perfect lines
if you're always using a maximum smoothing setting
while you're drawing.
So I have a few general tips for using smoothing.
If you're trying to sketch or paint loosely,
keep your smoothing either off
or at a very, very low setting.
That way you can draw and paint more spontaneously.
Especially if the linework that you're doing
has a lot of fine points and little sharp corners
and things like that.
If you're just trying to simulate brush friction,
choose a medium smoothing setting,
or maybe tweak it and make it a little bit stronger
or a little bit weaker depending on the kind of brush
that you're using and the amount of friction that you want.
If you're trying to draw very clean, very smooth ink lines,
then choose a heavy smoothing setting.
And if you're drawing with a mouse
or you're trying to draw absolutely perfect lines,
then you can use a maximum smoothing setting.
So, will smoothing hold you back
and keep you from getting better at drawing?
Well, that all depends on how you use it.
If used correctly, it's no different
than using the natural friction
of a traditional art tool to achieve stroke stabilization.
However, if you use it incorrectly,
it might keep you from being able
to draw accurately which will get
very frustrating very quickly.
Or even worse, it might even limit
the amount of detail, character and expressiveness
in your art by making the lines a bit too perfect.
After all, imperfection is what makes art art.
And it's the amount of imperfection in a piece
that helps to define an artist's style.
Use smoothing, but use it wisely.
If you found this information helpful,
take a quick second to like this video.
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I'd love to have you subscribe.
I have a lot more videos for digital artists like you.
Thanks for watching and I'll see you next time.