I'm having a very hard time simplifying noisy pieces (lot of detail). Could you please give a hand?

[hexdump]

Hi,

I have been painting for some time now and have always hit a very hard wall with noisy pieces as the one above:

My objective is not to copy the piece exactly with all the bumps and little details but providing a good simplification of that areas with high detail that still look pleasant and interesting to the viewer. I think it is called “suggesting detail”. I know our brain is very good at feeling details suggested by the painters and it is really hard for me to do it.

Here is my interpretation of the piece after 2 hours of trying:

I think values are more or less correct and colors are not too far but man mine is very ugly and doesn’t represent the image In my opinion.

Could you suggest any tip, book, vide tutorial or whatever that could help me on this subject?

Thanks in advance!

[Takiro]

I moved your topic from tech support to "art support "

[Michelist]

Hello @hexdump, and welcome to the forum!

I can’t help you with your question, because I always painted from imagination and let my feelings decide what’s wrong or right. But since you claim your goal wouldn’t be a 1:1 copy, why bother with “is this enough detail or not” questions? Paint as you see right and that’s it.

---

And now to something completely different.
In this forum, you are explicitly requested by the forum rules to provide some information if you post reference pictures not taken by yourself, like with this photo. At least, I have to assume it will very probably not yours, because you can find it all over the WWW, for example at File:Ossetian towers in Fiagdon.jpg - Wikimedia Commons, and although the picture itself is published under the CC BY-SA 3.0-License, it does not nullify this request, because pictures don’t talk and state their origin and license, and you can’t burden us with the task to always lookup if the posted pictures may be possibly yours or not.
Our Code of Conduct puts it this way, under “General Expected Behaviour and Actions”:

Excerpt of our COC
General Expected Behaviour and Actions

8. Post Only Your Own Stuff

You may not post anything that belongs to someone else without permission. The exception is reference images, in which case every attempt should be made to credit the artist or photographer by name. In all cases a link to the image owner’s website must be included.

You may not post anything (guides, images, links, videos, etc.) which facilitates actions which are illegal. For example: links to pirate software, links to videos showing how to remove watermarks and use copyrighted artworks, etc.

Please be so kind to obey it in the future. Thank you!

In case of further questions, feel free to ask.

Michelist

[hexdump]

Oh, sorry for that. I read the rules, but when I saw the reference images section I thought I was able to post it. I will try to be more careful in the future. The picture was taken from pinterest. Do you want me to delete it and add the link to pinterest?

[Yaroslavus_Artem]

It’s worth experimenting with textured brushes - they definitely save time when it comes to details.
Other than that - your work is simply unfinished - there is more detail on the distant moutains than on the rocks nearby.

[Michelist]

No, you don’t need to remove it. Because I already gave a link that is valid and provides the needed permission.

@hexdump

The picture was taken from pinterest.

AND here lies the huge issue with pictures taken from Pinterest. Pinterest’s rules state that an uploader is held reliable for obeying any intellectual property rights/copy rights and whatnot else is connected to it.
And Pinterest does it to make tons of money with the copyright infringements of their users, well knowing that their users’ urge to showcase the best collections, to present themselves as whatever they want to be seen, lets most of the users post anything, without thinking about the possible consequences for themselves, because copyrighted or not doesn’t matter for most users on Pinterest. And you won’t find for the most material on Pinterest a valid proof of permission, the fact that a pic is posted on Pinterest says exactly nothing if there isn’t posted a provable permission or the link to such a permission. And be honest, for how many pictures on Pinterest, you’ve seen, have you seen such a link or permission of the IP or copyright holder? These are mostly pics scraped by users for self-representation purposes, or whatever else reason, they don’t care about the risks, most of them are kids, but not only.
I guess, like with this forum, most of them never have read the rules they granted to obey. But if any IP or copyright holder sues Pinterest, Pinterest gives them the data of the user in question, and you have three guesses what will happen to them. But Pinterest doesn’t care, Pinterest sells slots between the pins of their users for PR-Purposes and earns from the views. As said above, they live from their users copyright infringements.

If you are interested in sources for save to use pictures, then you may want to take a look at this list:

Art references sites or sources

My unweighted collection of websites that I browse when I’m looking for ideas: https://purepng.com https://stocksnap.io/ https://www.pngwing.com https://openverse.org/ https://pixabay.com/ https://morguefile.com/ https://www.stockvault.net/ https://www.rawpixel.com/ Michelist

and here with some changes:

How do you guys manage your references?

First I crawl my disk (about 2TB of references over the decades), then I search through my list of picture hosting sites, Pinterest does not belong to them because you seldom (almost never) find works posted by their creators but content of questionable origin or even without naming the origin - and that is a no-go! The list is an unweighted collection of websites: https://purepng.com http://www.freestockphotos.biz/ https://stocksnap.io/ https://www.pngwing.com http…

The problem is almost always having or finding (a) permission (that can be safely deduced) to use an image, only a few providers on Pinterest offer this, mostly it’s companies, photographers or studios themselves¹ that offer this on Pinterest, that’s why sites that post images with license information are so valuable. And if you want to search for more sites yourself, there are new sites popping up all the time, then search terms like “royalty free images”, CC0, public domain images, and the like are very helpful.

Michelist

¹ Because rights violations can jeopardize the existence of a company, photographer or studio.

[hexdump]

I noticed what you commented about the far mountains. I did that becuase that part was very easy to me to simplify :). One more question, do you ussually use hard brushes (textured or not) for this types of rocks? I used one that is semi transparent thinking that the layering would work but it made it really muddy.

Thanks!

[Yaroslavus_Artem]

I use hard brushes with 90-100% opacity for pretty much everything ( I adjust the softness with the flow slider). But I guess - it’s a matter of personal taste.