Imogen's Sketchbook of '22

[miimogenation]

2-3 hours.  It shouldn't be this hard..!!  

I am sick of searching on YouTube and Skill Share.  Apparently no one has ever done "Realistic Clothing Digital Painting" nor fabric, textiles, digital art, painting...   and I've tried every combination of the term and I'm just getting people who really aren't 'good enough' to be doing tutorials, plus not realistic..  Concept art which isn't fully rendered..  Or things that are absolutely nothing to do with what I asked!!  

I'm getting upset because everything either looks super blury like I painted everything with the softest brush I could find and there's no definition.  Everything looks too hard like I just coloured in some line art with kids felttip pens.  Looks like I did it with wax crayons.  Is too textured and now becoming painterly / muddy and I'm back to the same upset..  

I am using my own shirt for reference.  And trying to pay attention to light and creases and values, while I'm not trying to copy crease for crease, shadow for shadow, wrinkle for wrinkle etc etc..  I am trying to make it look like an actual shirt - semi realistic / photo realistic.  

I know I'm not going to achieve this in one day.  It takes years of practice but I've had years of just churning out the same thing.  How do I actually do this?? 

I honestly I have now painted this shirt with soft brush, hard brush, texture brushes a mixture of the above.  And I am just getting the same crappy result that isn't what I want my art to be.  And now the more I try I'm making mud.  Working on one layer or fifty layers it just doesn't look like it should.