VectorVonDoom

No I meant more about the left hand side and the middle. It's a bit dark it could perhaps do with some highlights too. Perhaps even a bit more on the tool buttons.

That one looks better. I liked your properly skeuomorphic designs, hope that style comes back soon (I'm no where near the only one who does). But this is sort of in between so it's not boring flat. Hadn't noticed your DeviantArt account before.

Looks good but the way you've done the shading on the keys makes them look curved. Not sure but less drop shadow and bring the highlight down as it's too close to the dark part? Always like seeing your stuff, you should post more.

I you like that sort of style look at the Jaguar, Ferrari and Golf. https://forum.affinity.serif.com/index.php?/topic/46909-1965-ferrari-dino-berlinetta-speciale-ad/&tab=comments#comment-234716 https://forum.affinity.serif.com/index.php?/topic/54917-jaguar-e-type-lightweight-ad/&tab=comments#comment-278767 https://forum.affinity.serif.com/index.php?/topic/45896-the-image-i’m-submitting-for-16-promo-vw-golf-gti-16-ad/&tab=comments#comment-229455 In a way the Golf's my favourite. It's the first one I did and wasn't really going for realistic it just happened. That's one's different as the car doesn't use any blurs. I've tidied up the background since. I wasn't going to do the Ferrari but did a nice radial gradient for the wheel and thought why not.

There are a many different styles, aiming for photorealistic is just one, and they're all good as long as you enjoy creating them. There's no best one for everyone. But yes I do want to be better than that. I've been having a think about what I really want to do and it's better quality rather than more quantity. More just takes longer but isn't any more difficult.

Thanks. I think I'm OK but you can always improve and I'm trying some new things to get better at it.

Most call It photo realistic/realism. I've read two differing things regarding hyper realism. One was that it depends on the country and language, some call it one thing others the other but it's the same. The other thing I read was that the hyper realistic artists add detail above and beyond what a camera can capture. That's a bit vague. If they mean add bits that aren't really there to improve it, say a nicer reflection or combine more than one image, then fine. If they mean simply more detail than a photo then that's obviously nonsense. Remember the arty farty type can talk forever about a canvas painted a single colour so I tend to ignore them. It is what it is.

I disagree that the right tool is raster, it may be easier for some things but it's not as simple as right or wrong. I also disagree it's always better as in better quality. Most of the quality is down to the person not the app. Of course there are some effects that would be very hard or impossible to do in vector but then you know the advantages of vector over raster. Anyway all of that doesn't really matter, I do it for this sort of stuff for fun and being difficult is part of that, if it's too easy then that isn't my idea of fun. I've always been impressed with people who create photorealistic art and tried it to see if I could get anywhere close. I'm sure some people don't like the style but there are styles I dislike, all this flat stuff for example. But it doesn't matter if I like it or not as long as they enjoy creating it (in anything they want), there's plenty of other stuff to look at. I might get bored of it sometime and do other stuff but for now I enjoy it.

This was this evening's shading practice/doodling, just the pen tool as usual, using a very grainy artifacty photo as the reference. But it didn’t really matter as I just needed to know roughly where the highlights and shadows were. I worked on it for a little while then exported it and though oh my God it’s hideous. Hated everything about it and thought about stopping there. But I hadn’t really done that much so I’m not sure what I was expecting. Anyway I did keep going and came up with this. With big blurs it almost ends up like painting it, long winded painting and in my case sucky painting but still painting. It’s a bit weird but in the end I quite like it, I think, I can't decide if it's ok or rubbish. Anyway it was good practice.

Hi Peter, That's one reason to post. Whilst it's always nice for people to say they like it, hopefully it also pushes some people who want to try that style to take their work further. If I can do it then I'm sure most can, it's patience and not skipping details. I'm not sure it would help, it's pretty obvious and much the same as the Jaguar, but I could message you the AD file.

I’m not really much of a motorbike person but fancied doing one for a long time and Peter’s Ducati drawing reminded me that it’s about time I got around to it. I didn’t want to do the whole thing this time, I wanted a small’ish project. There are a few crops that looked good but I wanted the Ducati name in it. This is a slight crop of a crop to make it A paper size. Adding depth of field, so some things at varying degrees of out of focus, was a bit fiddly at times but not too bad. The petrol cap was sort of interesting as the reflections made it look very vector like in the photo. One of my favourite bits is the green petrol (I assume) pipe and clip (the clip took just over an hour) which doesn’t jump out at you but I really like it. Of course I also like my brake pivot screw that I showed the other day, together with the horn section. There is one bit I was lazy about, on the fork crown the black paint in the photo had texture which I didn’t do. However photos of other bikes show it smooth painted so I’m OK with that. I think the brown stripe on the tank was actually yellow when new but I’ve yet to see one where it’s still that colour other than on a model. It could be the models are wrong though. Near the end it was killing my MacBook so I split it and used a master for the finished stuff. Ignore any banding on the tank it only shows up on the upload. There are a few tiny bits that I might do as I get time but I’m quite happy with it. The main image is half size. I did think to look at how much they go for these days, they’re not cheap.

If you look at those teasers, search for something like gamepad teaser, then the highlights are still quite bright. I think if you did similar it would improve it especially on the left.

You can do but you won't get a prize as I've already said somewhere, not that you would have got one anyway! I'm not ignoring Venus, I spent the weekend on it, but nothing new was finished. As that's going to take so long, so very long, I need some mini'ish projects too. I found this list (there are a few pages) of photorealistic artists that was interesting to look up their work, I didn't recognise all the names. Although I don't see how some listed could be classed as photorealistic artists unless you've never seen a photo or the real thing (a pet hate of mine). All have more talent in their little finger than the whole of me of course so I can't complain too much. https://www.widewalls.ch/artist-style/photorealism/ I'm starting to think that trying to do anything like that as vector must be the slowest way possible.

that sometimes make me happy. I managed to spend a good couple of hours on a screw but wanted it to look just like the original (the background's just blocked in). The wireframe doesn't even look that complicated, well I suppose it does for a screw, but it still takes time. It's full size from a 7216x5412 canvas. I was intending this one to be a quickie but somehow it doesn't often turn out that way with me. Now it's time to do a bit of work in the dark so I can see where the feint parts are.

Or you can add a shadow on the body where the wing meets (or vice-versa) so it blends in that way, which must be how it looks in real life. You can't just blur the whole thing or the other edges won't look right but you can enclose it and do it that way. See the 2nd to last post https://forum.affinity.serif.com/index.php?/topic/77827-botticellis-the-birth-of-venus-ad-progress/&page=2 and blur the container too.