darMP

Landscapes blurring studies

Added 2025-07-31 04:56:20 +0000 UTC

There was this short that I came across a long while ago but the instructions were simple enough for me to remember.

It's about using blur on the reference image to force you to ignore the smaller and finer details and look at the bigger picture. It's not required but I personally would suggest using only a few brushes, especially if you're not going all the way to 0 blur. But whatever brushes you use it's up to you. I personally went for this flat brush that has a nice 80-90 opacity in it. The blur percentage is also up to you, there are some references where I started at 50% and then others at 75%, just blur it enough that you see less small details.

I'm not the happiest with the last one - the red panda because it's less landscape and more portrait of an animal. An animal I draw more cartoony than realistic my habit took over me depending on the reference and made the head bigger. That said though, I'll try and see if this whole blur thing can work on character design in terms of readability.