Soft muscle shading - Need help

[GambleFur]

I want to learn to properly apply a blur, or smudge to muscle lines, making it look super soft. But the more I experiment, the more off it looks it seems.

To give you a visual example of what I want to achieve, here’s a (NSFW) art example from another artist:
https://www.furaffinity.net/view/38544058/ (NSFW warning)

Talking about those smooth belly lines, or shading even.

I am unsure why I cannot seems to get a result to my liking, and it this point I also wonder if my toolset is just not ideal. I pretty much only draw in the latest dev build of SAI. I do own Photoshop CS6, and Clip Studio Paint too, but never used them, perhaps I should. Any advice on this would be greatly appreciated. Or perhaps someone’s knows of a youtube tutorial or something.

 

[MissNook]

Since you use SAI, you can configure your brushes to have different results in term of blending and render. I think that maybe your issue is that you don't have proper parameters. Can you show your current render and the brush parameters you use?

 

[GambleFur]

Since you use SAI, you can configure your brushes to have different results in term of blending and render. I think that maybe your issue is that you don't have proper parameters. Can you show your current render and the brush parameters you use?

I just reinstalled SAI xD
But to reply, I have zero clue on how the parameters work anyway. So my current brushset is the default one.

 

[Punji]

I never thought I'd ever see a sexy flamingo before.

 

[MissNook]

I just reinstalled SAI xD
But to reply, I have zero clue on how the parameters work anyway. So my current brushset is the default one.

To create brushes, click right on the default brush and then on duplicate, it will create another brush in the list and select it. I advise you to rename it by double-clicking on it (you can also change the shortcut for this brush there). Change the parameter of the brush by using the options as shown bellow and then draw and play with the options ^^
If you need help for the options and what they do, here's the SAI manual on them: http://en.saipainttool.com/manual/painting-tools/ and of course you can ask ^^

Here are two brushes parameters to help you. The second one I made quickly to be close to the render you wanted, but you should play with the parameter to go for something a bit smoother or use the water color brush which have a smooth option (I like more painterly render that's why I'm not used to have really smooth render )

Hope that helps ^^

 

[GambleFur]

Thank you very much! I am going to play around with this in a bit. For one, I though that I needed the blur tool to blend in the first place, not a brush.

 

[MissNook]

Thank you very much! I am going to play around with this in a bit. For one, I though that I needed the blur tool to blend in the first place, not a brush.

I'm glad I could help Don't hesitate to ask if you need more help and hope you'll have fun drawing!!