Direction of a texture or brush

[Caseydave]

Hi All,

I'm in the process of drawing a lizard and have a lizard skin photo as my guide.

I'm hoping someone here can give me a few tips or suggestions on the following,

I'm currently drawing all scales one by one and adding the required linear fill colours to get the texture i need seen in Sample 1 below. No problem here I'm patient and don't mind doing it for the larger scales BUT later on the scales across the body will have to be small and follow the body shape,

Is there a way to use Sample 2 on the right that i have designed to create a brush that will follow the shapes i draw? i need it to scale also to the pen size, the photo on the left of sample 2 is the texture i would like to achieve.

I really don't want to re-draw that many scales if i don't have to. I tried using Gary's fur tut to do it but the scales don't alter direction.

I have included a sample xara file of my textures if anyone would like to give it a go.

http://www.macrophotography.com.au/lizard2.png

[Big Frank]

I think what I would do is select areas where all of the scales are as near as possibly the same (excluding general shadowing which you can superimpose later) and draw one scale and and clone them one by one using Drag + Right-click (assuming that's what you have set your Right-click to do).

http://i598.photobucket.com/albums/t...izard_skin.jpg
Similar areas of scales circled

I would never use a brush on anything like this since a brush creates the kind of uniformity you don't see in the animal kingdom.

[Caseydave]

Thanks! That didn't even cross my mind, so simple.

Cheers

[Burpee]

Look forward to your lizard when you are done.

[jvila]

I'm not sure it will be useful for you but I use this method to do things similar you are doing, take a look to this valery's thread.
http://site.xara.com/news/january08/...ationalart.asp

[Caseydave]

Thanks for the suggestions, I'm using a combination of both methods, Drawing the scales in 8 different directions then cloning into 8 seamless tiles and then using them with the mould tool.

I will post my resuts when I have the head completed.

[jvila]

I look forward to hearing from you, if it is possible explain your method.
Un abrazo

[masque]

I started to draw this iguana months ago and took it as far as the attached before moving on to something else, so strictly speaking it was never finished. I used Mehdi Natural Grain as a skin mottling effect to underpin the scales which I then drew scales on top in the areas where they would be most noticed, cloning 'clumps' of scales and adjusting the fill afterwards where appropriate. How much time you spend on something like this depends on your patience and your determination to get it photographically correct. My time and patience ran out as I had to move on to other things but it depends on if you need to finish, i.e. its a job, or you are doing it for pleasure and are satisfied to keep coming back to work on it more over a period of time. Everytime I look at this I notice a few scales that require adjusting (fill or direction) or where I need to sdd more or bend them to follow folds in the skin.
I don't think there is a quick way as the variety of shapes and colouration make it impossible to use a brush or a tiled fill.
The best thing about drawing lizards is that they at least sit still.
The line drawing shows where I've placed scales in areas where they are more visible and areas where I've relied on Mehdi Grain to do the job for me.
Derek

[Big Frank]

Beautiful job.

I used to have the patience to do things like that but time moves on...

Once again more inspiration for people to persist with Xara.

[gwpriester]

I would never use a brush on anything like this since a brush creates the kind of uniformity you don't see in the animal kingdom.

True. But there is a Randomize option that creates more random spacing, scaling (appropriate here?). etc.