I need help. Tell me how I can do the following

[Ento]

Hello, I don’t really like long introductions so let’s get to the point. I want to draw a cute baby dino, and I drew it, but it doesn’t look realistic enough. This image of octopus represents how realistic I want my dino to be. As you can see, my dino looks “empty”, even though I added some shadows and highlightning, while this octopus is a masterpiece.
I then realized that the octopus’ skin is not “one-colored” like my dino’s skin. It has some kind of “texture effect” (if you don’t understand, zoom octopus in).

How can I do the “texture” and what can I add to make it look realistic enough, realistic like octopus? Thank you in advance.

[techiekev]

Well, I’m no artist but if it was me I would consider the following…

• Soften the shadows
• Make the highlights brighter and blur them a bit
• Use some gradients for the dino body
• Then add another fill on top of the body of the dino, set it as a ‘Texture Fill’ and select a texture file and reduce the opacity down quite low or play with blending modes

You can find lots of seamless texture files online, do a google search for ‘seamless textures’, find a few and download them they play with trying different textures at different zoom levels

You might even find adding another fill of ‘Noise’ and lowering the intensity and opacity might work

I couldn’t really see the texture on the octopus so not sure quite what you want but I have attached a couple of textures to get you started from my library of textures

Hope this might help

[EllenM]

I think you mostly will benefit from dynamic strokes by drawing an outer and inner path - then make a compound path and gradients for instance. You might get the idea:

Cheers

[techiekev]

Yeah, what @EllenM said

That’s how an artist would do it, excellent