One thing that attracts me to the premiere fractal artists’ work is their incredible use of texture — which is sadly lacking from my own work to date. They get stuff that looks like rusted metal, or crumpled paper, or diaphanous clouds. Whereas I’m getting pretty comfortable with UFs layers and merge modes, this texture stuff has so far been black magic.

There is a fantastic set of UF tutorials on how a top-flight artist gets texture: Nicholas Rougeux of c82 gives an intro to the concept of texturing, then dissects two of his works, Sanctuary and Confidence. I really like his comments about color: most layers should be grayscale, with just a few layers having color. This makes things much easier to control.

Here are the three images from the articles — go check out his work!

Texturing: Tactile Magnification by Nicholas Rougeux

Sanctuary by Nicholas Rougeux

Confidence by Nicholas Rougeux