On brush settings
This is something I've been thinking about and have sorta discussed on Twitter and mastodon.art.
Artists, usually the less experienced ones, will often ask for brush settings, get said brush settings and use them, and then get upset that their art looks nothing like the art by the artists they look up to. I understand the frustration, but it also completely makes sense why their art ends up looking different.
This is because the brush settings are only a part of the story. They aren't everything. The other thing that dictates the look is the brush stroke technique used, as in long strokes vs short ones, pen pressure, pen pressure settings etc etc, it could even be dictated by tilt, something that some tablets don't support (my tablet has no tilt support for example). Lots of artists use the default hard round brush but their art looks different because of the brush stroke techniques they use.
I haven't really seen people talk about brush stroke techniques. The conversation usually centers around brush settings and I think we really should start talking about brush stroke techniques along with brush settings because I think this is what less experienced artists struggle with and don't understand. Sure, a specific brush setting may encourage you to use specific techniques, but we're all different and we solve problems differently. Maybe someone will use the brush settings and chicken scratch. Someone will blob a huge brush on the canvas and paint things that way. Etc etc.
Anyways, conversations about brush settings may need to be accompanied with conversations about brush stroke techniques. Brush settings are only a part of the story.