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I was painting something in TVP last night, with paper turned on, and noticed that after laying down some color with a non-smearing paint brush (and seeing the paper texture nicely), if I used a smear brush, I lost my paper texture. Is this correct or is there something I need to do to not lose that nice paper texture?

From what I have seen, the smear brush will always destroy the paper texture because once you lay down that color, the texture isn't "really there". To the smear brush, it's just more pixels and colors to play with. About the only way to get close to what you are suggesting would be to fill another layer with the paper texture, with alpha, and use it as a mask when you both lay down the color and then smear it.

That's pretty much what I figured, that the paper won't work with smearing. I thought using the mask would work, too, I will post my results hwne I give it a try

Using a bottom layer filled with a paper texture as a mask works great for getting a nice canvas-y oil painting look