Brush settings for making abstract images?

[akstylish]

I followed a tutorial on how to make abstract images using abstract brushes.

One of the attachments is from the tutorial. The other is my result.(you will know which is whose; I used the same brush)

There must be some brush settings I need to adjust, but the tutorial doesn't say anything about them. What am I doing wrong here?(messing with shape dynamics and scattering produced a better result, but it was too bright and still looked terrible.)

 

[Stuartsaves]

Well, for the moment I'm assuming your's is the top one.

Can you give a link to the tutorial? Right now the top on looks like a brush that was spaced out a bit (or just stamped over and over) and the bottom one looks like maybe it has more than one brush being used. If you post a link to the tutorial I can narrow down what the problem is, perhaps.

 

[akstylish]

The top one is indeed mine. And yes I just clicked around instead of dragging because it looked even worse by doing so, even though I was making sure to variate the patterns.

Since the abstract brushing is part of a larger tutorial, I'll just quote that part.

Here's the part where I blend some abstractions into the image. You can either steal some abstractions from deviantart, or you can make them yourself with abstract brushes.
A good place for abstract brushes is JavierZhX's deviantart gallery channel (if you want them, search after Abstract ?insert number here? in his gallery). However, the brush I'm going to use is Shadow-gfx's Abstract Fury Brush Set
When you have a brush that you want to use in photoshop, place it in your Adobe Photoshop CS3\Presets\Brushes folder.
Now I will make a new 800x600 image, make the background black and create a new transparent layer over it.
Now I will have to select the brush that I want to use, which I can do by first selecting the Brush Tool from my sidebar, then click the brush pattern that's to the right of the Brush: text in the top left corner. Then I will click the arrow that's pointing to the right in the box, and a number of brush names will appear. Select the abstract brush that you want to use (it should have the same name as the filename of the brush).

Now I have serveral abstract brush patterns to select between, so now I can mess around with them in my transparent layer, what I have to remember though is to make my brush white and don't press more than 1-2 times when placing an abstract brush pattern.
Things that you should think of when you make your abstract picture is:

1. Don't use the same brush pattern too many times, make sure that you variate yourself
2. Don't place your brush patterns at the same place too many times, it can look neat sometimes but makes it a mess
3. It can work sometimes but keep in mind that you shouldn't use two different brush sets in one picture.
4. Try to fill up the biggest black places with abstract brush patterns, smaller black places doesn't really matter that much


If you follow these terms the picture will usually end up nice whatever you do.

After messing around with my brushes for a while my image will end up like this

[Example image]