Painting textures convincingly is a skill that separates generic digital work from work with material presence. I want to share the mental model that finally made texture consistent in my work.

Texture at different scales: every surface has texture at multiple scales. Rough stone has large irregular mass forms (many centimeters), medium crevice patterns (centimeters), and fine granular detail (millimeters). You paint all three scales, but not at the same prominence throughout the piece.

The viewer distance principle: the texture detail you render should be the detail visible from the implied viewing distance in the painting. A viewer standing twenty meters from a stone wall sees the large mass forms and perhaps the medium crevice pattern. Fine grain is not visible. Rendering fine grain at that scale looks wrong.

The focal gradient: the most detailed texture rendering should be in the focal area. Texture in the periphery should be simplified to the largest scale only. This is the same principle as detail in general — focal area richness purchases peripheral simplification.