Tablet practice, now with 100% more spaceship!

[ThreeOhFour]

Hey all,

I haven't posted in here for a while, but it's time to give Ben more advice .

Drew this last night as tablet practice:



The background isn't meant to be anything special, just something nicer than a white one to draw on.

I'm not too happy with the brushstrokes here. I found that I'd either make them too sharp or to blurry and had trouble finding a happy medium. I'm guessing that this could be fixed by moving to a higher resolution, which is something I'm planning on doing soon-ish.

Anyhow, any advice with regards to colours, the posture and general anatomy of the girl, that sort of thing would be appreciated .

Cheers

[loominous]

Nice!

Finding a brush you like sure can be frustrating. After a lot of fruitless searching I ended up creating "my own", which is actually just a modification of one of photoshop's artist brushes, but it's now pretty much the only brush I ever use.



The distinct texture on the edges leave nice watercolourish artifacts, while the blurred center takes it more towards oil, and allows for smooth surfaces. So it's something between the two, and it fits me perfectly.

Here's the brush file if anyone is interested

To import a brush:



Select the brush tool, right click on the canvas, click on the upper right playbuttonlike button, then choose 'load brushes'.

There's other stuff in that menu that should be of interest. The 'preset manager' allows you to organize your brushes, like deleting, reordering, etc. Further down in the menu are other brush sets that you can choose. Don't forget to save your current brushes before you do though, as they will be replaced when you choose another brush set.

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Anyway, regarding the pic:

I think the colours could use some variation. Right now it looks like it's the same hue all over, which is kinda unexciting. A simple way of addressing this would be to make the colours go more towards one colour the brighter they get (for instance more towards orange), and more towards another colour the darker they get (for instance blue).

There are many easy ways of achieving this - can do it in Curves, Gradient Map, Selective Color, Color Balance. I guess the simplest way would be in Color Balance, where you select which values you want to affect in the bottom (dark, mids, brights), and can then push these regions toward different colours.

To get maximum control, Curves is a great tool, and will also help you improve your understanding of colours in general.

In this post I go through this whole thing

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Regarding values, I think you've avoided one of the common pitfalls of adding sharp highlights to everything, regardless of what material they're made of. The sharper the highlights, the less midtones you'll find, as the material is then going towards a mirror, where the lightsource is reflected intact, and not scattered across the object. So for her hair I'd tone down the midtones, which will bring out the highlights, and make the hair look glossy.

Depending on what material the dress is made of, you could do the same with it, to achieve a more glossy look.

Skin is tricky as it's made up of many layers, with different properties. The outer glossy layers act more plastic/mirrors, while the deeper acts more like dry dirt. This makes getting skin to look right tricky, and also why 3d artists have such woes with it.

It's not only the values that makes it tricky, but the colours are affected by the skin layers as well. You often find the highlights going more towards orange, while the shadows go more towards red.

This is explained by the layer properties, where the outer glossy layer reflects back the light pretty intact (remember, it's very mirror like), while the inner ones absorb the greens and blues, and thus reflect back red. So with an orange lightsource, the highlights reflect back the orange light fairly intact, while the other areas absorb everything but the reds, resulting in more orange like highlights, and reddish mids n darks.

Another factor here is skin thickness, where an area like the forehead has a thin layer of skin, while our cheeks have a thick. This means that as light hits the forehead, it has a pretty short way to go from hitting the skin surface, to travelling through the skin, and then back. As the trip is short, only some greens n blues are absorbed.

If you compare this to the cheeks, the light has to travel many times further into it, which allows it to absorb much of the greens and blues.

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All in all I think the values work quite well though. One thing to try out would be to alter the light setup, where instead of having the light coming from the camera - which is a rather unexciting choice, and takes it towards the look of a flashphoto from a party - you'd offset it to some side.

The standard setup is to have it come from 3/4, and if you want a more elaborate setup, you could add a rimlight on the opposite side, that'll accentuate the edge of the shadow side. This makes it look quite studio/artificial though, so I personally prefer a single lightsource, and many have a problem with that popular setup

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Anyway, I really like it as is, and incidentally, if it wasn't for the more realistic facial features, I would've thought it was a Mashpotato pic.

[paolo]

Wow!

Ben, as far as I'm concerned, there is nothing that needs to be changed here. This picture is stunning!

[ThreeOhFour]

Loominous:

Firstly, thanks for posting your brush. Leaving watercolour style artifacts is something I've wanted to do for a while (mainly on backgrounds) so, if I can get it loaded into the Gimp, I will give it a shot.

Regarding use of hue, I understand the comment about the lack of variety. I found the linked to post detailing the Curves function (something that has always left me quite mystified as to it's purpose) a very useful explanation. I've given a quick shot at using this funtion to adjust the colour values (pushing shadow towards blue and highlight towards yellow):



It's given a lot more contrast to the image, meaning I decided to go through and adjust the background's values slightly as well. Whether this is an improvement or not is probably up for debate.

Regarding the dress, I plan to leave off on making the highlights any brighter as I feel it gives an accurate impression of the type of fabric I imagined for the dress (I do not know the name of the textile, but it does not reflect a white light so much as show it's hue in light). I'll have a shot at downplaying the mid tone in the hair though .

Interesting explanation of the woes of shading skin - are you suggesting that anything here needs changing? I've left the skin looking quite flat as I didn't expect the quantity of light from the imaginary lightsource to be harsh enough to leave enormous highlights or shadows. I agree it's lacking in contrast, but is this a problem?

I will spend some time on trying to emulate a more 'dynamic' lightsource - I went with this for simplicity's sake as I'm inexperienced with using soft brushes for images. I think I will avoid studio style lighting for now, again for simplicity's sake.

Anyway, I really like it as is, and incidentally, if it wasn't for the more realistic facial features, I would've thought it was a Mashpotato pic.

- this may be the nicest thing anyone has ever said about one of my pictures

Thanks for taking the time to write the post and the useful advice

Paul:

Thanks for the nice words

Edit: Aaaand another version with the lighting set just off to the girl's right (and smoother brushstrokes)



Is nice?

[Dualnames]

Well, it's really stunnung, your best so far. You've been improved a way lot since last time, and really there's nothing to change here..

[auriond]

That last version looks beautiful, very clean and neat.

[Buckethead]

Well Ben now you really can't pretend like you are not an artist , this is great!

[ThreeOhFour]

Dualnames, auriond and Buckethead: Thank you for your lovely comments

[TwinMoon]

Believe it or not, there's something slightly bugging me about her stance in this pic:

We're looking at her from slightly above (which is a great angle with cleavage like this )  but which seems unusual to me. I'd rather have seen her from the front.
(It's only a minor point, but since this is the critics lounge I thought it worth mentioning.)

Other than that: stunningly beautiful.

[ThreeOhFour]

Interesting point there TwinMoon. Unfortunately, I painted the girl without doing any sketches or such (linework is not my strong point) so I spent little time thinking about posture. Thanks for the comment anyway

Anyhow, the other night I was looking through my tablet bundled software and realised it came with a copy of Photoshop Elements 3! Whilst it may not be the big expensive one (which is quite beyond my price range currently) it is still nicer to use than the Gimp, so I've made the switch.

While I spent most of my drawing time getting used to the program and mucking around blending colours and doing sketches, I thought it'd be good to do an actual image in PS as well (because all that practice stuff is terribly boring). Here is the result (thus far):



A reference photo was used, btw.

If I were to critique it myself I'd say the eyes look quite lifeless, however I'm not really sure how to "bring them to life" as it were. It obviously still needs quite a bit of cleaning up - I used a size 19 brush to do the majority of the skin tones and went back with a smaller brush to clean up. I've never really sat down and 'painted' a face in a "realistic" manner before (and don't plan to much in the future, but it's a good skill to have, no?) so I'd be interested to hear where I can improve.

Thanks all

[auriond]

One instant way to bring eyes to life is to shade them. Eyes are pretty shiny, sparkly parts of the face. Even very subtle variations in light and shadow can make worlds of difference. Here's a quick paintover to show what I mean:

Paintover:


Original:


All I did was to use the dodge and burn tools on the eyes to make them shine more. It does seem to have changed her expression a little, but that can be tweaked. The main point here is that people's eyes are round, and you have to show that or it'll just look cut and pasted on.

[ThreeOhFour]

Oh cool (and quick reply )

I couldn't find the dodge and burn tools, but I tried to make shining parts with my brush:



Thanks

[auriond]

Oh - just noticed you're using The GIMP Sorry about that, I was using Photoshop.

But I think there is a dodge/burn tool in GIMP - see here: http://docs.gimp.org/en/gimp-tool-dodge-burn.html

The end result might not be what I posted, but it might be similar.

The right eye (our right) on your newest picture looks great! The left eye might need a bit more contrast though, to match the right.

edit: D'oh. I think I'm a little behind on things. Noticed the second picture is done in Photoshop. Dodge/burn is right under the bucket tool. You need to click and hold to pop up the sub-menu with the dodge/burn/sponge options.

[ThreeOhFour]

Oh, I was using the Gimp. Now I'm using Photoshop Essentials (which I think is like diet photoshop )

I'll see if I can replicate the good eye technique onto the bad eye

Thanks again!

Edit: Is better now?



Thanks for helping me find the dodge burn tool. I wondered what the little arrows there meant 

[auriond]

Yes, that's fine  Looking good!

Now the next thing you can work on is the shadow under the nose. Since the nose is a feature that protrudes quite a bit from the face, the shadows under it also tend to be darker.

Also, I haven't seen the reference pic, but it strikes me that the eyes are a little small. This can be fixed by copying the eyes onto a new layer and then resizing them. But then, it could be that the reference pic already had small eyes, so this is up to you

The lips look nicely shiny and lipstick-y, so nothing to change there.

The last thing that bugs me at the moment are the eyebrows. They look painted on with liquid paint. You can either paint on little stray hairs with a tiny brush (zoomed in really close), or fake it with a very small smudge brush set at 70% strength. Smudge is on the left of dodge/burn

[ThreeOhFour]

Thanks for the advices - all of them have been followed plus some cleaning up to create:



(and a smile as well )

We're ready for hair soon, hey?

[Ryan Timothy B]

Also, I haven't seen the reference pic, but it strikes me that the eyes are a little small. This can be fixed by copying the eyes onto a new layer and then resizing them.

When it comes to resizing, rotating or skewing a part of the image, just press CTRL+T while certain areas are selected or a layer (assuming the 'diet' Photoshop you are using has this feature).  Holding CTRL will allow you to skew the vertices's individually.

Only thing I notice, other than the dark shading around her eyes and nose, is that her eyebrows aren't in the same spot on both eyes.

Good stuff anyway, I suck at drawing people so that's the only advice you'll get from me. 

[ThreeOhFour]

Oh sweet, thanks for the tip

I'll have a go at fixing her eyebrows, I hadn't noticed that

[auriond]

For the smile, I'd stretch her lips a little to accomodate the smile, and maybe shade the corners of the mouth a little darker.

Otherwise, yes, she looks ready for hair! That'll be another challenging bit.

[ThreeOhFour]

Ok! I have done this to her smile and added the first attempt at hair. (actually it is the second, but the first is not worth posting)



I use mainly a size 2 brush for the hair and made sure I put the focus away from midtones, as suggested by Loominous earlier. Thoughts?