WHere can i get some help?

[DrewCCU]

My forte is music .. .but my second passion is the art of well ... art .... i do a lot of photoshop work and consider myself a pretty good graphic artist - at least as far as photo manipulation and gui type stuff goes ... but when it comes to more along the lines of digital painting and things of that nature my skills arent where i would like them ...

anyway ... i have this sketch that i would like to turn into a pretty nice painting. Im using a Bamboo-Fun art pad ... I used superman for several reasons ... 1) love him ... 2) the colors are simple so i figured it would be good to start learning with and 3) practice doing faces too



i know there a thousand digital painting tutorials out there but for some reasonI'm finding it hard to find one that really speaks to me and tells everythingI'm looking to learn ... don't know ifI'm making much sense so let me get to the point:

you digital painting artists out there who think you could give me a little personal tutorial or pointers and maybe a quick basic paint over  to show me how to get started ... or maybe even link me to some of your favorite tutorials that got you started ... just looking for some push in the right direction (a rather large push would be nice ) thanks guys!

[Chicky]

Search for Photoshop speed paints on youtube, should help you with colouring a fair bit.

This is pretty awesome: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QjcHhjt6bYo

Edit: Your sketch is pretty good btw!

[DrewCCU]

Search for Photoshop speed paints on youtube, should help you with colouring a fair bit.

This is pretty awesome: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QjcHhjt6bYo

Edit: Your sketch is pretty good btw!

thanks for the link but im afraid a speed painting video isnt helping me very much ... i know enough about art to know how to paint ... its using photoshop to do it and how the tools work and all that and setting is mainly what gets me ... i dunno ... i just think i need a really detailed -something - to get me started so i think the speed painting is the opposite to what i need ... thanks anyway though.

[ThreeOhFour]

Pretty sure I linked you to these in a PM some time ago, Drew, but in case I didnt:

http://www.itchstudios.com/psg/main.php?id=ps55paint

http://www.itchstudios.com/psg/art_tut.htm

This has some good advice on using Photoshop to blend and stuff

And on the subject of speedpaintings, have a crappy one from me (I just remembered why I hate doing faces, too)

[DrewCCU]

Pretty sure I linked you to these in a PM some time ago, Drew, but in case I didnt:

http://www.itchstudios.com/psg/main.php?id=ps55paint

http://www.itchstudios.com/psg/art_tut.htm

This has some good advice on using Photoshop to blend and stuff

And on the subject of speedpaintings, have a crappy one from me (I just remembered why I hate doing faces, too)

Ben304
those pages look kind of familiar so i think you may have linked me to them ... but that was when i was in iraq so i probably didnt get a lot of time to look at them ... now that im back home im trying to find more time to learn this stuff ...

i understand that this is a quick speed painting and still requires a lot of detail ... but if i could get to this point then i would be so happy ... lol good job ... thanks for resending me those pages - ill read ...

ANYONE ELSE ... if you have any suggestions im always open to hear them - every little bit of advice helps i suppose.

thanks.

[ThreeOhFour]

As far as I know that is considered one of the most complete digital painting tutorials around, so I hope you find some useful info in there. The way I do things is fairly similar to how he does it, however I take a lot of stuff that I learned doing the pixel based stuff and still apply it to the more paintery stuff as well, so I've still got some pretty bad habits

One thing that I find is that lots of people try to use lots of special tools and layers and stuff, but I find it a lot nicer to do things without any of that fancy stuff (ok, so guys like Loominous have awesome results with custom brushes and adjustment layers  ). I generally do speedpaintings like this one all on one layer and with one brush only, which means you spend more time getting shapes and forms right than switching between tools and layers  8)

[uoou]

Hello Drew,

This maybe unwelcome but I'm just going to babble on with a stream of disconnected stuff some of which might hopefully be of use to you. This will probably be quite longwinded and babbly, so apologies upfront. Writing is not my forté.

First, I think there are as many ways to draw/paint (whether digital or not) as there are people who draw/paint. Because of this, a tutorial can only communicate to you that person's particular way of drawing (I'll call it all drawing, painting is just drawing with a bristled stick). They can be useful - you can pick up tips and (even better) get into the artist's thought processes but I think it's very rare fro a whole approach to be transferable from one person to another.

It's very important to play. Just play around with materials and techniques and whatever and see what works for you. Sometimes it will just feel right/comfortable and sometimes it will feel like wrestling with a bear, but you can always tell between an approach that suits you and one that doesn't, I think. The most important thing is to be confident. Like with anything, confidence isn't learned or achieved, it's manufactured. BE confident, do things boldly. What's the worst that can happen? You screw it up and start again (or with digital stuff: undo).

The technical side is important, but it's something which only makes sense through practise. Someone can describe a technique to you but until you have a context within which to understand that description (i.e. lots of practise/playing) it will be pretty much meaningless. 99% of your eventual technique will come from you - from your discoveries while drawing and trying things out. The best a tutorial can do (And what they are best at I think) is provide a context for that - give you some boundaries for your next play-session.

I can't stress this next bit enough. This is by far the most important element (aside from playing/practising). Look at and read about art. Doesn't matter whether you intend to do fine art paintings or graphical stuff or cartoons or whatever - fine art underpins it all. Fine art defines the languages in which all those other practises speak. That's not to say it's more important or worthy, it's not. But it is prior - it sets the path.

So look at and red about art. In galleries, books, the web, whatever doesn't matter. Look at it and read about it. Find an artist whose work you like and look at everything they ever did. Look at how it changed. Read about why it changed. Look at her/his contemporaries and identify how they differed, then find out why they differed. Look at what came before and what came after.

All of that is in order to get to an understanding of what they were trying to do and why they were trying to do it. And that will explain what they did, the choices they made when they made their works (that's all a drawing really is - a series of choices, one after the other). Understanding the choices artists made and the results and interactions of those choices will open up choices to you. And, less importantly, you'll learn that technical stuff along the way within its proper context.

Say you look at some paintings and you decide you like Georges Braques. Why did he paint like that? What is analytical cubism? How is it different from synthetic cubism? Why were his and Picasso's paintings so indistinguishably similar for a while? Why didn't they stay that way? Why did he stick bits of newspaper onto his work? What was Impressionism? What was Post-Impressionism? What was Futurism? What connected them all? How did they differ?

I'm not saying spend 3 years reading - each of those questions is answerable in a single sentence. And this stuff should go hand in hand with you practising. You do something and "this reminds me of..." or "I'm having a problem here...." or "I wonder if anyone's ever..." and you get on Wikipedia or whatever. Be inquisitive and probing about what people do with drawing and why - so when you make your decisions you have something on which to base them.

This ties in very much with the above. Question everything you do. Don't take anything for granted. I don't mean in a stifling way that stops you working - in a way that increases your awareness of the decisions you are making. Because if you're aware of the decisions you can move them forwards and progress them. Not all of the questions will have answers - it's just good to be aware that there's a question there so you don't take things for granted. Nothing just be "just because". "Because I want to" is fine, even if you don't know why. But everything should have a reason, even if it's just that - you should be aware that you have made a choice.

For example you might read somewhere about (I'm sure you already know about it, it's just an example) aerial perspective. Someone might say "things in the distance should be painted in paler, cooler colours so they appear more distant". Don't just go "okay" and do that from then on. Go "why?" and find out. Find out who first did this. Find out who consciously decided NOT to do it and why. Think or find out about instances where people have used this effect (the fact that cooler colours recede and warmer colours advance) for purposes other than to convey perspective/distance, those who've used it for pure compositional purposes etc..

Then you can decide (in an informed way) whether, in a particular drawing, you want to do it. Or do the opposite. Or half-do it. Or whatever. Rather than just doing it because someone said it should be done. There are no 'right' techniques, just choices. And each choice should be made with what you want to convey in mind. Don't use linear perspective or the golden mean or a rectangular canvas or complimentary colours or aerial perspective or shading or outlines or... etc etc etc "just because", decide whether it's the best way to say what you want to say, the best 'tool' for the job, and use it only then.

As if I haven't babbled on enough, here's an analogy: Think of each drawing (and each decision involved in a drawing) as a question, rather than a test. A question like "How do you feel about manatees?" - there's no right or wrong answer to that question but there are nonsensical, meaningless and ungrammatical ones, such as if I answered "many bouquet satchel piss-lantern". Learning about art will teach you the logic and grammar of the language so that all your decisions have meaning. There's nothing wrong with saying something nonsensical/ungrammatical of course, so long as that's what you wanted to do - the Dadaists and Surrealists made movements out of doing exactly that.

Like any language the best way to learn art is to practise endlessly and experience other people using the language. Not to read others' descriptions of how to use the language - I don't feel that's the best way to learn art anymore than any other language.

Ok I'm done babbling. I apologise again if this is nothing like what you're after, but hope it will be of some value at least.

Good luck


Edit: Fuck me that was long :|


Please don't double post.

-ProgZ

[DrewCCU]

this is my latest attempt ... i still think it needs A LOT of work ...

[ThreeOhFour]

In response to PM:

I've uploaded a second speedpaint, this time with layers saved an a few rough explanation parts hidden in the layers. I think your version is actually pretty good - obviously we all have our only little techniques, so these are some differences between how you've done it and how I do it:

- I never paint over white, ever. Either I block all the colours as solid chunks with a completely solid brush (you can see this in the .psd I've uploaded) or a paint a rough background first and then start doing the main part. For me, white takes away the delicious boldness of a colour and makes it look washed out - but I can appreciate some people like this style!

- When I go for my first run of blocking in colours and shading and the like, I use a freaking enormous brush. ENORMOUS. In the .psd example, I used a size 93 brush for the majority of the thing. Setting pressure sensitivity to 'size' (as well as opacity when shading) gives pretty much all the brush control you need with a little practice. You can spend all the time you want refining with teeeeensy brushes once you've gotten the shapes to look how you want.

- I am of the absurdly romantic notion that lightsources are best warm, so I push all my highlight colours towards yellow on the hue slider and shadows towards purple on the hue slider. I've scattered screen caps of this through the .psd, which hopefully explain some of this better .

- Fuzzy brushes sometimes work, sometimes they don't. They make blending colours easier, but they also mean you often lose some of that delightful 'painted' look.

I haven't touched the skin in the uploaded file yet because that takes a fair bit more effort to do right/explain properly, but I hope this is a good start! Let me know if I've glossed over any points too quickly 

In response to uoou:

Here's some stuff outta my brain that's basically on a parallel to your outta brain stuff:

- Tutorials are alright as long as you practice TONS as well. I learnt more from practicing, practicing etc than I did from reading about how some dude reckons stuff should be in this spot and not in that spot. Still, it's super important to seek further advice/direction once you're satisfied with your current efforts and are looking to learn more.

- Looking at other people's stuff is a big help. I often go on big old image collecting trawls through places like Gamewallpapers.com, Eatpoo forums, Deviant Art, PixelJoint, and the like. Sometimes I'll go to an image search engine (altavista/google/whatever) and look for stupid random stuff like "Waterfall" "cyborg" "rain" "liquid" "ice sculpture" (yes, I have an obsession with water). Other times I'll be on a site somewhere and see an ad for an MMO with art direction I like. I often click on these ads and go to the site just to see if there are any cool wallpapers in the download section - they're often really nice and you don't have to sign up for any rubbish even.

- Following step by step things is boring and you only ever learn a certain thing. I often make up new techniques as I go to try and get a certain 'look' - often it fails but redoing a few brushstrokes really ain't so hard.

I think that's all the junk I've got to spout at this point in time 

[DrewCCU]

@Ben304

your link is broken. :/

[ThreeOhFour]

whoops 

[DrewCCU]

In response to PM:

- When I go for my first run of blocking ......  Setting pressure sensitivity to 'size' (as well as opacity when shading) gives pretty much all the brush ........

how do u do that?

[Kastchey]

I don't know what style you're aiming for, but unless it's gonna be a painting-like portrait, you could try making an outline using Pen tool to add some shape to your picture. It would make it more cartoon style so again, I don't know if that's what you want, but might be worth trying.
Here's a sample:



This way it's relatively easy to add shading and details after you fill your outline with basic colors.