Part 1 dealt with using custom brushes for their shape, and this video takes an opposite approach. Sometimes brushes need to be used in conjunction with other tools, like clipping masks, to get the most utility out of them.If you want to know more about making your own custom brushes from scratch, make sure to check out the premium series Custom Brush Design.
Custom brushes can be a challenge to use successfully. Digital painters often think of them in terms of traditional brushes: flat, bristle, fan - etc. To get the most out of Photoshop's custom brush engine, a digital painter needs to broaden their definition of 'brush'. This mini-series aims to shed some light on the unusual ways custom brushes can be manipulated in a painting workflow.
If you want to know more about making your own custom brushes from scratch, make sure to check out the premium seriesCustom Brush Design.
Sometimes making art feels like a long series of frustrating failures. The truth is that every artist feels this way some of the time. Your mindset can be a huge roadblock to artistic progress if you let it. Hopefully this video will give you a little perspective, and help remind you of the big picture.
Painting color can be done in one of two ways: direct and indirect. Indirect painting is the process of glazing colors on top of one another to achieve a slow build-up. Like traditional some oil painters, many digital painters prefer this method to working 'directly'. If you want to learn about going from a grayscale underpainting to a fully colored image, check out "Grayscale to Color" in the store.
The way the stylus lays down marks in photoshop has a certain 'feel' to it; in the same way that you could say painting with a brush has a different feel than drawing with a pencil. Unlike these traditional tools, you can customize the way your stylus 'feels'. Do you have a soft or a light touch? This video expolres both the Wacom Tablet Properties, as well as 3rd party software designed to customize the stylus experience.
Update 1/29/2012: Apparently the newest Intuos 4 drivers have addressed this issue! Make sure to get the newest drivers if you have an intuos 4.
And reader Dado Almeida brings up a crucial point about tablet wear & tear:
"[This is] really important stuff to know if you deal with a Wacom stylus in the daily basis. Using a hard grip, for months, in the same spot of your Tablet surface could dameage the cover plastic faster. Have you noticed how the center area of our Tablets are more scratched? To make my experience with the Wacom smoother I´m using this tool + a protection plastic (those used in the iPad screens) to cover my little Intuos. This way I can change the cover from time to time without any damage in the original surface."
And, as a reminder, this is unofficial software. It might not give you the results you're looking for. If you have a problem using it - or it screws something up - you can restore the factory defaults by re-installing the Wacom drivers. Good luck, and have fun!
Choosing a few pieces of art to represent yourself is a challenge. What pieces should you include?This video considers the challenge in terms of your end goal, and the person reviewing your work. Like it or not, the portfolio you choose to present to the world says a lot about you, and can have a big impact on your art career.
The human head is a challenging subject to capture. Especially when drawn from the imagination, the head is an extremely complex shape. This video explains a simplification approach in which the organic forms of the head can be envisioned as simplified planes: a planar analysys. Many illustrators and painters have their own forumlas and methods of simplifying the head, so please tell use your favorite resources in the comments!
"Realistic painting" often means "realistic surfaces". If you want to improve the level of realistic detail in your paintings, this premium video (available in the store) is for you. It deals with two primary methods for adding detail: by hand with custom brushes, and with photo overlays. These methods are described in a very versatile way, and will work for any sort of illustration or concept art.
Do you have a favorite few brushes? Do you like to use them with specific flow/opacity settings? "Tool Presets" might be for you! This feature is often overlooked or confused with "Brush Presets", but it is extremely useful for digital painters. This video explains how "Tool Presets" can add a big dose of efficiency and speed to your workflow.
This video finishes my explanation of removing your linework from a painting. Once again, we see the power and versatility of working with layer masks to non-destructively hide the initial drawing.
If you don't know about the basics of masks, make sure to watch these three videos first: Masking 101 pt 1, Masking 101 pt 2, and Masking 101 pt 3
In art school, drawing 1 teaches you the basics of form, light, and shadow. This premium series approaches this fundamental subject-matter with Photoshop as the medium. Honestly, this is the foundation of painting, and if I could only recommend a single series from the store this would be it.
Available now in the store.
Paintings often start as line drawings. Eventually, you'll paint over those lines - resulting in a full painting. If you made that line drawing on its own layer in photoshop, you're able to remove those lines in a totally risk-free way! This video shows how to use a layer mask to easily remove the linework and replace it with a painting.
If you don't know about the basics of masks, make sure to watch these three videos first: Masking 101 pt 1, Masking 101 pt 2, and Masking 101 pt 3
Color is relative. Depending on the surrounding colors, ambient light in the room, and a variety of other factors - your results will vary. This video explores the idea of relative color, and suggests some tips for carefully observing color. Training your eye to carefully ovserve color is challenging, but very worthwhile. Good luck! If you want to see the earlier video mentioned in the post, here it is -- "guess that color"
Edge control is a huge factor for painting technique. To properly describe form you'll need to use both hard and soft edges. This video explores a practice routine designed to hone your edge control. I can be tricky learning to observe hard and soft edges, but they are essential.
I encourage you to give this technique a try! Download the lesson file here (it's a .PSD). Have fun!
Being inspired by art you see on the internet is both good and bad. It's bad when you copy the style, and not the substance. This video discusses the danger of digital painting fads like 'speed-painting' and 'painting silhouettes'. In this video I break from tradition and use some examples of other artits' work: David Levy and Mike Yamada. To see more of their paintings, make sure to check out both vyle-art.com and myamada.com.
Realistic color is often pure and unmixed. Learning to paint realistically involves learning about the way light behaves, and how colors bounce from one object to another. This video shows you how you can kill two birds with one stone: create realistic color and unify your color palette at the same time.
computers and software are really good at repetitive tasks. Why not let Photoshop do some of the hard work for you? This video tackles a specific storyboarding-related challenge with a photoshop "action". Even if you're not a storyboard artist, you'll see the way that I identify a challenge and figure out how to get Photoshop to solve it for me. Best of all, once you've created the action, you can assign a keyboard shortcut to it! And if you want the storyboarding action I mention in this video, download it here!
Every artist has a different answer to the question of "how many layers?", but knowing the difference between direct and indirect painting is key to forming your own workflow. This is an old concept, but it makes the leap to photoshop beautifully, allowing the artist to work on layers independently from one another. There was a time when layers meant you had to wait for paint to dry -- luckily, the digital process allows you to skip that part.
If you like the idea of "indirect painting" and want to know more, check out the "Grayscale to Color" series in the store.
I'm having a blast making these videos for you guys. It's great hearing the interesting conversation, and swapping techniques with all of you artists. That said, I need to keep the lights on here in Ctrl+Paint tower, so you guys need to help spread the word! I hope you've noticed that the website has no advertising, and lost of free videos! None of this is free for me, so another way you can help is by purchasing one of the premium series from the store. Thanks, everyone - and keep being an amazing community!
Digital painting relies on your ability to comfortably wield the Brush Tool. Keyboard shortcuts are a huge part of that, and committing them to memory is an important step in your learning. This video proposes a 'maze' drill for you to hone your brush tool chops. It may seem a bit unusual, but it's not all that different from an athlete running through an obstacle course to improve their agility! Most importantly, have fun with this! And make sure to download the brush maze drill here. And if you want a refresher on the brush tool and its hidden features, check out this digital painting 101 video
