My Road To Mastery

#201

Thumb 3 of 4.

I figured out how to get the paper texture off of my layer this time, which was nice. Also adjusted the levels to make the white of the paper legitimately white, which gave me a full value range. So that’s nice to know. I also thought the gradient on the tree turned out nice.

Negatives are the background elements in the distance. I wasn’t quite sure how to (not) render them. I ended up just leaving the desaturated gradient there and figured I’d learn more about it next time. Trying to keep these quick.

Which actually brings me to another positive. I think this one took even less time than the previous one, again. Go Workflow? Why yes, indeed. :smiley: :smiley:

Again, ref’d sketch, light and colors from the head. Except for the figure. I made him up to have a focal point… something that first thumb really lacked, haha.

Thumb 4 of 4.

Hmmm… weak values. :banghead:

#202

grandmother’s backyard: That turns out really well. Great sunny mood. And interresting way of doing underpainting.

#203

Hey! Neat stuff, mate! It’s good you’re trying to develop one style to speed your process. To me style is just the brushes I would use or the different ways of using them. I think what is important is a logical way to approach a painting and it all depends on the complexity of the painting.
For example, If i were to paint a landscape and a portrait, I’m pretty sure I would not approach those two paintings the same way.
So what I’m trying to say is that it doesn’t have to be like “I MUST do the linework first, then follows the block-in and the third step is to…” You get the idea.
I could go and talk about this much more but I feel there’s no need for that.
Also, it’s all just my opinion and I’m not sure that I got everything real clear, haha.

Cheers

#204

siiilon - Thanks. :slight_smile:

razz - Yeah dude, I totally get what you’re saying. Haha. No worries. But for sure, it’s been interesting. I’m not actually a big fan of the look of these thumbs so far. I didn’t think about finding a style I enjoyed and then learning a workflow for THAT style, haha. I just started going and taking notes on whatever style came out first. So I’m gonna have to make some more adjustments in the future, heheh. Thanks for stopping by, man. I always dig what you’re working on.

I tried going even smaller and simpler this time. Gotta figure out how to make things not look so much like cutouts…

Value practice thumbs from imagination.

#205

Ahh, thumbnails, neat things. Take a look at Min’s thumbs for a great example on those. It really is a great way to learn about different stuff. It might just the thing for me. Good thing you reminded me of those, hehe.
Do you use selections to paint stuff? Those create a very sharp edge, which might make it look like a cutout. Like in your thumbs here, very sharp edges which look even sharped with the gradient of the sky. To deal with edges, compare them to one another. Choose the sharpest edge a softest edge and just don’t go any sharper/softer than those in a painting. There’s quite a lot of theory about edges. Try getting your hands on the book that I posted a photo of in my thread (the one by Richard Schmid), I’m sure you won’t regret it. It is more about painting from life but the knowledge can be applied to imaginational painting also.
Ok, now I felt like some kind of advertiser.
Always exciting to see your new stuff. Godspeed.

#206

razz - hey man, thanks a ton for mentioning edges again. I was so focused on trying new tools that I stopped painting, you know what I mean? And thanks a million for the Min link. I’ve got that thread in my subscriptions, but it’s so far down that I’d forgotten it was there. Never finished browsing all of the pages. Those enivros were intense! Haha.

So yeah dude, Min was doing envrios from references on pbase.com, yeah? So I went there and did this during lunch. All painting this time. No selection tool, no gradient tool, no adjustment layers, no color picking. It felt so good. :smiley: :smiley:

#207

Dinner sketch…

Ref’d from pbase. Tell me, what techniques or tools do you guys use for making straight lines? The line tool in PSCS creates a new vector layer, and having to rasterize and merge down a layer every time I want to make a line is really tedious.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I have to find out how to not suck at clouds. Haha. :stuck_out_tongue:

#208

Another (becoming daily? :open_mouth: :O) lunch sketch. Ref’d from pbase. PS, about 35 minutes.

#209

Hey Static,

straight lines: while brush tool selected klick hold shift down and klick at the end of the line again and you will get a straight line. If you have pressure sens. on opacity the line will fade out.

#210

Yeah that’s one way to do straight lines, but with this you can only do a vertical, horizontal or a 45 degree line. I prefer free-hand. A few tries and something decent comes out but then again, I’ve never done any serious mechanical/architectural linework, so it’s easy for me to speak. But it’s not a problem in Painter, with one button click you can set the brush to draw straight lines from one point to another without getting any new vector layers. Painter :buttrock:
For straight lines when not doing a linework, but painting, using a selection works good. Polygonal lasso tool in PS, if I remember correctly. But you knew that already.
New stuff looks good, especially the last one. You may try doing those without texture brushes (just like Min did). A tad bigger challenge and you may just learn more.
Good luck, mate!

#211

Hm thats actually not true. Thats just the case if you just click and drag once. But if you click at one point. and then hold down shift and klick at any oter point you will get a straight line between those to points no matter what the angle is. Its really usefull. Especially because it keeps the style you have set for your brush. Just give it a try.

Another cool thing you could do but is better suitet vor perfect curves is drawing a path line with the pen tool seth to path.§ . and then select you brushstyle and size. With the pen tool selected do a right click --> stroke path.

#212

I guess I was thinking more about Painter than PS when I said that because I work all the time in Painter. Well then, problem solved with that one.
Thanks for correcting me, Roman.

#213

well yes, for me it was exactly to other way around. I can remember that you can change between freeform and straight lines in painter but I don’t use painter that often anymore.
Sorry razz for beeing a smartass :wink:

#214

Roman - Thanks very much. :beer: I really appreciate your input. I just tried that click and hold, shift, click again technique and it’s exaaactly what I was looking for. I knew PS had to have something like it, but the electronic manual within the software didn’t mention it as far as I could find. :smiley:

Razz - Thanks dude. :wink: Yeah, I prefer to do freehand lines for a number of reasons, but sometimes when doing perspective grids and whatnot you’ve got to be specific, you know? As for texture brushes, I think I skipped them for the first couple sketches… I can’t remember. But really, I haven’t really felt a difference in my learning whether or not I use a textured brush in these little studies. I’m about to post some more sketches here in a second, though, and a couple were without textured brush use, sooo… it all depends on how I’m feeling, I suppose. :stuck_out_tongue:

So, very sorry there has been such a long delay between posts here. The internet signal at the place where I live is officially gone. Right now I’m at a small fast food place, and I feel kind of sneaky, cause I didn’t order anything. :open_mouth:
But yeah… I’ll be posting as often as I can, but it seems the updates will come slowly for a while to come…

Some value sketches over lunch the last week. All about 30-40 minutes:

#215

Oh yeah, I forgot to post this one:

#216

That naked womam is very nice, but I love the last one. Wonderfull.

#217

Siiilon - Thanks very much. :^^:

I’m sorry it’s taken me so long to post again, and I feel even worse that I’ve got so little to post. :frowning: I’m downloading something quite large (couple gigs) and I have to leave my laptop out here in the garage for the signal. And well, painting out here is really uncomfortable. I have been learning a little bit about pixelart and animation, though, so I made one of those.

It’s me. :slight_smile:

It’s roughly a gameboy-sized sprite, so this is a 400% zoom:

#218

[left]hehe, nice sprite! Pixelstuff is cool, I used to do it quite a lot while I was working at a mobilgames company. I would leave away the shadow or better dither it. So you can better see the walking animation.

[/left]

#219

tednindo - hey, thanks very much man. :slight_smile: Yeah, someone else mentioned the same thing about the lower area being too dark. You can’t really see what’s going on down there. Thanks for the tip! What kind of projects did you work on at the mobile company?

I’ve been reading school catalogues and stuff lately, and I’m pretty sure I want to go to an art school and end up trying to become a storyboard artist. I was on the fence for a long time between art school and film school. But I’m thinking art schools have film classes, too, sooo… see what I like with electives at an art school and then go from there. Also, storyboards are something that I’ve been doing for a while now for fun, cause it’s a nice mix of drawing and film stuff. It’s like my perfect career path!
So on that note, I thought I’d dig out all the old storyboard bits I could find in the sketchbook I have here. Nothing fancy or properly formatted here, just sketches meant to remind me of shot techniques.

#220

So, I lost my internet at the house again. I had it back for like a day, but it’s gone again. I actually took a break from art for a few weeks there anyway. I felt overdrawn. Plus a few family members are having health issues/surgeries, so things are pretty busy here.

Anyway, here’s a quick oil sketch from the other night. The photo made the reds really hot though… =/ That and my relatives came in and took the table to play cards, so technically it’s unfinished, haha. :argh: