Are you totally new to digital painting? This Digital painting 101 series is a great place to start. I teamed up with Lifehacker.com to create this 5 part introduction to painting in Photoshop. The first four sections introduce the layout and tools, and the final video is a narrated painting demo to put it all together.

Enjoy!

Welcome to part two of the digital painting 101 series.  In today's short less we're going to dig into the meat of photoshop painting: the brush and eraser tools.

One tool, many forms

You might notice that the tool palette contains both a Pencil and a Brush tool.  This seems like a reasonable distinction – after all, traditional painters have brushes, pencils, airbrushes, pens, and more. So where are the buttons for airbrushes?  Spray paint?  Markers?  The answer is found in a single tool: the Brush tool.  This single tool can take nearly any form – ranging from pens and pencils all the way to watercolor and rubber stamps.  For your purposes the brush tool will be the only thing you need to add pigment to your canvas. 

 To change the type of brush that you're working with simply right click anywhere on the canvas (If you're using a Wacom tablet, the lower half of the rocker switch serves as right click. Be careful when gripping the pen – otherwise you might right click accidentially!)

When you do this a secret menu appears near your cursor.  Each of these icons represents a different type of brush.  You can add to this list with things called 'custom brushes', or make your own. 

What brushes should you use?

Any artist will tell you a different answer to the question of brush choices. The best advice I can offer is to start simple.  Limiting yourself to a handful of useful, versatile, brushes is the best way to approach digital painting.  Even though I've been painting for years, the three following brushes are used for 90% of my painting.  

Click to download basic 3.ABR brush fileHard round – This has a circular head and a sharp edge.  It's the most useful brush in all of photoshop.

Soft round – Also circular, this brush lacks the definition of the hard round.  It's more similar to an airbrush or spray paint.  It is great for painting smooth transitions and moody atmosphere.

Hard flat – This is a variation of the Hard round.  It has a flattened oval head and a hard edge.  This has a more directional quality to it, but has a tendency to leave nice looking brush edge marks.

But what about that huge list of default brushes? In the pursuit of clarity, I would suggest getting rid of them.  I'm not exaggerating when I say that the 'basic three' brushes are all you'll need to get going. I've provided a small .ABR file which contains my three basic brushes.  Follow the link below to download this file, and save it somewhere you will remember.  

http://www.ctrlpaint.com/storage/_dl/Basic_3.abr

Installing the 'Basic 3' Custom Brushes:

Restart Photoshop

Make a new document

Select the Brush (B) tool, and reveal the Brush palette

Click on the small Settings icon 

Select the “Replace brushes” option

Locate and select the mKohr_basic3.ABR file

Congratulations!  You've now removed some unnecessary clutter.  If you want them back at any time, find the 'reset brushes' option on the same menu.  

Brush tool, expanded

By now you've probably experimented with the brush tool.  It makes marks pressure sensitive marks in the active (foreground) color.  With a few useful keyboard shortcuts, you can have much finer control!  

Changing the color:  To change the color without using the color picker, just hold down the ALT key.  This changes your cursor to an eye dropper and wherever you click will select a new color.  

Changing the size:  To change the size with keyboard shortcuts, use the bracket keys found to the right of the “P” key.  “[“ makes the brush smaller, and “]” makes the brush larger.  

Alternately, hold down alt+right click and drag the red preview shape to alter the size of your brush (ctrl+option+drag on mac).

Drawing along a ruler:  To draw a vertical or horizontal line, first hold down the shift key. As you draw, you'll notice that your line has a magnetic quality as if you're drawing along a ruler.

“Pulling a straight line”:  To draw a straight line at any other angle, follow these simple steps:

1. Click once to define the start, then release
2. While holding shift, click to define the end of the line.  

The one caveat of this technique is that the line's intensity will fade as it progresses from beginning to end.  Keep in mind that the side you begin with will be darker than the ending side.  If you're interested in making technical drawings, you could create a custom brush that has no pressure sensitivity – which wold function more like an ink pen.  A custom brush of this sort would not exhibit the same fading effect. 

Move your current layer around:  While the brush tool is active, you can hold the Ctrl key to temporarily select the Move tool. This can be handy if you want to change the placement of the layer you're drawing on. 

The Eraser Tool

With all of that brush tool information you just trudged through, do you have the stamina left to learn about the Eraser tool?  I'll let you in on a secret:  you already have.  The Eraser tool functions exactly the same as the brush tool – but it removes pigment instead of adding it.  Everything you learned about the brush tool applies!

Because they share a custom brush library, you have access to the 'basic three' erasers when you right click.

Homework: Brush Drills

You've just covered a lot of ground.  To review, try your best to re-create the following drawing.  I've used the “basic three” brushes to draw a variety of marks.  Try to use exclusively keyboard shortcuts if you can.  

As one color approaches another there's always a blended transition.  Even if your subject is painted a single color it will have lighter and darker areas.  Because color is affected by light and form, it has a huge amount of variation.  Even a sheet of white paper seen on a cloudy day contains a gradation subtle colors.  

One color into another

On-Screen Mixing with the brush tool

The secret to painting a color transition lies in the brush tool + eyedropper.  As you learned in lesson #2 the alt key will temporarily call up the eyedropper while the brush tool is active.  'Sampling' in this way gives you an incredible power that traditional painters would kill for.  To create a middle mixture between two colors use the following steps:

1. Sample color A and paint a swatch of it in the middle.
2. Sample color B and paint it lightly over top of the middle swatch.
3. To paint with this middle mixture, sample it with the alt button!  

This process is known as 'on-screen mixing' and is quintessential for digital painting.  It's not similar to painting with oils, but will quickly feel intuitive. When using this on-screen mixing technique, you'll experience two major bonuses to your workflow:

• Save tons of time.  Every time you avoid opening the color picker window time is saved.  To maximize this effect, use the eyedropper (alt) tool as much as you can.
• Create a unified color scheme.  If you are primarily mixing on the canvas, your colors will naturally harmonize with one another through blending.   

Using a 'Mini-palette'

Traditional painters are required to pre-mix paints on their palettes before starting to work.  In this way they are able to plan out a pleasing color scheme ahead of time. Digital artists aren't forced to do this step because there's no physical paint involved.  Even though not strictly necessary, I would ague that pre-mixing digital colors is a worthwhile endeavor.  

When starting a color painting, my first step is to create these pre-mixed colors on what I refer to as a 'mini-palette'.  It's simply a blank  layer that I title “palette” and paint small swatches on.  Because it's on a separate layer I'm able to move it around my canvas when it gets in the way, or to hide it completely with the visibility button.

The specifics of the mini-palette format are up to you.  I like to keep mine small and unobtrusive.  Some artists like to paint swatches of their main colors – but I like to include mixed gradations as well.  Doing so gives me a pleasing color palette because middle mixtures have a nice neutralizing quality.  

Mixing Productively 

One of my main goals when approaching photoshop for concept art is efficiency.  I've found  the most success through a combination of on-screen mixing and sampling from a mini-palette.  When both of these techniques are used, one can almost completely avoid the color picker window – and save a ton of time.

Homework: Swatches

If you only take one thing away from this lesson it should be the power of the Alt key.  What takes a traditional painter time and effort to mix is only a click away for photoshop users, so take full advantage.   

The following worksheet might be a familiar sight to art school students.  It's not glamorous,  but it'll get you mixing accurately in no time.  The goal is to use the principles of on-screen mixing to mimic the examples provided. 

1. Sample from squares A and B to create middle mixture C
2. Find the middle mixture between A and C
3. Use the same technique to mix B and C
4. optional bonus:  use the soft round brush to create smooth transitions between each color swatch

So save a copy of this sheet, and start mixing!

 

 

Today's installment of digital painting 101 is all about layers.  Layers are one of the features that most dramatically separate traditional from digital painting.  Knowing how to use layers to your advantage can give you great freedom as a digital painter.  In this lesson I'll introduce the fundamentals of the layer palette, as well as my thoughts on layer economy.  

Layers Basics

Layers exist to keep elements on your canvas separate from one another so they can be edited independently.  How you use this power is up to you – whether it's an individual layer for each character in your illustration, or a layer for each brush stroke. To make a new layer, click the new layer button on the bottom of the layer palette. 

Layer Order

Layer Groups

These can be thought of as a “bundle” of layers.  A group is primarily an organizational tool.  Like folders on your computer, they can be expanded or collapsed in the layer palette. Additionally, they can be moved and transformed as a group.  

To create a layer group, click the new group button on the layers palette.  Once You've created it, drag other layers onto it's title to add them to the group.  You'll know they're a part of the group once they're indented on the layer stack.  Layer sets can be nested.  

Blending mode

So far the properties of layers have been pretty straightforward – but this gets a bit more complicated. The pulldown at the top of the layer stack describes the 'blending mode', which defaults to 'Normal'.  All of the other modes modify the way that the layer mixes with those below it in the stack. Most of the time I use two types of layers: Normal, and Multiply.  

 
“Normal” layers are used for opaque painting, as in thick acrylics, gauche, or thick oils.

“Multiply” Layers are used for glazing with transparent paint – like watercolors or thin oils

The downside of a tall layer stack

Layers add flexibility.  They allow you to separate your elements from one another.  The drawback, however, is that each added layer increases the file-size and amount of RAM used to manipulate the file.  Additionally, a tall layer stack makes for a long scrollbar on the layers palette - leading to much wasted time in navigation. Each artist must find a comfortable balance between flexibility and reasonable file sizes.  

My personal layer strategy – a.k.a 'temp layers'

When working with written documents, do you ever find yourself saving every time you're pleased with the state of the paper?   You probably do this because it protects you against a potential future mistake.  If you make a mistake it's not a problem because you have the most recent save to fall back on.  

This general concept is at the heart of my layer strategy.  In the long term I like to keep my layer stack short, but in the short term I make a new layer whenever I want to take a risk. This means that every time I want to add a large feature of some sort I make a new layer.  If I mess it up in some way, it's not a problem: I just delete the layer.  If I like it, I flatten the layer down onto the rest of the stack.  In this way I have the best of both worlds: short for easy computing, and plenty of new layers for confident painting.  

In this example my goal is to paint the unfinished plate on thie robot's chest with a smooth blue gradation.  Here's a breakdown of my usual process (temp layers):

1. Make a new blank layer (normal blending mode)
2. Using the Soft Round brush I paint way outside of the lines.  Not worrying about drawing inside the lines makes my brushwork much more confident
3. Using a hard eraser I erase away what I don't want.  In this case, the paint that fell outside of the lines.
4. Once I'm satisfied with the result, I use the 'Layer> Merge Down' command (Ctrl+E) to flatten this into my layer stack.  

The example shows how my workflow allows for large, smooth transitions and simultaneously  crisp edges.  If I were painting on a single layer the entire time It would be very difficult to achieve this result. I don't constantly add new layers – not for every stroke.  If I'm noodling on small details I will keep it on one layer.  Adding a new temp layer is only for large areas of color, or times where a clean edge is critical.

Homework : 'Temp Layers' worksheet

You've covered a lot of territory in this lesson.  I've attached a worksheet drill for you to practice these new techniques on.  It will mainly focus on the 'temp layers' workflow.  Your goal is to paint smooth gradations on under each of these organic shapes I've provided. You should work with Normal (opaque) layers.  Also, remember to make a new 'temp layer' for each shape, and merge it down (Ctrl + E) when you're satisfied.  The end result will be a single painting layer above the background.  

Download the .PSD, ctrlpaint.com/storage/101/layers_worksheet.psd,   and have fun!

Where to next?  

Still have questions?