How Many Layers?

If you like the idea of "indirect painting" and want to know more, check out the "Grayscale to Color" series in the store.  

Comments

[Joshi]

Learning that history was cool. It's interesting to see what kinds of techniques people used back then and how that's informed us now.

Personally, I prefer to keep my number of layers as low as possible at any given time, but that doesn't mean I don't use a lot. In fact, I tend to be quite liberal about painting stuff on it's own layer, it's just that once I've gotten to a place where it no longer needs to be a seperate layer, I'll merge down to get as few as possible.

Matt, quick question, isn't there a middle ground where you set the brush mode to something like multiply instead of the blending mode of a new layer? That was you can paint on fewer layers and still get that element of discovering new and interesting tones and colours.

[Jun]

Thanks matt... you are the best!! this is my 3rd day of practicing Digital Painting.

I would like to ask if there is a system I can follow our something in order to improve. What I have so far is. Everyday I do one Typography "following tutorials", then practice value painting on PS (for some reason I'm only good with an apple), Then do a lot of just sketches everyday both from still life and on real life (people walking outside my window. Well I was just wondering if Im doing the right thing. I'm planning to stick to this routine for 2 weeks or so and see if I improve. By the way the typography helps me with getting familiar on the various functions on PS. But then again I want digital painting. :) so thats why I only do one of those a day.

Do you have any suggestions for me to improve. Any suggestions would be awesome. Also I would like to ask what are your exercises when you practice value. Is it like me where I just put an apple in front of me and then paint a black and white version of it?

Sorry for the questions Im just a total noob who really wants to learn this stuff. I have been drawing for sometime though and even in that part I know I also need improvements. Again thank you for tutorials. I just found a goldmine in the internet :) since then I have been telling all my friends about ctrlpaint.com :). This is great what you are doing here..

Thank you

[jeff riddle]

I was wondering is there a way to calibrate the colors on the cintiq so that they match what I see on computer iMac screen? Excellent tutorial.

[solomon]

I always found that when I just want to get an idea out I usually go for the direct painting and just quickly get whatever is in my head onto the ps canvas, but when it comes down to actual work I always found it wise to do an indirect painting since its so much easier to change things at any point of time and saves allot more effort of redoing things all over again like erasing and filling things up :) and a faster comp does help when you're doing an indirect painting, scratch disks should be set accoridingly too, so allot more tweaking is surely needed on the software's preferences to make sure you have a smooth experience while you work.
think I blabbered a bit..

[javidiaz]

Hi, I want to congratulate you on the website and the wonderful tutorial, I'll follow in a while, and I have all the tutorials.
My English is not very good, but I work slowly with the videos.
a greeting from spain

[Cameron Nielsen]

For illustration direct painting is fine, but if you actually want to come close to capturing the soul of an oil painting, then I think indirect painting leads to a much richer and deeper feeling.

[Erf]

Cameron: Yeah, I'm beginning to see that, too. I've wound up with colours I never would have chosen directly, but that give so much depth and richness, even texture!

Out of curiosity, what do you mean by the soul of an oil painting? What makes it different? (Or is that one of those deep questions with no easy answer that can be explained in words?) I haven't studied enough art in different media to have a sense for what it brings to the work.

[John]

Was pretty informative; I come from a traditional painting background and I had very few colors to use (mostly just primaries, student-grade at that), so I know what managing resources is about xD. I'm new to digital (just maybe a little more than a month of serious painting), and I'm at a point now where I'm contemplating if I can 'do things better', layers being one of them. I think if I made some smarter palette choices in terms of colors, I might not have to use as many layers even in the working file, so today I'm gonna try a new method I thought of to see if I can still get the results I want.

One thing that always stresses me about layers is finding out a purpose for each one. The only reason I want to use a layer is if I can't achieve a certain effect on the one underneath. I have experience w/ all the layer modes in some fashion now, and where each has their strengths (Luminosity for highlights, hue for slight color adjustments, etc.).

Thnx very much for uploading this and setting up the site in general; it's proving to be helpful :)

[abhirut]

nice video matt thanks again

but i was unable to understand the core differences between direct and indirect painting.
could someone explain it in simple words that would be really great.

[John]

@abhirut: Well, I got some time to kill so I can do it.

Direct painting is where you take a color swatch from the color selector, and paint it on a layer set to something like Normal at 100%..and that is *all* you're doing. Not changing the layer settings, not using multiple layers, just one layer or a few layers all set to something like Normal 100%. B/c Normal is akin to an opaque setting, you would need to set it to lower than 100% to have color from one layer to interact w/ color from another. Even so, because digital colors work differently than traditional paint-and Normal does not compensate for that-your colors will look pretty flat and lifeless even if the data in the color picker matches what that color technically is (for example if color A of some traditional paint has a hue of 225, and you pick that hue as your color, you are merely using a technical version of that color. It will not have the life, richness, vibrancy or characteristics of its traditional counterpart on a layer setting like Normal 100%-or Normal period-because the digital version is not like the traditional version by default).

To work around that, you can use indirect painting. This is equivalent to glazing traditionally, where you thin one color paint down (usually a single-pigment, transparent or translucent paint, but opaque paint can be used for opaque glazes) and place that film on top of another paint film already on the canvas. The resulting color will depend on the thickness of both films as well as the colors of both, but the general result is the resultant color is very rich, vibrant and energetic. Digitally, this means setting one layer to a particular mode like Multiply, Hue, or Saturation, using one color on that layer, then creating another layer set to another mode like the mentioned ones or even Normal at some lower opacity, and painting another color on that layer. The resulting color is the product of those two colors. It requires advanced knowledge of color theory to get the hang of, but that and some practice goes a long way.

Once you learn more about color, you'll begin to construct palettes that, while few in number in their own, will allow you to replicate an endless number of different colors w/ the indirect painting method. Also, it's not so much what the color data says is right that's important so much as what LOOKS right to your eye that is, so you need to judge all of your colors in relevance to each other and what that color looks like to you, if you were happening to be looking at a canvas in person.

[hang]

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