Traditional painters often start with a "ground" - giving them a neutral, textured surface to begin their painting on. This video introduces a custom brush which will quickly generate such a ground for your digital painting. Unlike most brushes I mention, this one is designed to work with the Smudge Tool. To download the brush for yourself, click here!
Most painting is done with basic brushes, but sometimes it's nice to have a big chunky block-in brush to get your canvas started. This video introduces my ctrl+Paint block-in brush, and includes a free download.
To try the brush for yourself, download it here!
In the vocabulary of painting "value" refers to illumination. Light areas are high in value, dark areas are low in value. This video explores value sketching - in which a painter foregoes the line-drawing phase and skips straight to tone. If you've never done this sort of sketching before, it's a fantastic exercise!
From my experience, beginners are often taught to think in terms of line because pencils are so cheap and accessable. Working in value requires an artist to more carefully consider form and mass, which is a valuable way to think. Normally sketching in this way would require messy paints or charcoal, but working digitally makes using tone and value just as easy as lines.
A safe approach to most drawing is going from general to specific. Large scale before details. This video shows how apply that general form to sketching line-work in Photoshop using layers. Of course, drawing is a personal process and your technique might differ. This is the method I derived over time from my experience as a Comic Book student in art school, and a concept artist after college.
Light and shadow reveal the form of an object. The way to create a likeness lies in the accurate depiction of shadows cast across form. So what should you look out for when painting light and shadow? This video explores shadows' tendency to have both hard and soft edges.
Note: It's not clearly mentioned in the video, but this technique is only relevant in the case of strong directional lighting. If you were looking at an object on a cloudy day, this principle would not apply.
Finally, if you want to know more about this topic you will enjoy the premium series available in the store: Basic Photoshop Rendering.
Mechanically, painting is very simple: add paint to the canvas, and blend it with the paint that you've already applied. That said, blending technique is a subtle art and can be a lifetime pursuit. This video shows some basic blending techniques for photoshop. And if the brushes aren't working the way you want them to, watch this video on brush controls.
What type of computer should you use? Is it ok to draw with a mouse? What about the iPad? I answer these questions and more in this video. It's worth noting that these are my personal views based off of personal experience, and we'd all love to hear additional viewpoints in the comments!
What happens where two faces of a cube meet? I'll give you a hint: it's not a a razor sharp divide between the two surfaces. This video zooms in on edges and bevels and explains their importance in painting. Additionally, industrial design lives and dies by tiny details like the radius of a bevel or corner - so this is valuable information for aspiring designers of all stripes.
Is there something you normally avoid drawing? Hands, faces, cars? Here's my challenge to you: draw 100 of them. There's no better way to improve at something than to dedicate yourself to it. It's natural to avoid drawing the things that you're weak at, but you should fight this urge. Are you up to the challenge?
Many beginner artists are reluctant to learn perspective drawing. It is often thought of as 'technical' and 'scary', but it doesn't need to be either of those things. If you want to be a concept artist or illustrator, you need to learn perspective. In this video I'll show a very basic exercise that you can practice for beginning to understand perspective. This is an observational drawing assignment, and should be done with paper and pencil. Have fun!
The previous two videos explained how to observe and paint glossiness from reference. What happens when you are painting a glossy surface from your imagination? In these cases you'll need to have a strong mental texture library, and apply what you've learned in your studies to the imagined forms. This video explains how to approach this task by using appropriate reference materials and doing a bit of mental extrapolation.
Even if you're aware of 'glossiness', and can observe its effects, you still need to be able to reproduce it in your own paintings. This video offers some practical advice for doing exactly that. Focusing on brushwork, I'll show how to use layers effectively to work on the specular highlight separately from the base form.
Improving your painting is often a matter of depicting surfaces realistically. One component of a surface is the glossy highlight, or, "specularity" and it is explained in this video. If you're interested in learning more about surfaces and improving your rendering techniques, you will enjoy two of the series available in the store: Basic Photoshop Rendering and Creating Realistic Surfaces.
Visit any large book store and the 'art technique' shelf will be filled with titles like "How to Draw ___ (dragons, zombies, vampires, cars, etc.)" -- this is deception. Instead of useful instruction, this is merely a scheme to sell books. Want to learn the real secret of how to draw anything? Observe, and practice. This video shows a versatile approach to learning any kind of new subject-matter. As you progress in your art career you'll find that drawing isn't a set of individual recipes, it's a single way of working. When I set out to draw a dragon I use the same techniques that I would use to draw a fire hydrant. Hopefully this video will empower you to tackle the subject matter your're having trouble with - and to ignore the "1,2,dragon" shelf at the book store.
Why are console video games played with a controller or a touch screen, and not a keyboard? Because those are the best-suited input devices for the way most users interact with their device. Guess what? Being a digital painter means you're no longer included in "most users". Now you've got a different set of needs, and will most likely be spending longer at your computer than the average user. With this in mind, a standard keyboard might not be the best input device for you. Just like using a stylus instead of a mouse, you might want to consider alternative keyboards or controllers for your other hand.
When it comes to ergonomics, re-mapping your keyboard shortcuts is a great start - but it doesn't need to be the end. Over the years I've radically changed my input scheme and the results have been very clear: expensive, but worth every penny.
Like the buttons and dials in your car, keyboard shortcuts are the "user interface" with which you control Photoshop. Have you customized these commands yet? The whole point of keyboard shortcuts is to save you time and avoid wasting energy. With this in mind, it's worth considering your personal needs when working with keyboard shortcuts. In general, shortcut keys are designed for easy recall: ctrl+s = save, etc. In this video I suggest that a better scheme for assigning keys is based on the position of your left hand. Re-mapping the keyboard shortcuts with this new prioritization will reduce your hand strain and speed up your painting technique.
In pt. 1 I showed you the basics of creating clean straight and curved lines in photoshop. This video shows a sample workflow: creating a mechanical prop using the techniques introduced in the previous lesson.
Reader Anders was nice enough to expand on the topic in his own video here. Check it out.
Clean linework can be a challenge to create with a stylus. This video offers a solution. If you were an industrial designer it would not be considered "cheating" to use a ruler or an ellipse template. Likewise, you're not breaking any rules by utilizing some of Photoshop's mechanical aids for drawing technical linework.
Whenever a new medium emerges, artists are quick to dismiss it as inferior -- and digital painting has been received negatively by many artists. This video is my attempt to argue in favor of digital painting. Of course, there's no correct medium to work in. Working digitally, though, brings some wonderful new opportunities to the table. Besides, when was the last time you hand-wrote a letter? With my commercial work I find the best solution is almost always a combination of tools: some 3D, a little photo-texture, lots of reference imagery, and digital painting to pull it all together.
Painting is all about controlling your mindset. You can easily become your own worst enemy by tensing up, being overly critical, and worrying about your mistakes. Learning to control these feelings is a huge part of learning to paint. In this video I'll show you a drill that helps you come to terms with 'professional detachment'. This practice of 'letting go' will give you a thicker skin, and make critique easier to hear. Being able to throw away your work is essential for all artists, but it is especially useful for professionals.