Faces are hard to draw! One secret to learning how to draw faces is to first tackle the skull. For a variety of reasons, the skull is a great stand-in for a face. We're hard wired to be especially critical about human faces, and they can be frustrating to learn with. Instead, learning with the skull can help you internalize the basic proportions and masses before you move onto actual faces.
Sometimes a line can be more than just a line. This video explains how to fit extra information into a simple line drawing. Adding a bit of extra thickness might seem like no big thing, but if you use the weight of lines intentionally you can infuse your artwork with depth and energy. Though these are not hard and fast rules, you can use the information in this video as rules of thumb for your future line drawings.
Anatomy is a huge subject. This video will introduce the two main approaches: observational and constructive. Each is useful, and most artists use both from time to time.
Have you ever had a trouble drawing certain directions with your stylus? You're not alone. This video offers a few solutions. Sadly, the best one (canvas rotation) is only available in newer versions of Photoshop.
Learning to digital paint is a long process. It can seem overwhelming at times, but it gets easier! Trust me! This video will give you a bigger-picture view of the process, and help keep things in perspective. If you want to know more, Learning Map is another good resource.
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
When you think of perspective, do you immediately reach for the rulers and technical pens? You don't need to. I find perspective to be more useful when it's utilized more like the rest of your sketching: casually. This video offers a simple exercise to get you thinking.
Download the worksheet as a .JPG
Drawing symmetrical objects in perspective can be a challenge. In situations like this, I generally use Google Sketchup to help me with my accuracy This video explores the powerful tools that Sketchup provides for working with repeated shapes and symmetrical forms. Even if you're saying "Yeah, yeah - symmetry is no big deal in perspective..." would you change your tune if I asked you to draw an object that 7-sided with rotational symmetry? Sometimes a little bit of 3D saves a lot of time.
Do you ever feel like you're treading water? You're stgnating, while the rest of the art community is progressing at lightning speed? You're not alone.This video is a little detour from the standard ctrl+paint technique videos to talk about inspiration, mindset, and 'getting better'. Ultimately, we're all experiencing this in one form or another, so it's worth talking about. Remember: even professionals feel sub-par a fair amount of the time. Art is mind game. UPDATE: It's been really, really great hearing these responses. Art is one of those challenges that we all take on personally - and can feel isolated by the effort. Knowing that everyone else is wrestling with similar issues can be a big help.
So keep the conversation going -- It's an important one to be a part of. Additionally, reader "Jonathan" reminded me of a fantastic series of videos by the radio host Ira Glass on storytelling and inspiration. He's the host of This American Life, and has a lot of experience fighting through the self doubt and frustration involved in creative work. It's definitely worth watching.
Learning art can seem like a bottomless pit of information. To keep things simple, it's important to start your drawing and painting education in grayscale - and reserve color for later. Though it's tempting to move straight into color, this video provides an argument for working slowly and methodically. After all, it's how they do it in art school.
If this is a topic that you really believe in, and want to know more, make sure to check out the Basic Photoshop Rendering series in the store! When I created this series, it was my intent to capture my experience in Drawing 1 and apply it to digital painting.
In the years I've studied drawing, "constructive form" has made the largest impact on me. The general idea is to visually reduce complex forms into simpler ones, and make your drawing challenge more manageable. Especially as a concept artist, drawing from one's imagination is essential. Teaching yourself to envision objects in this simplified manner is a key concept for improving your imaginary drawing skills.
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.
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!
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.
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.