tagged digital painting
Study of a building from Keyflower by R&D Games. I love Juliet Breese’s work – delicate and fun :)
Photoshop watercolour brushes have come a long way! I used some from Kyle’s Ultimate Real Watercolours ( https://gumroad.com/l/rmgqh ) and I think they look great. A lot of the brushes even react in a paint-y way (you can push the paint around a bit as you go, they settle and ‘dry’ a bit etc.).
New blog! And where better to start than with the past and the future combined! ~mwahahahaha~ …or something like that.
Anyway, for those who weren’t watching my DeviantArt back in 2009 (so, most people), I was starting out with digital painting in Photoshop. I’d been drawing forever but getting the hand-eye co-ordination down for successful Wacom tablet use was a big challenge, not to mention learning about those elusive creatures, the Photoshop brushes.
The first 2 sketches, from 2009, are 30 minutes each. I used to do tons of speed paints from photos back then to force myself to jump right in rather than be staring at a blank canvas. The third sketch, from 2011, was more self indulgent and took 2.5 hours. I also spent 2.5 hours on the fourth one, which I did yesterday. Its still unfinished as I had to put it down to go out. Glad I did though as I like the 2.5 hour comparison and don’t see a lot of point in noodling it for another couple of hours…
Luckily my ref photo is still up on Flickr if you’re interested -> https://www.flickr.com/photos/mythoto/927551160/
My 2 personal observations when painting this were:
Why in the heck did I choose this photo to be my longitudinal progress one?! Its all fiddly details that need careful planning to get correct. I could probably sit there for 3 hours just plotting in all the windows!
This is the first of these where I made a palette for myself based on the photo before starting (just by eye). Its also the first one that I painted randomly in the middle of a big canvas, rather than on a document of the same aspect ratio of the photo. Just felt better to be measuring the parts of the building against each other rather than the arbitrary cutoff of the photo edge. But that’s not important! Going back to the palette, I noticed that I don’t really think in terms of just ‘colour’ any more – I tend to naturally approach things more in terms of light and shadow. It was nice to realise :) …also I really need to work on my use of light and colour in general…but I have exciting plans for that. Onwards into the next 5 years!