Join for FREE | Take the Tour Lost Password?
[x]

deviantART

 
[x]  

Link




Share


  Share on twitter Share on Facebook Share on reddit Share on digg

Notices



More Art Blogs & Mags News

Better Digital Photography -Winter Edition

=Kaz-D:iconKaz-D: reports, 11h 30m ago
Better Digital Photography Magazine - Winter Edition
This is the free interactive/online version of this magazine that I received this morning due to being subscribed to a photography mag. I hope it works for everyone else, I have checked it out to see :) Enjoy! It's really excellent :)

Horsin' Around Vol. 9

=boribaby:iconboribaby: reports, November 16
Horsin' Around is a bi-monthly article which showcases deviantART's finest equine artists, as well as recognizing the lesser-known but equally talented ones. Interviews, helpful tutorials and features can all be found here too! I hope you enjoy it.

Contributions invited for Sublime Rush magazine

^RockstarVanity:iconRockstarVanity: reports, November 7
Sublime Rush is a new independent art, culture and entertainment magazine, published exclusively online and open to contributions of content from all sorts of artists, all over the world. Click through to find out how you can get involved.

Sublime Rush magazine is in no way affiliated with deviantART, deviantART Inc. or deviantART.com

dAgnostics Nov 2009

=dAgnostic:icondAgnostic: reports, November 4
Like always and usual :) We present you the people in need of more exposure, they deserve it.

Horsin' Around Vol. 8

=boribaby:iconboribaby: reports, November 1
Horsin' Around is a bi-monthly article (updated twice a month) which showcases deviantART's finest equine artists, as well as recognizing the lesser-known but equally talented ones. Interviews, helpful tutorials and features can all be found here too! I hope you enjoy it.

DEVIANCE October 2009

^PurpelBlur:iconPurpelBlur: reports, October 30
:skull: The DEVIANCE Halloween Special has arrived from the depths. :evillaugh: What a freaky cover! :fear:
You have got to check out the special treat inside we have for you AND you can expect many more in the issues to come! ;)

:pumpkin: Click the title of this article to be taken to this DEVIANCE issue.

Horsin' Around Vol. 7

=boribaby:iconboribaby: reports, October 16
Horsin' Around is a bi-monthly article (updated twice a month) which showcases deviantART's finest equine artists, as well as recognizing the lesser-known but equally talented ones. Interviews, helpful tutorials and features can all be found here too! I hope you enjoy it.

Issue 001 of Sublime Rush magazine launches!

^RockstarVanity:iconRockstarVanity: reports, October 15
Sublime Rush is an independent arts, culture and entertainment magazine with its door is always open to fans, friends, creative content submissions and new readers.

From the website, SublimeRush.com, you can read the magazine online, register with the mailing list to get your hands on the mag before anyone else (plus see special subscriber-only content) and find out how to contribute YOUR work to future issues.

Sublime Rush is a RockstarVanity production, promoted here by me as an individual, and is in no way affiliated with or part of deviantART.com or deviantART, Inc.

Art Libs Greatest Hits Vol. 1

=littlestar:iconlittlestar: reports, October 14
Art Libs is celebrating our first 6 months with a special feature of greatest hits. We’re showcasing all of the art today that really stood out, out of everyone that we featured on the site since day one.

OYEZ OYEZ FRANCOPHONES !

=ArwenGernak:iconArwenGernak: reports, October 8
NOUVELLE COMMUNAUTE FRANCOPHONE

Art Blogs & Mags News This Week

Better Digital Photography -Winter Edition

=Kaz-D:iconKaz-D: reports, 11h 30m ago
Better Digital Photography Magazine - Winter Edition
This is the free interactive/online version of this magazine that I received this morning due to being subscribed to a photography mag. I hope it works for everyone else, I have checked it out to see :) Enjoy! It's really excellent :)

Sculptor Kris Kuksi is featured on Inhabitat.com

=Spikette2108:iconSpikette2108: reports, November 19
The incredible sculptor *kuksi has been featured on Inhabitat.com, a blog dedicated to green design, as a way of showing the wonders that can be done by upcycling materials.

CC- Do you hear our environment? (Extreme feature)

~criticalcomment:iconcriticalcomment: reports, 4h 15m ago
One of the many Articles that Criticalcomment (theCC) writes about: this week it's called PULSE and focus's on the world's need to preserve our environment and to regulate our impact on wildlife and nature.

Art Blogs & Mags


My Painting "Secrets"

*Maidith:iconMaidith: reports, July 25, 2008
Okay, there is no such thing as secrets. But I’ve always been browsing for tutorials and information about how my idols paint, and tried out their methods, and lo and behold, some of them worked for me too! And I’m still learning.

I can’t tell you how to paint digitally. My art idols have many different methods, and each of them is “right”. All I can do is tell you how I paint in Photoshop, using a graphics tablet. I won’t claim this is the true, right method. It’s just the one that I’ve developed over the years to get the results I want - all great things develop out of necessity - and it’s the one that works for me.

How I make a digital painting:

I have found that I make the best pictures when I’ve already sketched them in my mind. When I start a painting without any idea about how I want colors, composition, etc. to be, it gets frustrating because I try out many things without knowing what I want. It’s good to have a clear idea of your painting in your head, so you only have to “copy” that picture. It’s mostly the color scheme and mood I’m imagining first.
Looking at other people’s art has helped me tremendously being able to paint pictures in my mind. When you look at pictures often, you will have a big “vocabulary” that can help you make your own, unique phrases - in this case, pictures.

I always start with a colored canvas. The color of the canvas will be one that dominates the picture’s color scheme or contrasts with it (both can yield nice results).
This is better than starting with a white or black canvas, because it helps you choosing the right colors for your scene, and because you can paint both darker and lighter on it. So this is actually very important!
On that colored canvas, I make a sketch of everything - mostly a small concept sketch, no wider than 500 pixels. In that concept sketch, I try out my idea. I want to test if it actually works - composition, light, shadow, color, everything has to be there because this determinates the picture’s final outcome. Just very roughly sketched in.

(Had I lived in the 19th century, I’d have been a follower of Delacroix and his “color-is-most-important”-dogma, as opposed to Ingres who was convinced that line and drawing were crucial XD It’s a very old debate about what’s more important in a painting, line or color).

As soon as I feel it’s working, I make a quite exact line drawing on a bigger canvas (about 2000-3000 pixels wide) of the same color. The line drawing is done partly from reference photos and partly freehand; I try to get proportions and anatomy as correct as possible.
On a new layer, I block in all colors, light and shadow. Here in this very early sketchy stage I already try to determine all light and shadow and color composition, because as mentioned, they are very important! They cannot be taken care of too early.

To illustrate this: Some years back, I used to paint midtones only, then add highlights and shadows until the picture was finished. Now, on the contrary, I sketch all of those in, and everything else is simply refining and adding detail. I can spend a lot of time on that, because shading and highlight has been done already.

This requires of course some careful planning, especially in terms of light, shadow and composition.

Here is an example of a painting in this early stage:



Well, now everything is but refining and detailing. Folds in clothing, facial details, the background, clothes patterns… everything is worked out. Gradients are made more smooth, harsh edges of sketched-in shadows are broken up and dissolved where necessary. Touches of colors are added whereever they can enhance another color (especially when it comes to skintones). Anatomy and proportion errors are corrected. I often repaint some parts, big or small, whenever they don’t work the way they should.

The finished painting; about 10 hours later, looked like this:



Photoshop Brushes:
- I always paint with the brush size and opacity set to the pen pressure of my graphics tablet (otherwise there would be no point in having a tablet). The three brushes I use most are: hard round, soft round and a bristle brush.
- I have a ton of other brushes too but those are not used often; only if I want to experiment with some ways how to make grungy or oil-painting-like surfaces or textures. Some I made myself, some are from other artists.
- Opacity is always set to 100%, the flow is mostly between 25% and 100%, depending on whether I want to paint soft, smooth edges or large, flat areas of color. Experiment with this - it’s fun!
- Sometimes I set the brush to the “soft light” mode; this will make the color darker and more saturated. But this shouldn’t be overused.
- Generally I can say that I paint with a rather light hand and often paint over the same area several times until I get the color I want. This also adds texture to a painting, as does erasing in a similar way.
The initial line drawing I erase more and more, as the painting advances. In the end, there will be no lines left - either they’ve been erased or painted over. Form has evolved from the lines through the means of color.

Other "Tricks":
- I always have two windows opened in Photoshop while painting: on the left, one window with a very big (original size) canvas - I can only see part of it, since it’s bigger than my monitor. On the right, I can see the whole canvas in a smaller view. This is great since it saves me the trouble of having to zoom in and out all the time. In Photoshop, you can open a new window of your painting if you select “Windows”–>”Document”—>”New Window” (depending on what version you use)
- I always have my finger over the “Alt” key while painting, because this gets you the color picker, much faster than having to click on it. I always need the color picker so I press on that “Alt” key pretty often.
- If you want to make soft gradients, you have to use more than just two colors! Paint the gradient color in between also - use the color picker to pick the color at the transition you’re trying to paint.
- I try to use as few layers as possible, since too many of them will make my computer go crazy. As for layers, less is more. Sometimes I can get along with only three layers: background, line drawing, colors. In general, I rarely ever use more than ten layers.

Devious Comments

love 1 1 joy 1 1 wow 0 0 mad 0 0 sad 0 0 fear 0 0 neutral 0 0
:iconkyrn:
Wasn't it the Rubenistes and the Poussinistes? I'd be the later.

--
prints @meredithdillman.com
:icond-na:
This is an awesome article, Kristina, I think you included all the most important things. I'm sure many people will find this helpful :)

It's crazy how we have almost the exact same painting progress and use the same tools :XD: Although I am yet to play with Flow (I used it a few times, but not nearly enough), hehe. Also, I just paint over my "lineart" (linesketch, rather, it's usually super-messy and awful), but make sure to keep it in a separate layer until I'm 101% sure I like what I see.

Another fun thing to do: postprocessing! I go crazy with textures and Adjustment Layers. Try playing around with Gradient Map adjustment layer, it works wonders to colours and overall feel of the image :)
:iconmaidith:
They had the same debate, Ingres and Delacroix just continued it :)

--
DO NOT click.
:iconmaidith:
Hehe, thanks :D I'm still a bit scared of postprocessing... gotta experiment more there xD

--
DO NOT click.
:icond-na:
Ahh, don't be afraid! I find it very fun to do, and you can get some really nice effects :) Besides, you can just erase the layer if you don't like it. Ahh, the magic of digital art!
:iconbolsterstone:
I've always been part of the Durer/Ingres school myself -- call it the curse of teaching drafting classes. =D

But speaking as a traditional painter who is still trying to move into digital, one thing I wonder about, when I look at your technique: do you put your lineart/sketches above or below the painting, or do you actually move that layer up and down depending on the work that you are doing? Or do you go truly traditional and actually paint on the lineart layer? Just curious...

Incidentally, another good mini-tutorial... :-)

--
:flagcanada: Visit random deviants. Try it! You'll never know what you might discover. :flaguk:
:iconwarrior-of-dream:
very interesting;)

--
"1,2 steps, action
mission complete
no doubt"

No orders, I fight myself!!

:heart:It's stupid to give up, isn't it?
:iconercanhoca:
very nice

--
you visiting my gallery Please
 

Site Map