Praeclaris Digital Mentor

[Rags of Ash]

Okie dokie. And yes - I was using soft brushes with the blur tool (sai doesn't have a smudge tool actually xD buuuut blur does the same thing, sorta) I've been beat up about my use of the blur tool in the past and have tried to lessen my dependency on it but it seems I still go to it as an almost security blanket.

Hm, so, basically just use the picture as a "guideline" ? It doesn't have to be exact? I actually held myself back on that point as many times I wanted to add something different than what was in the picture. But I wasn't sure that was ok. Alrighty - I'll work on re-painting my picture with a little more...free(?) kind of thing. And I won't use the blur tool! smile

Textures are something I've not worked a lot with either. But I do see what you mean and as I said - I'll redo it and make it look less...airbrushy.

Thanks for taking the time. (the only reason I had this done early was because I had a freak day off during the week - those don't happen but once a year).



I've never done anything like this xD It was fun but confusing and I didn't use a blur tool! I used the marker brush in SAI and the Acrylic brush. I think I might have used the "crayon" brush for some texture but not much.

Aaand, because I had nothing better to do while waiting for the kiddies to wake up. I did more practice.

The egg  

[Errol McGillivray]

100%. Didn't zoom in or out. Mostly just used the brush tool on different opacities and the pen tool when I didn't want to blend. However, it seems SAI automatically mutes and mixes colours when you place one colour on another, so I got confused as I was working. I used red and green and mutes in between. I used purple for the shaded areas and yellow for the higher lighted areas. White for the little highlights and no black. (I put a solid brown base down to start the shape at 100% opacity.

This was VERY intimidating. I didn't know where to start or anything since I am not too familiar with this program (or painting at all). Also, working in colour is difficult because while I know a bit about colour theory, I've never really worked with colour at all.



I kind of surprised myself. While I can see that it's inconsistent in texture and looks like I don't know what the hell I'm doing, that's why I'm here. To learn what the hell to do.  

[praeclaris]

Sorry for the late reply, just posted the new assignment, it's a two part assignment!

Critiques coming in like, an hour.


Since I realize most of you use Sai, which I assume is more of, like a Painter program? I'll just show you which brushes I use, and maybe you could find an equivalent in the programming. I'll still upload my brushes in case you have photoshop.  

[Errol McGillivray]

I can use a difference program. I have photoshop. I don't understand the brushes really, so I don't know how well I'll translate back and forth. (PS and SAI lock up about the same anyway. I guess it doesn't matter which one I use.)

And thank you!  

[praeclaris]

I'll do a mini tutorial on the brush system in Photoshop, because I think understanding is really important, and why I like it better than Painter in Digital art(it's easier for me), I'm assembling a brush pack right now and upload it by tonight. I'll take a couple of screen caps and my brushes are already programmed to work a certain way, so instead of changing it, I'll make a mini tutorial on making grunge and texture brushes.  

[Elsiane]

great smile
well i don't have photoshop, i use gimp for everything that I can't do in SAI, but i'm pretty sure the most recent version takes photoshop brushes as well.  

[praeclaris]

@Elsiane : Good value, good colors, I assume you're using the large round and selection tool to keep the shape? Or something like that? The large soft round is a good brush, it covers large areas, but don't get stuck on it. My advice, is to loosen up, and don't be afraid to experiment, because you have the accuracy and the visuals down, and you obviously paint in large and small strokes, which is also important, just to experiment with textures, and different brushes. The Large round for a brush is the slightly easier way, try something hard, a smooth egg with grunge textures and a hard round etc. Not saying you're taking the easy way out, but we should give ourselves a challenge sometimes.

My main thing is, digital painting should mimic and hopefully learn from real painting. I will always, always, love painting on the computer, but learning how to paint in real life is what helped me much, much more. I don't think you need a drawover as you understand value and light, and understand what I mean by texture but I think you'll get hooked on it just like I am. A lot of artists who I admire are good painters first, and digital painters second. While I don't look down on digital art, definitely, I just like the look of painting.

Some artists to check out are :

loish.deviantart.com I'm a sucker for her colors and painting style
artpad.org I love his painterly feel, and I hate him because he's ridiculously young
http://www.kekaiart.com/ His more textured, digital paintings are amazing, check out his blog for more painterly piece.
sparth.com more of a digital artist, his colors and compositions and just atmosphere is spot on. Hands down one of my favorite artists.
http://daarken.com/ download his portrait tutorial. It's a must.

I also have blacklist of artists, so I'm not going to stop you guys liking them... but sometimes my discrimination is too strong, lol, but that list is really short, like 2 people, haha.


@Errol McGillivray

You have good colors, and good values, like I said before, I don't want you guys to become a glorified photocopier, getting more saturated, and more expressive is part of this. I think texture brushes will help you a lot, apples have texture and to paint an apple with a non textured brush is already hard. A big part of learning is just diving in and doing it, just by doing this, you'll be surprised how fast you improve. There are no secrets, just do it. While I might be able to give you some tips, a step by step, just by trying, you'll learn so much more than you expect.

I think to help you see it better, you should try and draw the apple in as little strokes as possible, this is a little thing I learned, that often simpler pieces, you learn and see much more in the object.

I will accept any paid job just on principle, because I am poor as s**t and a moneywhore, a bad struggle, lol, so I'll even accept projects where I don't know how the hell to do, and just by being forced to do it, sometimes, things always even out, and you can take something out of it.

Another trick, is to not see an apple. Don't look at it, and think you're drawing an apple, look at the shape as a whole, and then look at each part of the object and pick a new color for each shape. This helped me a lot in painting, I'll put down a base color, I'll go through and remix each color every time I lay down a brush stroke. Remixing forces you to really examine the values, and combining this with the lowest amount of strokes technique, allows you to practice you accuracy in observation. I'll do a quick example of what I mean and edit this post with it~




This is a technique everyone should try out, helps with observations, helps with visually coordination, and really helps when you use the biggest brush possible. Also, remixing, or repicking your colors helps you analyze colors in terms of value, hue and saturation. Simple things are often harder than the more complicated smile

 

[Elsiane]

praeclaris

@Elsiane : Good value, good colors, I assume you're using the large round and selection tool to keep the shape? Or something like that? The large soft round is a good brush, it covers large areas, but don't get stuck on it. My advice, is to loosen up, and don't be afraid to experiment, because you have the accuracy and the visuals down, and you obviously paint in large and small strokes, which is also important, just to experiment with textures, and different brushes. The Large round for a brush is the slightly easier way, try something hard, a smooth egg with grunge textures and a hard round etc. Not saying you're taking the easy way out, but we should give ourselves a challenge sometimes.

My main thing is, digital painting should mimic and hopefully learn from real painting. I will always, always, love painting on the computer, but learning how to paint in real life is what helped me much, much more. I don't think you need a drawover as you understand value and light, and understand what I mean by texture but I think you'll get hooked on it just like I am. A lot of artists who I admire are good painters first, and digital painters second. While I don't look down on digital art, definitely, I just like the look of painting.

Some artists to check out are :

loish.deviantart.com I'm a sucker for her colors and painting style
artpad.org I love his painterly feel, and I hate him because he's ridiculously young
http://www.kekaiart.com/ His more textured, digital paintings are amazing, check out his blog for more painterly piece.
sparth.com more of a digital artist, his colors and compositions and just atmosphere is spot on. Hands down one of my favorite artists.
http://daarken.com/ download his portrait tutorial. It's a must.

I also have blacklist of artists, so I'm not going to stop you guys liking them... but sometimes my discrimination is too strong, lol, but that list is really short, like 2 people, haha.

my goodness i love loish too smile artpad.org didn't seem to work for me but loving those others as well. i have also recently discovered leventep.deviantart.com and wf74.deviantart.com ... i have not studied perspective (REALLY want to) or buildings/nature/scenes in general, only figures. (which leaves things looking boring).

can i ask you to clarify what you mean by the large round brush? i don't know how to import brushes into sai, but we only have round brushes. i usually use a hard-edged one though, not a soft-edged one. i will prefer to use a hard edged brush since it can be blended out afterwards to look softer, while it requires more effort to make a soft-edged brush look crisp. if you are referring to the "halo" around the dark edge of the egg, i added that in deliberately because i wanted the background to look like it was slightly glowing. lol sorry.

i didn't use a selection tool though. i used the erase tool for the messy edges of that particular egg. can you also clarify for me what a grunge texture is? XD. thank you!!

i also agree with the painter idea first, but probably more generally than you. i think that the skills that make both digital and traditional painting look good are more easily acquired in traditional painting because you don't have a program that partially solves a problem for you (and therefore doesn't completely force you to learn the skill). however... while i think it's important not to be a xerox artist, i don't see a traditional style as being a holy grail for digital art either.

one thing that i do think about digital art is that we need to be flexible in our approach and not just use the tools we've always had at our disposal. there are many ways to skin a cat, and some are more aesthetically pleasing to others than to yourself!

edit: and the second assignment looks scary. hahaha. smile
also, not sure if i mentioned this earlier, but i have disabled the colour palette in sai, trying to make myself more aware of hue, saturation and value by forcing myself to select them individually on the sliders.  

[Crimple]

I was browsing through the mentor threads and your assignments really caught my interest. I'd love to take part, though I understand you might not have time to critique it. Would that be okay? I'll post a link to my mentee thread and you can drop by in your spare time? Or would it be more convenient if I posted the image here?  

[Rags of Ash]

if I'm not mistaken...Sai is able to open psd files  

[Elsiane]

Slow As Christmas

if I'm not mistaken...Sai is able to open psd files

I've never done this so I can't confirm it but I've seen it said in several places.

yes, it can heh. everything i own is stored in psd if i am still using it in sai, or xcf for convenient gimp storage smile

but i was more concerned with importing brushes into sai... i know that gimp cannot rotate brushes natively although there is probably some sort of script you can write to make brushes rotate... it's been on the opensource to-do list for a while i understand.  

[Errol McGillivray]

praeclaris

I'll do a mini tutorial on the brush system in Photoshop, because I think understanding is really important, and why I like it better than Painter in Digital art(it's easier for me), I'm assembling a brush pack right now and upload it by tonight. I'll take a couple of screen caps and my brushes are already programmed to work a certain way, so instead of changing it, I'll make a mini tutorial on making grunge and texture brushes.

This is why I like you. Understanding is what makes the difference in whether or not you're learning or just regurgitating.  

[Errol McGillivray]

The second assignment is terrifying. (This first one is scary.)

I glanced over, but it's late and I want to tackle and analyze with a clear mind.

I will saw that my only experience painting in the last 10 years is with gouache. I didn't blend at all, so it's kind of new. I used oils when I was 18 for two semesters, but besides that, I have no painting experience at all. I don't have any experience painting, so I'll have to learn about brushes and all that other stuff. I just kind of used a base of brown and then used a lower opacity round brush and kept going over it. Everything got all smooth and waxy, but I had no idea how to make it not be waxy.

Fortunately, due to working in charcoal with figure studies, I did learn to "switch off" the 'this is an apple' and focus on value and forum. This is the first time I had to tackle colour and texture though. It's all very new. I'm pretty proud that I was able to do it at all.

I'm shitting myself reading the second assignment, but I'm ready to try it.  

[Rags of Ash]

Elsiane

Slow As Christmas

if I'm not mistaken...Sai is able to open psd files

I've never done this so I can't confirm it but I've seen it said in several places.

yes, it can heh. everything i own is stored in psd if i am still using it in sai, or xcf for convenient gimp storage smile

but i was more concerned with importing brushes into sai... i know that gimp cannot rotate brushes natively although there is probably some sort of script you can write to make brushes rotate... it's been on the opensource to-do list for a while i understand.

Ah not so sure about that one. I know I imported a few brushes but they had to be in a different file... I'm quite the newbie at Sai And as far as I have seen - there is no rotation to the brushes. Though that would make life easier.

I prefer Sai to gimp merely for the pen brush. It's so lovely and smooth  

[Elsiane]

sai and gimp? hmm, i think they're pretty different functions as far as i'm concerned... anyway, i'll keep this on topic for our mentor's sanity biggrin

i feel the same way as errol. giggle! i'll start on assignment 2 tomorrow, rofl. (unless i feel more intelligent by evening)