Post by greensquid on Mar 19, 2007 20:34:13 GMT -5
You know, I don't like critiquing. Most critiques are ____ is too ____ and offer really no help whatsoever, so I'm going to give you some brush settings and techniques that may help you.
I assume you're working in photoshop if not, this post will be less helpful than I intend. (I'm also not very articulate, so getting my point across is going to be a little tricky.)
For the first part of my painting, I just use a regular hard round brush. You can adjust size by using the "[" and "]" keys and opacity by the number keys across the top of your keyboard to adjust opacity.
Some people try to set it up so that pen pressure adjust size and opacity, but that's waaaay to impresice for my my tastes.
Basically, with drawing the idea is to go from light to dark, with painting it's the opposite, generally. Think of it as painting layers or something.
You start off with a base color and using a brush with low opacity lay down some strokes. Like so.
img442.imageshack.us/img442/2963/paintingex1it5.jpg
You can lay strokes on top of each other to get to that original color
img410.imageshack.us/img410/1406/paintingex2ii8.jpg
To blend further, you use the color picker. (you can press and hold the alt key while you have brush tool selected to get the color picker, and when you let go of alt it'll go back to the brush tool)
img410.imageshack.us/img410/2396/paintingex3xi0.jpg
Then paint some more with your low opacity brush to blend
img442.imageshack.us/img442/7834/paintingex4xm9.jpg
Now, no matter how much you try to blend this way, it's pretty much never going to look smooth.
This is where you use the handy dandy smudge tool.
The general settings are
Normal 50 - 60 percent (depending on the situation)
If you notice in photoshop there should be a tab that says "brushes" at the top right. This will let you adjust certain aspects of the brush. Here are my settings.
img232.imageshack.us/img232/8133/brush1aj5.jpg
img402.imageshack.us/img402/8537/brush2bt5.jpg
img402.imageshack.us/img402/699/brush3vx4.jpg
Using this brush, and a very light touch, you blend the colors like so.
img232.imageshack.us/img232/7269/blendingte2.jpg
------------
When it comes to color picking for high lights, that's another matter entirely. The best advice I can give is, most beginners tend to go "shadow, mid tone, highlight, blend until smooth" and that's bad, you should avoid doing that.
Different materials and textures will have different kinds of high lights and shadow. Look at the car for example. It's high lights are very small and thin. This gives it that glossy feel. A high light like that on skin would make the skin look wet at best, or plasticy at worst. My best advice is to look at real skin and see how far it goes with hi lights
Generally, picking colors depends on material. Skin and Cloth for example, are very different. Skin, tends to increase in saturation in the shadows, where as cloth increases in saturation in the high lights.
The difference between Saturation and Value
img87.imageshack.us/img87/8406/saturationvaluehg2.jpg
Color picking for skin would look something like this (note: don't follow this, I used a random color, not shego's)
img156.imageshack.us/img156/3288/skincolorpickinghq2.jpg
And color picking for cloth would look something like this
img410.imageshack.us/img410/5290/clothescolorpickingug6.jpg
I use techniques like that on paintings like: www.deviantart.com/deviation/48607488/
-----
I'm sorry, I can't think of anymore advice to give. But when it comes to blending a 3d image with a 2d image, that's a pain in the ass no matter how good you are. So I wish you best of luck. I can show you what I'd do, but I can't really explain it very well, so once you start compositing the two, post it, and I'll show you.
Umm, I'm not a very good teacher but that's the best I can do. I also fully admit that I could be wrong about what I'm saying and you could ignore everything I'm saying. It always tends to irritate me when someone assumes they know everything. I don't know everything, this is just how I would approach things. I hope it helps.
I assume you're working in photoshop if not, this post will be less helpful than I intend. (I'm also not very articulate, so getting my point across is going to be a little tricky.)
For the first part of my painting, I just use a regular hard round brush. You can adjust size by using the "[" and "]" keys and opacity by the number keys across the top of your keyboard to adjust opacity.
Some people try to set it up so that pen pressure adjust size and opacity, but that's waaaay to impresice for my my tastes.
Basically, with drawing the idea is to go from light to dark, with painting it's the opposite, generally. Think of it as painting layers or something.
You start off with a base color and using a brush with low opacity lay down some strokes. Like so.
img442.imageshack.us/img442/2963/paintingex1it5.jpg
You can lay strokes on top of each other to get to that original color
img410.imageshack.us/img410/1406/paintingex2ii8.jpg
To blend further, you use the color picker. (you can press and hold the alt key while you have brush tool selected to get the color picker, and when you let go of alt it'll go back to the brush tool)
img410.imageshack.us/img410/2396/paintingex3xi0.jpg
Then paint some more with your low opacity brush to blend
img442.imageshack.us/img442/7834/paintingex4xm9.jpg
Now, no matter how much you try to blend this way, it's pretty much never going to look smooth.
This is where you use the handy dandy smudge tool.
The general settings are
Normal 50 - 60 percent (depending on the situation)
If you notice in photoshop there should be a tab that says "brushes" at the top right. This will let you adjust certain aspects of the brush. Here are my settings.
img232.imageshack.us/img232/8133/brush1aj5.jpg
img402.imageshack.us/img402/8537/brush2bt5.jpg
img402.imageshack.us/img402/699/brush3vx4.jpg
Using this brush, and a very light touch, you blend the colors like so.
img232.imageshack.us/img232/7269/blendingte2.jpg
------------
When it comes to color picking for high lights, that's another matter entirely. The best advice I can give is, most beginners tend to go "shadow, mid tone, highlight, blend until smooth" and that's bad, you should avoid doing that.
Different materials and textures will have different kinds of high lights and shadow. Look at the car for example. It's high lights are very small and thin. This gives it that glossy feel. A high light like that on skin would make the skin look wet at best, or plasticy at worst. My best advice is to look at real skin and see how far it goes with hi lights
Generally, picking colors depends on material. Skin and Cloth for example, are very different. Skin, tends to increase in saturation in the shadows, where as cloth increases in saturation in the high lights.
The difference between Saturation and Value
img87.imageshack.us/img87/8406/saturationvaluehg2.jpg
Color picking for skin would look something like this (note: don't follow this, I used a random color, not shego's)
img156.imageshack.us/img156/3288/skincolorpickinghq2.jpg
And color picking for cloth would look something like this
img410.imageshack.us/img410/5290/clothescolorpickingug6.jpg
I use techniques like that on paintings like: www.deviantart.com/deviation/48607488/
-----
I'm sorry, I can't think of anymore advice to give. But when it comes to blending a 3d image with a 2d image, that's a pain in the ass no matter how good you are. So I wish you best of luck. I can show you what I'd do, but I can't really explain it very well, so once you start compositing the two, post it, and I'll show you.
Umm, I'm not a very good teacher but that's the best I can do. I also fully admit that I could be wrong about what I'm saying and you could ignore everything I'm saying. It always tends to irritate me when someone assumes they know everything. I don't know everything, this is just how I would approach things. I hope it helps.
