From Oil to Photoshop

[Ramennoodles518]

Ok guys, I am relatively new here. So first of all, hi! I haven't posted any artwork yet, but I will soon.

Anyway, on to the important stuff. I am doing my very first digital painting for a class assignment. I know Photoshop pretty well, as I've been using it for years and years at this point (you can never really learn it ALL though, can you?). I can do a variety of things from photo retouching to coloring lineart a la comic style. I have not, however, used it to do an actual painting before.

Also, I have been painting with traditional mediums for years and so I already have a decent background in the figure, values, color theory, intuitive color, composition, etc. My oil painting professor just thought it was time that I learned to do it in a new medium (i.e. digital paints!), and so wants me to do a painting in Photoshop.

Do you guys have any good tips on how to make the transition from one to the other? I have a Wacom Intuos 3, and I am using Photoshop CS2.

What sorts of opacity/jitter/whatever settings are best for my brushes to aid in blending and smoothing? Is there to way to make the color glow like one can achieve using regular oil paints? I have already gleaned that I should not use the "Smudge" or "Blend" tool. I looked for a basic beginner's guide, but it seemed as though everything was either for people learning to draw or paint... or for people who already knew what they were doing and didn't need brush type/opacity/flow settings to get jumpstarted.

Thanks very much in advance! I appreciate any help I can get!

[GriNGo]

http://www.conceptart.org/forums/showthread.php?t=107217

Check this thread out man, so you can jumpstart in doing exercises about painting in PS. BUMSKEE's first post if full of useful painting info: basically start your painting with large brushes, high opacity, and later lower your brush size and your opacity to work with the color transitions.

The basic brush options you should change are the size jitter (in shape dynamics, change it to pen pressure) opacity&flow settings (in the other dynamics section, set them to pen pressure as well), as it's more intuitive (at least for me), to make the brush size change according to the hardness of my stroke, to make the paint (color) appear "more" when I'm pressing the wacom pen harder, and when i press it softly, the paint should appear lightly.
The other settings are there basically for you to play with... Dual Brush is pretty cool (let's you mix two brushes, like if they were one, you can make some really cool brushes just with this tool), and texture (it has lots of options to add texture to your brush variant). Be careful though, because if you set too many options, it might make your brush be terribly slow while you paint, which is frustrating as hell. Now to begin with (until you get the hang of stuff), just start with your basic normal round brush!, and adjust it's hardness and opacity according to the stages of your painting). Learn to use the layers palette and masks, because those tools basically what makes digital painting unique and different from other mediums.

Good luck with learning the painting science of PS!

[Ramennoodles518]

Thank you very much. That brush information was just what I needed. I think I was trying to use a textured brush far too early in the game. I'll use my hard brush first. I also do like the idea of that dual brush option. I will definitely check it out.

This will help out a lot. I'll post my progress later on this month! Thanks again!

[GriNGo]

your welcome man! don't forget to post your ventures &/or excercises in this thread here: http://www.conceptart.org/forums/sho...d.php?t=107217