silhouette or Linework?

[bloodless]

Heya CA this is my first post here and i just want to tell you that your work is amazing and im deeply inspired by them :D

So I started to draw and paint by myself and hopefully wish to become as good as you guys :D

But i need some advice regarding to silhouette and line teqniques. which one is the best to start out and which one should be used in respective to painting and illustration?

As i have tried both of them by myself, the easiest and best method i find is the silhouette teqnique and it helps me define the porportions and the anatomy when drawing characters and stuff...

But the problem with the style is when trying to put details and paintings to it. Not only is the silhouette im working on all in one colour, but some part of the body (when drawing characters) is hidden within the 'masses' and it becomes harder to draw out the arms when it is hidden in the torso for example.

the second problem i find with this method is the painting. When working in Photoshop, which blend mode should i use when starting to colour the silhouette? should i put values and shadow/lights on on the silhouette itself or should i work it out in a seperate layer?

So how should i tackle these issuses when drawing details on a silhouette? or should i move on to line work?

[bloodless]

Hmm... maybe it's the wrong section and posted it twice... Could MOD move it to it's appropiate section?

[SoufMeng]

Im not 100% sure what you mean by "silhouette", you mean painting mainly with shapes and keeping no lines at the end of the image?
If so, that doesnt mean you can't use "construction" lines during the process.
But the problem with the style is when trying to put details and paintings to it. Not only is the silhouette im working on all in one colour, but some part of the body (when drawing characters) is hidden within the 'masses' and it becomes harder to draw out the arms when it is hidden in the torso for example.Like i said, what you can do in those situations is use a few lines at the beginning to separate different elements inside a shape but paint those lines extremely close in color and value to the color of that shape so you get rid of them easily as you progress.
Here's a sketch (http://i712.photobucket.com/albums/ww128/vxzl364/silhouette.jpg?t=1249773832) just to illustrate.

the second problem i find with this method is the painting. When working in Photoshop, which blend mode should i use when starting to colour the silhouette? should i put values and shadow/lights on on the silhouette itself or should i work it out in a seperate layer?
When it comes to adding the lights and darks, what matters is that you know what you're doing, that is where/what/how your lightsource(s) is(are), where/how the planes of your subject(s) are and how all of these things interact with eachother. Now wether you do this on 1 or 10 layers is not very important. Layers can be very useful and speed up the process significantly, yet they're not necessary to achieve from, depth, successful overlaps etc. An image (even a 3D screenshot) is always nothing else than a flat arrangement of shapes, a 2D illusion of 3D, so normally what can be done with layers can be done without them.

And before i go here's a tutorial (Link (http://www.gfxartist.com/features/tutorials/7731)) that might help you further understand how some artists approach what you call the silhouette technique (i guess you can also call that mass painting).

Anyway, all the best.

[gamerboi]

It's really a matter of preference and situation. The silhouette technique is most commonly used for when you're "winging" the concept and you don't have a clear enough idea of what the final concept will look like. A better way of explaining it is that it's for preliminary concepts (most of the time).

Here's two tutorials on the silhouette aproach.
http://members.shaw.ca/dmandryk/Assets/Images/tutorial_page_warrior_chick.jpg

http://fc06.deviantart.com/fs12/f/2006/310/f/a/tutorial_copy.jpg

And the line-work is basically the opposite. I prefer this approach to the silhouette approach because I know what's going into the concept or illustration and I can imagine the depth of the piece. Also more often than not you'll be ale to get a better flow to your concept using the line-work because of the construction involved.

And finally one of my favorite concept art tutorials by Prometheus.

http://itchstudios.com/psg/art_tut.htm

Hope that was what you needed.

[HunterKiller_]

So how should i tackle these issuses when drawing details on a silhouette? or should i move on to line work?

Draw lines over the silhouette.

[Nrx]

in my opinion, both differnt skill sets, first learn to work with line, then learn to block in

[bloodless]

wow thanks for the tut's guys!

the reason why i tend to lean towards the silhouette or 'Mass painting' is because im able to correctly shape the porportions and anatomy correctly. But with linework, the problem comes when i dont have any heavy 'masses' that is blocked out within the anatomy when drawing, which then causes fustrations.

I read a book that says that linework (without shading) is the most demanding teqnique, while using mass painting is slightly easier. Can that be true?

To give a more detailed info on how i use the Mass painting. The first thing i do is make a huge gray spot in in the photoshop canvas and start sculpting out the portortions with the ereaser tool. the method of sculpting is much easier for me than drawing the lines on a figure.