Digital Painting Mentor Wanted -- In desperate need of guidance, HELP!!

[MeZergy]

I have tried and tried and tried to digitally paint on my own. Several references to guide painting one piece. Tracing a photo and working from its own colors. Following the sketch, fill, blend formula. It just isn't working for me and I don't know what I'm doing wrong.

I like to think of myself as a decent artist (don't go by the earlier pieces in my sketchbook because it dates back to the stone-age), but I'm only mediocre. I can draw most anything I see and have a decent understanding of light and shadow. I know I could get better if I just had a better understanding of how to handle a tablet and Photoshop.

Please help me. I don't know what to do.

I'm very flexible and have plenty of free time. I'm organized and even have a scheduled time for drawing every day. The only thing that might be an issue is that I'm going to get an on-campus job in the Fall and that might eat up plenty of my free-time.

Even if someone just offers to critique my work as I practice, that will be enough.

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Idle viewers: Posting helpful links for digital painting and understanding color would be greatly appreciated.

[art-of-tennis]

Hi, I'm probably not qualified to tutor anyone, but I'd be glad to give you some pointers, as I do digitally paint.

1. You want to know your hotkeys for painting. It saves you loads of time.

-When in the brush tool, press ALT to quickly switch to the color picker, and release to return to the brush.
- "[" makes the brush smaller "]" makes the brush bigger
- "b" is brush, "p" is pen. (believe it or not, I do occasionally use the pen to make some fine lines that I want to be precise)
- CTRL+Z is the undo

2. Don't mess around with custom brushes if you don't know how to paint whatever it is your painting, with only a standard brush. Trust me, it shows when people try to guess their way through using custom brushes. When I paint, I generally use 26% opacity, 26% flow, and I try to make my brush hard as much as possible. Nothing makes a painting worse than everything looking like a puddle. (unless you want a watercolor effect) Generally the only time you need to use a softer brush is with hair or with glowing effects.

3. Be willing to take time on a painting. Most of my paintings are at LEAST 20 hours of work. I've had some go to over 50 even. :/ Unless you're a realism freak like me though, you probably won't take quite that much time, so don't worry too much about it. Just don't expect masterpieces in an hour. People can speedpaint, but speed comes with experience. I personally don't speedpaint.

4. Try to not color pick off of photos. (but do practice trying to replicate them) If you need to at first that's fine, but be weary of it. You eyes will grow lazy if you do it too much. I myself use the HSB Sliders to pick color. Windows>colors>HSB under the color window dropdown.

Don't take my words for gold, as I've only been painting since about January, but if you have any questions, feel free to ask them. My DA is art-of-tennis.deviantart.com That's where I post my work, not my sketchbook. My sketchbook is long dead lol

I hope this helps.

EDIT: In all seriousness, I'd love a mentor for this too. :P

[Tawnos]

I'd lovingly jump on this train.
I'm just starting to do digital painting and I'd say I somewhat have an understanding of how to paint, at least a little, but what I need is an instruction for dummies how to digitally paint.
I want slowly see how one is to do shadows right and refining colors. All tutorials I have bought so far only show me in a very fast temp. how the artist paints his pictures. Well, most of the time one gets explanations on what he is doing, but I can't see the steps he takes with the actual software and how the opacity of the pen is and so on.

I'd love to see a tutorial with the basics, it might even only be a ball or an egg that is painted step by step without the fast pace of the most tutorials.