About practise, please advise

[Henry2100]

Hi all!

I'm Henry and I'm new here and troubled. My day job keeps me in concept design, but there is never any need for my work to go beyond pencil sketches. The thing is that I'm trying to evolve into doing color that could actually be used on some cover some day.

I've been doing acrylics and the wacom/ps thing. My problem is that I don't know what to focus on. It would be really nice if someone could give me some input on this subject. What are the downsides of working mainly on computer? What does people who buy coverart and such think about the differences in analog/digital work? Is there someone here who has switched to/from analog to digital work? If so, for what reason?


Yours

Henry

[prismacolor]

just some quick notes...
I moved to digital because it's faster; plain and simple.

I can email progress/prelims to clients - no need to scan or photograph and adjust.
I can go from scribble-sketch to final line art by adding layers and redrawing much faster than using overlays and a light table. If something is working on a prelim. sketch, I don't have to redraw - I can use that part and change stuff on the newer layers, saving redraw time.
Digital allows me to move an image around on the "canvas", rotate, flip etc. until I get the composition I want. You can lasso parts you want to repeat or move and also make proportion adjustments that way. I can do overlays for value-studies very quickly too. Digital allows me to start small and enlarge and finish to whatever scale I want. You just have to look at Dermot Power's character/costume work in the latest Art of Star Wars book to know what I mean.

On building color, I use colorsets. Colorsets are not very popular with most of the folks I'm acquainted with on the Forums, but I use 'em all the time; my own custom ones that is. I find they're great for blocking in and getting your values working the way you want before you dive in and noodle the drawing/painting to completion. Again, I use 'em because it's faster, not better than any other way.

Downside of digital is I don't get to feel the scratch of pencil/charcoal on real paper, or the squish of real paint in board or canvas, but that's why I still do personal artwork...

try it and see...scan in one of your drawings to get an idea of the final working size you want. Black and white often works well at 150 dpi for me. I generally pay attention to pixel size more than dpi. For doodles I'm around 600 pixels, sketches I'm usually around 1200 pixels across, for finished/final color work I'm generally 3000 to 5000 pixels across the largest dimension. My photo process lab wants pictures I intend to turn into slides at 4096x2732 pixels, you can take it from there...

...'nuff said - good luck!

[Henry2100]

Thanks for your reply. I'll just pack up my brushes until i feel confident enough with PS. I have been fooling around with PS for some time now but I'm new to the colorset concept. Could you please tell me a little about it?

Sounds like it could be a handy thing for a penciller like myself, if i'm guessing in the right direction.

yours/Henry