Marley
February 13th, 2005, 01:44 PM
First point to mention, I am an absolute beginner to digital painting, however, I have been trying to learn for a very long time. My initial problems were had with the overlapping of lines when lowering the opacity…a few of you will know this from my countless questions sent out in my frustration :confident .
Anyway, I realized that with no real conclusions to the numerous application issues I was having with Photoshop, I decided to paint this picture [with the graciously bowered picture by Sercoe]. From this I have also decided to offer a short tutorial of my progress through painting this.
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v648/marty_dude/cresentship.jpg
Now…my inspirations such artists as Sparth, Niklass Jansson, Craig Mullins, definitely Ryan Church…and lets be honest all those people who have ever shown work on this site or that of cgnetworks. But I do not profess to know what I am talking about, just that I am offering a guide of how I painted this picture using the many lessons, tutorials, and advice from the kind people who bothered to post, write or reply.
So here goes…for those interested:
1. I took the original line art found here…http://www.conceptart.org/forums/showthread.php?t=38367 …and loaded it in Photoshop. Magic wand>select the grey and delete that so you are left with just the ship. Copied the layer so it sat above the original and made this a ‘multiply’ layer [the line art layer]. Then I created another layer for my background and placed this at the bottom of the stack. I got a blue and a brown and made a gradient in this layer [blue at the top!!].PICK YOUR LIGHT SOURCE AND DIRECTION NOW!! This will help you to understand where and how the light will hit the ship! Very important.
2. This is the hard part…Painting the thing!! Well, I basically observed certain rules [which I recently read in a tutorial by Niklas Jansson aka Prometheus [I think]…www.itchstudios.com/psg] about radiosity, specula’s and basic colour/light theory. So I began to add some local colours of grey brown and grey blue to the top and bottom of the craft. I used a variety of different brushes because this is my main weakness! However after much messing around I found a hard brush which I set at size 40 and opacity 65% [the other dynamics was set to pen pressure, and so was the shape dynamics]. I then tried to lay down colours that I thought the ship would have, and thus built up layers up layers of colour from dark to light…a tip here is to press [alt] to pick the colour from gradients you have painted and slowly even out any harsh colours [hurray I have finally solved my annoying opacity problem, so you’ll all be pleased to know I shouldn’t be hassling anyone about that anymore ;) ]. This is just about colours now, and defining shapes. The detail and highlights will come after this is down.
3. Now I have some kind of colour scheme down, in fact I just painted it and kept painting until I thought I should move to the next stage which is to get a colour for the ship and add that!! Still with the same brush but varying the size I will try to block in the colours. I am literally trying colours and seeing if they build up and work. If not I change them. I am having a problem with the saturation though…seems a little dull. So I look for some inspiration on colours etc…
4. Decided on a ‘John Berkey’ white…whether it works that way we’ll have to wait and see. I’m just putting down the colour almost pure white, a little on the red side, and then where I need my gradient I [alt] = ‘eyedropper’ on the point where the colours cross over and pick up that colour and use it to blend…in fact I keep doing this all over to work up a gradient between overlapping lines and the difference in colour. It is a case of painting now, and I am also trying to stay true to shadows and radiosity [very difficult with no reference].
5. I’m just messing around with colours still, adding to the gun, and hoping it all comes together with the rest of the ship. I am still observant of radiosity [where the light bounces off material and reflects onto other material]…and although I haven’t even added a sky yet, which is probably something most will do before they start with the ship, I am still conscious of a blue sky, and sandy earth.
6. Moving on to the overall colour for the shadows, I thought they were a little too washed out when I first began so I’m going to attempt to darken them without losing the feel of the picture.
7. Still got a bit to do. Finished for now the overall colours [the ship, the red stripe and engines underneath, and the gun. Now I think I’ll try to add some clouds so I can make sure my radiosity is working. I use a soft airbrush this time for some general cloud matter with blues, purples and keeping a good mix of darks and lights. I’m trying to be suggestive as apposed to photographic here.
8. Because I’m right handed I have a tendency to work from left to right with my sweeps going up…so after I have put in some clouds I flip this layer horizontally so the ship looks like it belongs.
9. For the clouds I used different brushes, for more effective and detailed looking clouds I used a brush that would be a dual brush with something a bit more like a scatter brush, just simply exploring the different methods and modes to get something that describes clouds. As best I could that is!!
10. Finishing touches…darkening shadows, bringing out specula’s to define its shape, and looking for ways to increase its presence. I hope! Been working on this now for a good few hours…going to rest for awhile, just to get a different perspective later.
11. Added engine and vent colours, and specula’s or reflections. Tried to mess with the background clouds but they’re not too good really…back to the drawing board so to speak. Flatten image and here it is! One last thing to mention I messed a bit with the saturation to pop it out a bit.
Although I worked hard on this, and have discovered a lot more from doing it and trying to analyze the problems I have, it is still very comic book looking…but it may have something to do with the fact of using line art. It is a good platform to move from though I think.
Hope this helps someone, oh and if anyone wants to add anything about the problems I’ve had and how to overcome them then please feel free.
Cheers.
Martin
Anyway, I realized that with no real conclusions to the numerous application issues I was having with Photoshop, I decided to paint this picture [with the graciously bowered picture by Sercoe]. From this I have also decided to offer a short tutorial of my progress through painting this.
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v648/marty_dude/cresentship.jpg
Now…my inspirations such artists as Sparth, Niklass Jansson, Craig Mullins, definitely Ryan Church…and lets be honest all those people who have ever shown work on this site or that of cgnetworks. But I do not profess to know what I am talking about, just that I am offering a guide of how I painted this picture using the many lessons, tutorials, and advice from the kind people who bothered to post, write or reply.
So here goes…for those interested:
1. I took the original line art found here…http://www.conceptart.org/forums/showthread.php?t=38367 …and loaded it in Photoshop. Magic wand>select the grey and delete that so you are left with just the ship. Copied the layer so it sat above the original and made this a ‘multiply’ layer [the line art layer]. Then I created another layer for my background and placed this at the bottom of the stack. I got a blue and a brown and made a gradient in this layer [blue at the top!!].PICK YOUR LIGHT SOURCE AND DIRECTION NOW!! This will help you to understand where and how the light will hit the ship! Very important.
2. This is the hard part…Painting the thing!! Well, I basically observed certain rules [which I recently read in a tutorial by Niklas Jansson aka Prometheus [I think]…www.itchstudios.com/psg] about radiosity, specula’s and basic colour/light theory. So I began to add some local colours of grey brown and grey blue to the top and bottom of the craft. I used a variety of different brushes because this is my main weakness! However after much messing around I found a hard brush which I set at size 40 and opacity 65% [the other dynamics was set to pen pressure, and so was the shape dynamics]. I then tried to lay down colours that I thought the ship would have, and thus built up layers up layers of colour from dark to light…a tip here is to press [alt] to pick the colour from gradients you have painted and slowly even out any harsh colours [hurray I have finally solved my annoying opacity problem, so you’ll all be pleased to know I shouldn’t be hassling anyone about that anymore ;) ]. This is just about colours now, and defining shapes. The detail and highlights will come after this is down.
3. Now I have some kind of colour scheme down, in fact I just painted it and kept painting until I thought I should move to the next stage which is to get a colour for the ship and add that!! Still with the same brush but varying the size I will try to block in the colours. I am literally trying colours and seeing if they build up and work. If not I change them. I am having a problem with the saturation though…seems a little dull. So I look for some inspiration on colours etc…
4. Decided on a ‘John Berkey’ white…whether it works that way we’ll have to wait and see. I’m just putting down the colour almost pure white, a little on the red side, and then where I need my gradient I [alt] = ‘eyedropper’ on the point where the colours cross over and pick up that colour and use it to blend…in fact I keep doing this all over to work up a gradient between overlapping lines and the difference in colour. It is a case of painting now, and I am also trying to stay true to shadows and radiosity [very difficult with no reference].
5. I’m just messing around with colours still, adding to the gun, and hoping it all comes together with the rest of the ship. I am still observant of radiosity [where the light bounces off material and reflects onto other material]…and although I haven’t even added a sky yet, which is probably something most will do before they start with the ship, I am still conscious of a blue sky, and sandy earth.
6. Moving on to the overall colour for the shadows, I thought they were a little too washed out when I first began so I’m going to attempt to darken them without losing the feel of the picture.
7. Still got a bit to do. Finished for now the overall colours [the ship, the red stripe and engines underneath, and the gun. Now I think I’ll try to add some clouds so I can make sure my radiosity is working. I use a soft airbrush this time for some general cloud matter with blues, purples and keeping a good mix of darks and lights. I’m trying to be suggestive as apposed to photographic here.
8. Because I’m right handed I have a tendency to work from left to right with my sweeps going up…so after I have put in some clouds I flip this layer horizontally so the ship looks like it belongs.
9. For the clouds I used different brushes, for more effective and detailed looking clouds I used a brush that would be a dual brush with something a bit more like a scatter brush, just simply exploring the different methods and modes to get something that describes clouds. As best I could that is!!
10. Finishing touches…darkening shadows, bringing out specula’s to define its shape, and looking for ways to increase its presence. I hope! Been working on this now for a good few hours…going to rest for awhile, just to get a different perspective later.
11. Added engine and vent colours, and specula’s or reflections. Tried to mess with the background clouds but they’re not too good really…back to the drawing board so to speak. Flatten image and here it is! One last thing to mention I messed a bit with the saturation to pop it out a bit.
Although I worked hard on this, and have discovered a lot more from doing it and trying to analyze the problems I have, it is still very comic book looking…but it may have something to do with the fact of using line art. It is a good platform to move from though I think.
Hope this helps someone, oh and if anyone wants to add anything about the problems I’ve had and how to overcome them then please feel free.
Cheers.
Martin