There are times when you want to make large scale (global) changes to your painting. Things like overall contrast or color tint. Adjustment layers provide a fantastic solution for this type of challenge - and make traditional painters extremely jealous. If you're not familiar with the 'masking' I talk about in the video, here are three videos to clarify the subject: Masking 101 pt 1, Masking 101 pt 2, and Masking 101 pt 3
Custom brushes can be a wonderful time-saver for your digital painting workflow. Though they can be downloaded from the internet, the very best ones are those that you create from scratch. This premium series explores custom brush design including real world test-cases, and can only be found in the store.
Part 1 dealt with using custom brushes for their shape, and this video takes an opposite approach. Sometimes brushes need to be used in conjunction with other tools, like clipping masks, to get the most utility out of them.If you want to know more about making your own custom brushes from scratch, make sure to check out the premium series Custom Brush Design.
Custom brushes can be a challenge to use successfully. Digital painters often think of them in terms of traditional brushes: flat, bristle, fan - etc. To get the most out of Photoshop's custom brush engine, a digital painter needs to broaden their definition of 'brush'. This mini-series aims to shed some light on the unusual ways custom brushes can be manipulated in a painting workflow.
If you want to know more about making your own custom brushes from scratch, make sure to check out the premium seriesCustom Brush Design.
If you've been digital painting for long, odds are you use a stylus. Have you considered what grip you're using? This video will introduce a new hand position, and encourage you to give some thought to the way you grip a stylus.
Creating a "tiling" texture is a very useful skill for digital painters. This video introduces the basic concepts, and shows how a simple photographic tile can add gritty texture to a brush. This is a technique generally reserved for Texture Artists working in video games, but I've found it to be a versatile skill for illustration in general.
Reader Etheryte is kind enough to show alternative tiling texture technique in this video.
Do you have a favorite few brushes? Do you like to use them with specific flow/opacity settings? "Tool Presets" might be for you! This feature is often overlooked or confused with "Brush Presets", but it is extremely useful for digital painters. This video explains how "Tool Presets" can add a big dose of efficiency and speed to your workflow.
A simple secret to productivity is eliminating roadblocks. Especially if you don't have much time to dedicate to practice digital painting, it's a good idea to get straight to the painting. This tutorial explains the "document presets" feature, and why it can help streamline your practice ritual. After all, sometimes the hardest part is 'getting started'.
This video finishes my explanation of removing your linework from a painting. Once again, we see the power and versatility of working with layer masks to non-destructively hide the initial drawing.
If you don't know about the basics of masks, make sure to watch these three videos first: Masking 101 pt 1, Masking 101 pt 2, and Masking 101 pt 3
Paintings often start as line drawings. Eventually, you'll paint over those lines - resulting in a full painting. If you made that line drawing on its own layer in photoshop, you're able to remove those lines in a totally risk-free way! This video shows how to use a layer mask to easily remove the linework and replace it with a painting.
If you don't know about the basics of masks, make sure to watch these three videos first: Masking 101 pt 1, Masking 101 pt 2, and Masking 101 pt 3
Edge control is crucial to solid digital painting. Traditionally, this means having a very steady hand and careful mark-making. When working digitally, the rules are a bit different. This video introduces a few more unconventional masking techniques. They may seem pretty foreign at first, but can yield a huge effect in your painting process. If you don't know about the basics of masks, make sure to watch these videos first: Masking 101 pt 1, Masking 101 pt 2, Masking 101 pt 3, and Alternative Masking pt. 1
This video is a quick introduction to two alternative masking techniques in Photoshop. If you don't know about the basics of masks, make sure to watch these three videos first: Masking 101 pt 1, Masking 101 pt 2, and Masking 101 pt 3
Do you keep an "inspiration" folder? You should! This video explains the benefits of keeping a folder of inspirational paintings, and organizing them with Adobe Bridge. There are a variety of programs that offer similar tagging and organizing, but Adobe Bridge integrates well with other Adobe software, so I like it a lot.
Hopefully you've already watched pt 1, because this video enhances the basic 'chop and warp' technique by modifying the selection. Quick mask mode, as shown in this video, can be a very efficient way to modify a selection! It is a very powerful tool, though many digital painters avoid it.
One of the real benefits of working digitally is the ability to be flexible. Want to change the color? No problem. Want to move something around? No problem. It takes a different mindset than traditional drawing, but if you can wrap your head around it your work will improve. This video explores the use of "copy merged" to modify a piece of nearly-finished concept art. Traditional wisdom says that once you've made it this far into a painting it's too late to move things around, but Photoshop makes it much more possible! Though it's always better to work out the problems in your illustration earlier in the process (ideally in the thumbnail sketch), you will occasionally need to make last-second course corrections.
As a followup to the Sketchup for Backgrounds mini-series, I want to explain the concept of a 'paint-over'. This is not an excuse to skip learning to draw, but rather a shortcut for experienced painters. Before digital art was possible, commercial artists have done plenty of tracing in their work - and it was totally acceptable. This was not because the artists weren't very good at drawing - it was merely a time saver which allowed them to meet their deadlines. Using a 3D render (from sketchup or elsewhere) is the same concept -- it saves time for the artist. Again, it's not a pass which allows you to skip learning perspective drawing. Update: In response to some of the comments about the Sketchup series, I've created a quick video which will hopefully clear up the confusion. View it here.
This wraps up the sketchup mini-series by putting the scene together and exporting a render. I find this stage extremely fun, because all of the hard work is complete. Now all that remains is arranging your houses - very much like building a toy city out of pre-painted models.
This continues the mini-series by looking at the Sketchup 'texturing' process. This is when you apply color and surfaces to the blank white 3D models, making them look much more convincing. If you've never worked with a texture in 3D before this might seem abstract, but the knowledge is very useful if you plan to enter the game industry.
Adding a cityscape in the background of an illustration really ups the 'wow factor', but can be an unacceptable amount of extra labor. A little 3D can change all of that. This video series uses Google Sketchup as a tool to speed up the process of creating a detailed background. Eventually you'll paint over the 3D render, but it serves as a fantastic 'under-drawing'. Note: This three part series won't show you every button to press in sketchup, but instead - a compelling reason to figure them out.
computers and software are really good at repetitive tasks. Why not let Photoshop do some of the hard work for you? This video tackles a specific storyboarding-related challenge with a photoshop "action". Even if you're not a storyboard artist, you'll see the way that I identify a challenge and figure out how to get Photoshop to solve it for me. Best of all, once you've created the action, you can assign a keyboard shortcut to it! And if you want the storyboarding action I mention in this video, download it here!