Learn simple how to steps to paint your character drawings on Photoshop.

The Steps for Painting A Caricature

The last video/blog I did, showed you how to “Paint A Line On Computer”, using a caricature drawing of myself. This video/blog reveals how painting a caricature, comic or cartoon with that line on top of it can be done.

• Import Drawing

  First, do a line drawing or import the drawing you want for character painting.
  Follow the steps in the video/blog mentioned above for painting the line. Make sure the line is its own layer.

• Duplicate Drawing

  I begin by duplicating my line. Command (Mac) or Control (PC) J. This gives a line layer above (for finished covering), with one below (a painting guide).

• Create A New Layer

  Click on the copy symbol at the bottom right corner of Photoshop to create a new layer. You will paint on this new layer between the lines.

Start with Flat Colors

• Flat Color

• When painting a caricature begin with a flat basic color for every section. I did this on my face, my shirt, my glasses etc.
• Of course I clean up should I go outside the line. I then make adjustments in the tone of my color as I go.

• When I start painting my shirt, as a way to speed painting it, I put a marquee around the line which helps me isolate the shirt off and allow me to go through it quicker. The marquee prevents me from painting directly on the line therefore I’ll need to go back and paint in missed areas under the line.
• I do the same for my glasses and my eyes. Then clean up underneath the marquee line there as well.

• When I finish cleaning up, I work on some hair textures that I drew in. I paint in a solid color for the hair. Then do a transparency percentage which will allow hair texture to show through from the layer beneath it.
• I isolate my eye color with the marquee tool in order to make an adjustment, using the hue saturation color slider.

• I do the same thing on my lips making an adjustment using hue saturation. Then clean up afterwards.
• I repeat the same procedure to give a shadow under my nose using only flat color for the time being.

• Now I add flat color in the shadow areas of my shirt.

Dimensional Rending

From here I start doing dimensional rending with an airbrush approach when painting a caricature.

•  Determine Light Direction

• I decided to have light coming from the left going toward the right which will cast a shadow on the right side of everything. It’s always important to know direction your light is coming from.
• The fun of painting with computer is that as I paint in some light areas, I shift them if they are not exactly in the shape or place I wanted them to be. Using the move or the warp tool helps with that. I brighten the area up some with adjustment sliders or color shifts on my shirt if it needs. I decided to cool down the shirt color a bit adding a slight blue touch.

• Then clean up my glasses and give a shadow side to it.
• For my face shadowing I created a darker “Layer Adjustment Mask”, then erase out unwanted areas. I shift the colors a little bit and brighten it up so it has a strong sense of light and shadow.

• I do a “Layers Mask” for my hair and I brighten it up and erase out the unwanted so it looks like light is hitting my hair, and there’s a shadow side.
• I decided to give more shadowing under my nose. Now I’ll work on my lips to give a light and shadow side to that as well with a shift in color.

• Then I’ll have the few spots to clean up, a few mistakes I haven’t seen before, shifting my face color some.
• This is where I paint in the nostrils. I’ll add a little more detail to my lips. Bring out some highlights. It’s amazing to me how highlights add more dimensionality.
• Now I give a light area to my beard and mustache. First, marquee it off, then paint in light spots.
• I will give highlights to my glasses making the line straight across and using the “Warp Tool” to put it in place. Marquee it off to make it easier to paint in other highlights.

One of the things I like doing is giving reflective light because it gives more dimensionality and extra color interest.

• In this case I’m using cooler reflective light because my face is overall warm so it make for a good visual balance when painting a caricature.

• My glasses needed a darker area on the arm to push back one portion of it.
• Now I’m working on my eyes, I’ll give myself a pupil, erase some of that out. I’ll put some Shadowing on my iris trying to give it some dimensions. Then give some shadow to the white part of the eyes then clean them up. Now I’m giving myself a lip to the lower eyelid giving dimensionality. Putting some highlights to the eye. Checking things that I may need to clean up. Darken the upper eyelids a little more.

• Put a shadowing on my wrinkle lines, not too heavy, and then a light side to my wrinkles. Soften some of that edge a little bit.
• Putting a little more shadow under my nose for dimensionality as well as on my lips. Some shadow on my glasses. Adding a little more shadow to my nose to feel more anchor to my face.
• I painted a background card for the finished look. Below is the completed character.

Hope that was helpful! Give it a try, and let me know how it turns out!

You may find “Painting with Photoshop On Computer” and “How To Paint Digitally With Photoshop” helpful with related details to this blog/video.

Getting An Opinion

I ask my children which one of my paintings they thought would be most interesting to do a digital art alteration on. The answer was, either Encroaching Falls or Favorite End. I did both. In this post I’ll give some general pointers to my digital approach to “Favorite End”.

First here’s a glance at the “Encroaching Fall” painting image which I made a digital art alteration to for a “Happy Thanksgiving” post I shared with friends and family on my social media pages.

The Required Challenge In These Digital Art Alterations

The concept given was to bring a minimalist approach to the painting “Favorite End”.  The challenge being, make it foggy to drop out more details, remove the tree branches on the left hand side, remove the flowers to simplify the look, show as little information as possible and still allow it to be a working painting.

Removing The Tree Branches

• Removing The Unwanted

  I started the process by isolating out the tree branches and using “Content Aware” as I deleted them. “Content Aware” replaces deleted material with surrounding color information. In this case, some of the sky area that is in the painting itself.

• Repairing Replacement Info

  Then I used the “Healing Brush Tool” to clean up patches of the sky that “Content Aware” filled in that did not work quite as well for me. There are times I use the brush tool to paint over areas for a better look. Content Aware and Healing Brush are wonderful tools for digital art alterations.

Adding The Fog

• Finding My Way With Layer Mask

  Because I’m not quite sure where I want to take this. I’m simply experimenting with different possibilities, using different “Layer Masks”. Of course, I use “Levels Layer Mask” to give it a foggy look. I’m using “Photo Filters” to try and get a feeling of color I may want. “Selective Color” as well, and “Hue Saturation” to desaturate the color in certain areas to aid the fogginess.

• Gaining Some Clarity As I Go

  I decided to play off a bit of the warm against cools to help give a certain look. Because the fog lessen some cloud detail, I’m painting a white edge to the clouds to help with some of the form lost. I painted in extra fog creeping over the mountains to help solidify the foggy look. 

• One Method To Approach Painting

  Digital painting lends itself to positive and negative painting. When using a “Layer Mask” I will generally fill an area with the mask, then erase out a certain unwanted percentage of it. Because of the fog effect, I approach most of this painting in that manner.

Removing the Flowers?

• Playing It Safe

  Now rather than painting out the flowers, I simply try to turn them more greenish and yellow in flavor by using a “Selective Color” layer mask to help me do that. This way I can determine whether I really want to get rid of the flowers or not. After doing this, I decided to leave the flower colors to maintain a certain color balance to the picture. But I keep them toned down (or desaturate in color) by the foggy effect.

• Visual Balance

  Without the tree branches, the picture falls visually heavy to the right side to me. Because of this I felt it was important to put the tree branches back in to give it balance. I played around with it to push it more towards the left, not quite as far into the picture as I had it before, and kept it tone down as well. I copied and pasted branches from the original image, which means I had to erase out the old sky color around the branches in order for the new sky color to show through. Then did similar digital art alterations to shift the color to fit the new environment.

• Finalizing The Look

  I continue to play back and forth with various “Photo Filter” layer masks both warm and cool filters, to help me determine what range of color I wanted in this picture.

  
  Once I finalize me decision, I cleaned up my Chinese name stamp to fit the new environment.

Here’s a comparison of the old and the new. Send me a note, tell me what you think, and happy painting.

You might find “The Painting Advantages of Digital vs Traditional”, “How To Paint Digitally With Photoshop”, or “How To Paint Digitally With Photoshop”

The advantage of digital painting gives quicker adjustments to your artwork.

Learn these digital advantages and discover new tools to help with painting.

General Explanation To Digital Painting.

This post will be a general explanation, the next post will be the specific how too of the advantage of digital painting. Usually I start with a line drawing when I paint on computer, but this time I thought I would approach it as I do my plein air painting with loose brush work then tighten it down as I get closer to the finish of the painting. This is a deviation from what I would normally do as far as computer painting.

• Lay In Basic Structure

  I laying in the basic structure of this candle painting. By starting with the background, then I rough in the candle on it’s own separate layer.

• Building from The Basics

  It get it’s lights, darks, and medium tones or values. Which helps me build the structure of what I’m painting. The candle will have it’s dark area at the bottom and it’s light area at the top to give the glow and luminosity of the candle.

• Making Adjustments

  I make computer changes which I will give how to explanation to on the next post. These are examples of the advantage of digital painting, which allow changes such as the size of the candle glow on the background.

Adjusting the size of the candle base.

Stretching the width of the candle stalk.

Adjusting the size and shape of the handle. These adjustments would require more time to make with traditional paint than when done on a computer.

• Approach to Adjustments

  The basic approach for me, is to duplicate the part of the artwork I want to adjust, then resize them to the look I want, and marry it the existing art. It will completely cover what does not work or you may need to remove parts of the unwanted elements that are not cover up by the duplicate areas. There are adjustment layers for altering values, colors, light exposure, vibrancy and a few other effects to work with.

• Finalizing Visual Interest

  I slowly build more detail into the candle, making it more believable. I make sure I’m attentive to volume or roundness when building the values.

Even as I apply reflectiveness into the candle holder. I must remember the principal of light direction. I add more light into the flame to increase the glow effect. I’ll also add a designed smoke effect and light speckles for visual interest then warp the image to a shape that work better visually.

Another adjustment I could never do in traditional paint. It’s important put additional imagery on a separate layer which will allow for the adjustments without effecting the other parts of the art.

The Advantage of Digital

The advantage of digital painting adds benefit to my traditional painting when I run into difficulties of thing not working as I want. I can make digital adjustment from a photo of my artwork to resolve painting issues. Even make digital changes to the images including color corrections before final prints are made of the art.

Here’s my final of this digital candle painting.

Catch my next post so you can take full advantage of digital painting adjustments to make your painting dreams a bit easier.

You can get additional insights on digital painting from the post, “How to Paint Digitally With Photoshop” and “Painting With Photoshop On Computer”.

This quick tip will help you paint volume in tree foliage for more roundness in your work.

From Flat to Rounded Fullness

There are times when viewing my paintings that I think the trees appear more flat than round. So I need to remember while I’m painting, to think in a way that will help me convey fullness in the canopy of trees. Today I want to share a simple tip of how we can get fullness in a tree canopy.

• Envisioning The Round

  A method that can help us have fullness in our trees is to think of trees as broken up into leaf clusters of large, medium and small size irregular domes.

• Think Large Dome:

  Think of the entire tree canopy first of all as a dome. Even as we brake the tree down into smaller clusters, we want the total tree to have the look of roundness. This is why we start with one large dome.

• Values To The Domes :

  That dome would have a light side, a medium side, and a shadow side, even though we can see light breaking through various areas. But if we think of it in the dome form, it will make it simpler for us. See the whole tree as having light, middle, and dark sides.

• Think Medium Domes:

  We also want to recognize that the tree has clusters of leaves that are medium-size domes which branch out of the large dome, such as the three shown in the image below. When we think of it that way, we still want to have a light side, middle side, and shadow side. This will help us paint fullness at this scale of the tree.

  

• Think Small Domes:

  We have to go down to the next size of domes, as well, to realize that there are smaller clusters of leaves. These branch out of the medium size clusters. I’ll only show a few here, for the smaller clusters can be many. Each of these small dome cluster of leaves must also have a light side, a medium side, and a dark side. If we envision the tree in this manner, we’ll have a better chance of painting fullness in the total, overall tree.

  

• The Tree Trunk and Branches
:

  Let’s also view the trunk of the tree as being a cylinder that has a light side, a medium side, and a dark side. And all the branches that go out into the leaf clusters as cylinders of various sizes that have a light side, a medium side, and a dark side.

  

Quick Recap to Paint Fullness

Envision the entire tree canopy as a big dome with three values to give a sense of roundness. Then out of the big dome are medium size leaf clusters that become domes with their values. Out of the medium size domes are the small cluster domes that catch the light, the medium, and the dark. Now we can paint fullness in our trees by keeping this simple concept in mind.

• Group the Leaves:

  Try not to paint leaf after leaf after leaf, but do them as blocks of shapes; groupings that will give the light, medium, and dark values. Then have a few individual leaves appear at the edge of the groupings. This simulates the look of lots of leaves without drawing or painting every one of them.

• Irregularity:

  Be careful not to get a dome shape appearance in the artwork. We still want irregularity in the look of the tree canopy.

The dome concept is to help us remember how we can give values of light, middle, and shadow tones, to paint fullness in the tree canopy. Check out my related video post “How To Paint Roundness In Even Light” for additional tips and tutorials.

Hope it works for you! Try it out and let me know how you did!

Roundness An Important Principle

There are times when we’re painting nature scenes and the details may get in our way and we forget a very important principle: to paint roundness, or volume. Perhaps the lighting is of such that there is no strong sense of direction of light coming from any given side with an obvious shadow being cast. That happens on days that it may be cloudy or, for example, when the sun goes down behind a hill and it makes the area fully in shadow, but there’s still a lot of light that makes the subject matter evenly lit. Some forget to paint roundness in these situations.

On these trees, it may be difficult to tell which direction the light is coming from. You can get a sense of shadowing in some spots. But in others, it feels flat. When this happens, there’s a tendency to paint details without volume, fullness, or roundness.

The Simple Solution

So how do you resolve issues like this when you’re painting? Even though an area may be in the shadow and you want the appearance of even lighting, you can still give it roundness by having a lighter side and a darker side.

• Accentuate The Shadow
  You accentuate the shadow slightly, not a lot, just a little to aid the roundness. I’ll give an example of that here so you can get a visual to what I’m talking about.
  I’m using the computer to demonstrate, therefore I’ll darken this tree with the layer mask. Then I’ll take the right side of the shadow out. Now it has a darker side and the lighter side is its original value, which you can see here. This helps it feels a bit rounder.

• Add A Reflective Light
  To give it more interest, I’ll add warmth to the left, which is now the shadow side, as a reflective light. See what it looked like before? Now it has more dimension.
  Think this way when you’re painting. Think to paint roundness, not just textured detail. The sense of light has not gotten stronger as I made the change, but there’s more core shadow and reflective light.

Painting Demo to Make The Point

Now I want to demonstrate this from a painting standpoint using the computer. So I will cover the left side of this picture with white to paint in my example.

• Texture, Detail Needs Roundness
  All too often I see paintings with lots of texture and no sense of roundness or volume to the subject that they are painting. So here’s my illustration of a textured or detailed tree trunk. 
This is missing the volume, the roundness, the fullness, that it should have – the shadow and light side to help it feel round. We don’t want just texture to describe the tree for us. We want to paint roundness as well. So how do we do that?

Remembering The Principle: Paint Roundness

The solution is the same concept as you saw with the photograph. As you’re painting, remember to paint roundness. So I paint a dark side that helps it feel rounder. See the before above and the after below. If you want to accentuate some of the texture, you can do that. Just paint in more detail.

Then I’ll give a warm reflective touch for color interest. This tree has come from a just-texture-look with no volume, to having more roundness.
 Now it has a core shadow and a reflective back end. It’s not as flat as it was before.

So don’t just think about texture; see the texture but think about roundness, about volume. Then remember to paint roundness while painting texture also.

Hope this was helpful. Do check out my blog/video Creating Dimensions with Core Shadow and Improve Your Artwork With Direction of Light as they share additional concepts connected with this topic.

Let’s keep those paintings coming!

The Takeaway: Direction Of Light

Today we are going to look at one simple rule that can make our paintings better. That’s simply making sure of where the direction of light is. My intent is to help you remember from the outset of your painting to become aware of this basic rule.

This Demo’s Tool Of Use

My method of showing you is by correcting an existing painting: as you see the difference in the before and after, you will grasp the importance of keeping the direction of light in the forefront of your mind when you make your next painting. Therefore, I will paint digitally with Photoshop to help you see the difference, as well as preserve my wife’s original painting. My language in this article will involve both the painting I’m correcting and using Photoshop. By the way Photoshop is a good tool for solving painting problems. I use it when I’m having issues with a painting and am not sure which way to correct it.

Making The Change

Here’s the painting my wife did – and for someone who’s not an artist I thought this was an excellent job. Wonderful painting! However, more emphasis on direction of light can make this a better painting. There is some light there, just not enough for enhanced quality.

• Determine Direction of Light
  Let’s have light come from the upper right hand corner of the picture.

I’m going to take the middle section of this painting, the area inside the flowers, and accentuate these petals with light to improve it. This gives more dimension to the flowers in the painting. Then I enhance color more so it’s not too pale. I turn the Photoshop layer off and then on again for a comparison look. I’ve already gained more dimension because we have a sense of direction of light. Lets make the inside of the flower at the bottom lighter. This will help the front petals look more forward.

• Accentuate The Shadows
  I want to accentuate dimension even more by making it a little darker and with a touch of violet for color variance under and behind the flowers. This increases the shadows, which helps us have a better sense of the direction of light. I’ll make the buds and stems darker on the left side and also underneath, for their dimensionality and direction of light as well.

• Accent Spots of Color
  I want to accentuate more color into the stems here and there for more form, or roundness. But not everywhere – just a few hinted spots so it doesn’t become busy.
  Once again, I make a before and after comparison to see how the painting is coming together (the wonder of painting by computer!). I’d like the green on the buds and stems to go redder, not quite so green. Then add some highlights to catch the eye more.

At this point I would consider the painting done. But we can showcase the flower more by making adjustments to the background.

• Showcase The Center of Interest
  Since the flowers are our center of interest, we can make them stand out more by adjusting the background behind them. I decided to cool down the background color slightly in a couple of spots to the left of the painting. Then darken the entire background a little. Now the flower stands out more.

• Extra Accents for Final Enhancement
  To make the painting more appealing, I’ll add a warm reflective color beneath the buds and to the left of the stem shadows. Just hints here and there, not all over. That brings more color interest to them (check out Creating Dimension with Core Shadows for more color action).

The flower at the bottom would work better if I curved the petals upward and close it off. This helps it look more like a round, completed flower. I’ll give more of a lighted edge accent on the top of the petals which helps give it more form or dimension.

I’ll add more shadowing underneath the upper right side flower. Then add a shadow side, slightly redder, to the stigma; then brighten its light side to give more roundness.

So now you see how giving more direction of light can improve dimensionality. I’ve chosen to give a sense of luminosity to the upper right flower by putting a slightly warm, light color in its front shadow side (it’s bottom right) to give an appearance of light inside of the flower. Also did the same on the top right edges of the middle and bottom flowers. Here is the before and after.

So keep these tips in mind as you’re working on your paintings. Make sure you determine the direction of where your light is coming from, especially before you bring it to a close. And be consistent with the direction of light on lit surfaces.

You might find Painting with Photoshop On Computer or How to Paint Digitally With Photoshop helpful to learn how some adjustments to my wife’s painting were made.

Now let’s go paint!

Learn how to paint digitally, adding to your Photoshop skills which will expand your creative expressions.

Beginning Steps To Paint Digitally On Computer

Sometimes people think that when you paint digitally on computer all you do is push a button and the computer does the painting. Not so. It’s the artist that’s doing the painting. The only difference is the artist is using the computer brushes and color as opposed to regular paint and brushes. Come along and I’ll show you the process of how we actually paint digitally on computer. Hope it’s something you can actually learn from.

• Import Drawing:

  I start with a digital drawing I did on my computer. Or you can use an imported file of a drawing you have.

  

• Duplicate Drawing:

  I duplicate my drawing using command (Mac) or Control (PC) J to duplicate another layer of the drawing. 

• Make Transparent Layer:

  Then hit multiply to see through that layer. This keeps the line on top of the painting at all time to see what you’re painting.

• Create A New Layer:

I create a new layer (click on copy symbol at bottom right corner) underneath the line layer. Here I paint digitally under that line layer. Starting with my background. Each added object gets it’s own separate layer. This make it easier for corrections or adjustments without affecting the other elements.

When I start painting the bear on computer I used a textured brush called Dry Brush on Towel. That gives me a furry look. 

Building The Structure of Your Image

• Determine Light Direction:

  Determine which direction your light will come from.

• Paint Lights and Shadows:

  Paint in his basic color then some shadow colors. It’s a little brighter than what I want so I toned it down.

  

(While on the layer click Image, Adjustments, Then any parameter you desire to make a change with).

I’m giving light to the top areas as if the light is coming from above right side. I’m filling it in to give dimensionally to my basic structure and I’ll fill in additional spots as I go.

I turn off my top line periodically to check how well the structure of my drawing is coming along. Then turn it on again.

I put in the sweater color quickly. Then go back and erase some of the color that’s outside the line. If you remember one of my previous video/blog (Artist Technique for Painting a Tree) on simple painting steps of 1,2,3 – dark, lights, and medium tones. I’m painting with this idea in mind, as I add in my lighter tones on the sweater.

• Making Adjustments:

  I’m going to tone the sweater down, using a Layer Mask to darken it then I’ll erase out some of the darks so the lights will come through.

A Layer Mask or Adjustment Layer allows you to make a layer to change the artwork without affecting the original art underneath. Such as complete color or effect changes, even erasing things out while the original remains in tack. You can affect the entire work or isolate out an area with a marquee or protective line around it (Painting With Photoshop On Computer). Then create the mask. Here are the steps.

If you choose the entire layer, click on the layer art image while pressing command (Mac) or Control (PC) to put a marquee or protective line around to image. (Short Cut)

     Or,  while on the layer you want, click on Select, Load Selection, then OK.

Then choose from Adjustment layer you want. Hover over then to see what they are then click the one you want.

Layer will appear and the window to make changes. Use them to adjust what you want.

I will give more color to my shadow areas. Darker in the dark areas on the sweater. Has a bit of violet touches to it and then I’ll darken it even more and erase some of the mid tones. (Please watch the video for visual clarity).

Adding The Details

Now I’m building some of the features, the nose, the eyes, putting in a little more detail as I go. On the video you’ll see me going in tight and out of the painting some times. I need to push it back to see how it comes together when its too close. Then I pull it back in to see more of the details. If it was an actual painting outside of the computer, I would be stepping back from the painting. 

I’m putting a Marquee around the feet and ears to lighten them up more. Then add line details.

The line drawing is there as my foundation to build the bear painting. I need to paint line detail on the bear to allow it to stand alone when the top line is removed.

I build form, giving value, texture, and other details to the bear giving dimensionally with light, middle tones, and shadows. This applies when you paint digitally on computer or painting on real canvas.

I paint a little in different areas to help build more of the form overall as I go.  Painting some areas a little lighter, some areas a little darker. I’m building the eyes now. Painting in some eye color.

I decided to brightening up the eyes more with an adjustment window. Because they are on their own layer I can adjust the color from a window and not use the Layer Mask if I’m not concern about preserving an original color.

If you refer to my blog (Painting With Photoshop On Computer) I’ll explain about finding the brushes window, where to pick colors and a few other Photoshop basics for painting.

Giving Final Touches

• Add Accents and Enhancement Spots:

  Here I’m putting in reflective light just to give more color emphasis and now I’m coming in and trying to give more texturing to make it have a sweater effect, without putting every line. I’m just putting in light hitting is as opposed to the shadows to give it that sweater feel.

  

I darken a few lines here and there to help accentuate form better. Now I’m giving more textures to the bear. I want him to feel more hairy but not overly so. Trying to simulate a look without giving every single detail. This will give him more of a “toy bear” texture. Bringing a little more light in areas.

This is me doing the painting on computer. It requires my artistic eye to know where to give more detail without giving too much detail. So here’s the final.

Now it’s your turn. Fire up the computer, open Photoshop and give it your test run. Just play a little and make it fun!

As the animation industry was moving to computer, Photoshop was becoming the software to paint with for background painting. Before the transition from traditional painting to computer was fully in swing, I give myself 30 minutes before my normal start work time and 30 minutes after work hours to learn how to paint digitally on computer. It didn’t take very long to get in the flow of it so long as I was consistent in my effort. So lets  do this.

I Hope this was a learning experience for you.

We’ll review the importance of a quick lay-in when doing plein air paintings.

Hello all you art lovers out there. Today I’m going to give you an example of how I start some of my plein air pieces. This particular painting was done at Caesar Chavez National Monument.

It represents several of the plein air paintings I actually start. So check out my starting process (watch the video), maybe there’s something you can learn from it. Mainly I want you to focus on how my lay-in is very quick.

I have a tendency to work from back to front with things that are furthest distance then come closer. There are time where as you may have seen on some of my demos, I tend to put the brighter colors in and then the darker colors. For this plein air painting I’m doing the sky first.

I’m going to build up some of the foliage to help give me depth of field as I go. As I lay more information in, I can determine whether I have enough depth or too much depth in some situations. But I start sky, build some foliage in front, lay-in the lighter color greens,

I get the shadowed area on the right hand side then go to the foreground elements to help me begin to build the basic foundation of values that I’m seeing.

That’s how I want to think of it. Laying in roughly, not fine detail, just quick elements so that I can build my plein air painting as I go. Putting the color that I think will help me establish the final colors that will come together eventually.

It will change as I began to fill in more and more of the details. But the basic background, middle ground, foreground elements that’s going to establish what I need as I move into the detail aspects of the plein air  painting.

Here I’m trying to get more of the middle and foreground area colors developed as close to what I’m visually interpreting as possible.

Then putting in the lighter tree foliage now and building the values around it.

When completed you see how roughly layed in this is. You can still see the loose brushstrokes. This is a good foundation for me to carry over. Good loose tree information.

Now I build the middle ground trees in the painting. Putting in additional branches, structure for trees on the left side.

Here is more leafy shapes building over top of the first lay-in. The rocks more detailed.

This is how the final looks.

This is how I would approach my first lay-in and build from there.

I hope you found this helpful. In the future I’ll show you the full plein air painting approach from beginning to completion. But my focus was the lay-in today. Happy painting.

Many artists are learning digital painting for a variety of reasons, knowing how to do both is vital for artists in today’s world.

How To Paint Digital Art Using Adobe Photoshop

Hello fellow artists! Someone asked me how to paint on computer so I thought I’d do a video demonstrating how I approach painting with Photoshop (be sure to check out the video along with this post!). Come along and see what we can learn from this approach.

Painting Digitally In Today’s World

Artists are finding in this digital age that having a working knowledge of how to use photoshop to paint the same quality of physical artwork digitally is invaluable. Working in the animation industry we soon transitioned entirely to digital for ease of use, so I quickly learned to hone those skills to create artwork you would never know started and was painted entirely on Photoshop.

Whether you are a professional artist, hobby artist, or enthusiast, using photoshop to paint can expand the realm of what you can do with your art!

Let’s get started with our tutorial:

I’m going to show you how I paint with Photoshop using a simple ball. You’ll get the overall concept. I’m going to start out with the circular shape brush (tool bar on upper lift).

I’ll just punch in the color (color palette on upper right). This is a quicker way than just laying in the paint.

I pick out my magic wand tool (tool bar on upper left) to isolate the color.

That puts a protective edge around the color. It’ll prevent anything from going outside that protective line.

You don’t actually need to do this, you can paint it free handed. We are going to keep it within the marquee circle for this demo.

I will pick a blue color for my shadow side.

Then use less opacity, about 34% (top bar toward left). This allows me to see through the color as I’m laying it in.

I’ll pick a paint brush that will make it easier for you to see my brush strokes working (upper left corner).

I prefer to stroke in the color because that gives me a sense that I’m actually painting with a real paintbrush. Using a color picker (option on Mac, Alt on PC), I’m going to select this portion of blue as a transition color that I’m painting in. Little by little, stroke the color in to get the painted look that we hope for.It’s building strokes on top of each other. I also like the random tones that happen as I’m painting, trying to slowly bring those tones together to create my dimensional effect; my “tone of values”–that’s a better way of putting it.

It’s more involving with this process, but I prefer the results. Now I’ll lessen the opacity to 9% to smooth out my brush strokes so they are not too strong. I just work the strokes, thinking of it as paint until I get the subtleties of blend that I would like to see or that I feel is working well.

Of course, you can achieve this using an airbrush effect also, which will soften some of the brush stroke effect. But I don’t want this to feel air brushed; that’s why I use this method. I like the irregularities of what I have here. I’ll give a little more to this area, going around to the right side of the ball.

I can actually blur it a little bit with a blur filter and that will give me even less stroke detailing, if I chose.

Now I’m going to lighten it up a little right in here: darker opacity to 45%, little more yellow, lighten up a slight bit. That’s my hot spot.

I use my picker, right here, to touch the color close by to allow for some of the transitional elements to happen easier.

I don’t always have to go to my color palette to pick colors. It can be right from my work in progress. Now I go slightly whitish. Give my final highlight. There’s my Photoshop painted ball.

Let’s say if I did choose an airbrush (or an “assimilated soft round brush” is more accurate). So I would take that color, go a little darker with it.

I would sweep across with it.

Then I would like to do a little reflective color. Let’s say there’s some red off somewhere. I could do it as a quick airbrush stroke and I could be done.

Or I could stroke it with my hard brush if I want to maintain that textured feeling, working it stroke by stroke. I want it to be consistent here. I’ll add a little more light to the reflective color and stroke that in.The idea is to get you to see how to apply the painting process.

I can, for better transition, use a little less opacity and make the reflection a little lighter with more saturation. Now that’s how I would paint a simple ball.

In the future, I will show you how to do other objects on Photoshop.

So there you have it, painting with Photoshop on computer. A totally different tool to utilize.

Keep an eye out for the “Painting On Computer” series. Give me a like if you learned something. See you next time!

NEXT: Continue this lesson by painting a bear with photoshop in part 2

Hello art lovers out there! Today we are going to show you a technique on how to depict grass in a painting. There are two methods that I use: one in the studio using an airbrush to soften, the other when painting Plein Air (Painting outdoors in natural light). Hopefully it’s an approach you find useful in your painting as well.

As we have talked about in past blogs and videos, “Artist Technique Depicting Ground Texture” and “Technique for Wall Texture” (check those out if you haven’t already), I like to wet the board first, which allows the paint to go down smooth and even. But it can’t be too wet.

To the left is too wet. Let it dry to a low sheen or dull look which is not reflective as we see here.

This enables us to lay in colors, both light, dark, and medium values, all in one swoop as much as possible.

Why do we want all of the values in at the start? The advantage of doing it this way when painting grass is that it allows you to stroke the dark areas into the light areas to simulate grass blades. So where it’s dark, you stroke up into the light areas; and where it’s light you stroke it up into dark areas. This gives us the sense of grass blades showing up without having to paint every single detail of grass blades.

I’m utilizing an airbrush to keep the surface damp which allows it to be a little softer and not so crisp in the edge. It gives a mood to the overall grass look. Try to mix some of the subtle values that you see and pull blades of grass out of those subtle values into values just above it. You want your color mixing to be as close to the tones of each area as you possibly can. Think of it as shapes of silhouetted grass, light values over a dark value pulling those strokes of one silhouette out on top of another, on top of another and so on. Then put only a few blades of grass inside the silhouette itself.

That builds a look of  a grassy field without overworking it with every single blade being painted.

Now on the right side, I approach it slightly different as if I was doing a Plein air painting. No airbrushing involved here. (Seeing the video will give you a better concept of my stroking action).

I like using older, worn out brushes where the bristles are uneven.

I push against the brush or I’ll use it sideways and push it up. It gives me loose, irregular strokes and broken up areas. You can see where it leaves rough areas of paint that looks like irregular grass in the distance.

That’s the best way to ruin a brush quickly. It’s the reason for using older, worn brushes.

The principles remain the same regarding pushing dark shapes into light shapes and pushing light strokes into darker strokes above it. You can pull a few blades of grass within that shape or silhouette, but not too many because you want it to feel (look) simple and not overworked. That’s the overall concept to get a feel for grass without having to do every single blade. Here’s what the final results look like. A field of grass that’s not overly painted or overly stroked:

Hope you get a sense of how to approach grass in a more simplified fashion. So which method do you like the most? Is it the technique using the airbrush or the straight painting technique of just the brush alone? Whichever…

Hopefully it’ll be a lot of fun when you paint. Try it out and let me know what you think. See you next time!