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juuhanna — TUTORIAL 1: Building the Form
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Published: 2012-12-25 17:09:05 +0000 UTC; Views: 102918; Favourites: 4385; Downloads: 1643
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Description
A lot of people ask me how I paint my paintings and collaborations, so I decided to finally make tutorials explaining the steps I take to get to the results you can see in my gallery.
Here's part 1, which shows how to get the shapes down easily.
In Part 2 I will explain how to lay down the colors, and in Part 3 I will further explain how to polish and detail the picture.
This technique is actually a variation of really old traditional oilpainting-technique called grisaille, aka greyscale. It's a very useful technique which helps separate the painting-process into more easily controllable steps.
I know I personally can get carried away by all the lovely colors of the world and my painting turns out to be a complete mess unless I think about the shapes first, as a separate step! Then comes the colors, then comes the detailing and polishing.
I'm sorry about certain inconsistency with the screencaps and whatnot, I painted the painting in another city with a mac and then came home and changed to my PC, I used two different versions of photoshop, etc. So getting this together was a bit messy. Hopefully you peeps can still understand something of it! @_@
LINEART by *MeganeRid !
TUTORIAL part 2: Adding Colors
TUTORIAL part 3: Overpainting and Finishing
TUMBLR -> [link]
FINISHED PIECE:
Wallpaper:
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Comments: 229
Great tutorial! I think you've explained everything very well, thanks for the help
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Great! 
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thanks for posting; this is very helpful! ^-^
and woah o0 are you answering every single comment ?! I'm impressed x)
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Yeah, I try my best to answer everything these days. I was absent from DA for few years and left comments unanswered 'cause I visited so rarely, I always felt a little guilty about it... if people spend time looking at my gallery and communicating then the least I can do is let them know I've noticed it.
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I'm really impressed! ^-^
keep up the good work! ; )
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Thank you for sharing your technique!
It's really great!
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My question is when you add the colors in photoshop, how do you keep your curves and lines so tight? I just posted my first real attempt at painting tonight, and I like how it came out but its real loose, I would love to learn how to make it feel a little less sloppy.
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I basically overpaint everything once I've done the greyscale and base colors! So all the lines and sketchyness you see here will be covered by an entirely new layer. And I paint freehand. In the third tutorial I will show how I do the overpainting.
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this helps me understand shadows so much better, do you think the same teqnique of finding shadow and light would also work for pencil drawings???
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Yes, of course! It might also help to keep the entity together more easily than if you'd just start adding shadows to a white paper.
For example, many traditional pastel-artists use pre-toned paper and build lights with lighter pastels, and darks with darker ones.
And I've seen lovely traditional drawings where the paper is greyish or other medium tone, and the artist has done lines and shadows with pencils and then used white pencil or dry pastel to bring out the lighter areas! It can look really beautiful.
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Go ahead and try different techniques, you're bound to find the one that's right for your art!
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ahh, you're making a tutorial! i love how soft and integrated your colors look, so i'm excited to see more. *__* not to mention i know so little of grayscale + color glazing LMAO
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I wasn't sure if I should make one because I'm no expert at making tutorials, but I've received so many notes recently asking about my technique that I decided to go ahead with it.
I hope the tutorial is helpful!
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Ah yeah, Vermeer had a method like this where he did a grisaille style painting and then glazed color on top of it. I tried the same method in my Painting 2 class a couple semesters ago... it was partially successful. lol ;_;
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Yeah, the old master's style.
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lol yeah. Many times have I wished that I could ctrl+Z while painting. lol
I liked grisaille painting but I preferred using a limited earth palette. I think it's the greatest palette ever. Black, Alizarin Crimson, Burnt Umber and White was the colors we used for this type of palette. I loved how much a person could accomplish with very few colors, that and it saved on having a huge mess of different paints on one palette. @_@
Hm... now I feel like trying that digitally, though it's probably not going to be as simple as grisaille.
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Ohh no kidding. >__> And oils dry so frustratingly slow lol. But they do have their charm.
I like natural earths as well - cyprys umber, raw umber, earth reds and ochres make me a happy girl.
I hope you didn't use real alizarin though, it has zero light-fastness and fades significantly in no time! D:
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lol I'm not sure of the kind of alizarin, it was whatever they had at the college bookstore,um... Gamblin was the brand. Lets see...
I just looked it up and I guess the Alizarin Crimson for that brand has a lightfastness of III(ASTM), so it's kinda in the middle.
But yeah, oil paints has grown on me. I absolutely hated oil paints when I was an illustration major, but when I changed it to Fine Arts, I ended up liking oil paints a little more. The teacher for the illustration courses pretty much told us to paint something using oil paints and left us there with not much instruction, so ended up hating it, but with fine arts we actually had a class dedicated to painting with oil paints so I actually GOT to learn how to use them properly.
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The lightfastness is not stated properly, I can't remember how it went but apparently most companies label its lightfastness or permanence based on some scale that shouldn't be used. But that only goes for real alizarin, not it's replacements. Here's some info [link] , and there's more at handprint.com and wetcanvas.org.
Well anyway, oilpainting is a technique that definitely one needs to be advised with at first, I can't imagine the frustration when being left to work with them without guidance. 
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Interesting, interesting... Thanks for the post!
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Thanks for posting this. I was wondering how to paint things like that for awhile now.
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Ah, well now you have your answer, hehe! 
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Oh, there's a second part?
Sweet!
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Yes, there will be three parts in total! This first one was just building the shape, the second one will tell how to add colors, and third one will explain how I paint over and add details.
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Oh, coolio! That's going to be extremely helpful for me. Thank you. : )
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I uploaded the second part yesterday, feel free to take a look!
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thats fantastic and a great help. thank you very much for taking the time to part with us your knowledge
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Great! I hope the coloring-tutorial will be useful as well!
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This is so helpful! Thank you very much!
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Glad to hear that! You're welcome~!
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Thanks for making this tutorial
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Nice design and good tutorial. I do it a bit different. By using channels you can separate white background from lineart with one mouse click. And then do all the steps as you did or plain gray + clipping mask.
I like the colored version as well
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There are as many ways as there are artists, the most important thing is to find the technique that suits one's style the best!
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Yea ;D I do care about the process and like to see other artists approach, this helps me to improve.
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Yes, it's important for everyone to remember that an artist is never perfect and there's always new things for even the best artist to learn! Continuous development is also what keeps making art so interesting!
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Go to ~MeganeRid 's gallery, the place is filled with awesome lines waiting for collaborations!
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Nice! I've been wanting to try out greyscale painting for a while. I'm looking forward to the other parts of this tutorial
Merry Christmas!
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It's very useful to paint greyscales, and a lot of times greyscale-paintings can be awesome by themselves without any added colors too.
Merry Christmas to you too!
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