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miraikazuya — Digital Painting Tutorial pt.i
Published: 2010-12-07 09:59:36 +0000 UTC; Views: 5787; Favourites: 46; Downloads: 405
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Description
Forgive me for the sheer length of both this tutorial and its description, fellow deviants. I felt I should be comprehensive in what I show here and offer some true value to those interested instead of a quick and confusing gloss over the topic.I have marked the major sections of this description with bold headings; please have a scroll through and read the bits that are interesting to you. You may just learn a few new things!
As a bit of background to those who have just met me here on DA, I am both an artist and a Graphic Designer; I specialize in advertisement and magazine layout, but have always been a painter/drawer/dabbler. Here, I hybridise the two worlds into something you will hopefully find interesting; both in creating puuuurdy people as well as managing the heaving, slobbering BEAST that is Photoshop.
Art Style
You can see I have a very specific personal style in my art, which has been evolving over the years. I focus on realistic colours and shades, though they are HEAVILY laced with drama; my details try to be realistic, though my proportions often miss the mark somewhat. I am forever trying to improve, as should all artists.
I like to take my time. You should, too.
Yes, a lot of my stuff comes out a bit yellow. But let’s face it, many of our favourite characters often have stuff in common with us – I am a dirty azn (or half!), I have tanned skin with a teeny hint of yellow.
Soft, organic lines are my friend.
As you will see from both my pixel and vector work, I am a fiend for detail. You can bug me about this as much as you wish
Software, Hardware
My weapon of choice is Photoshop rather than Painter, simply because I can use the entire Adobe suite with a blindfold. This is thanks to six years as a professional designer! I insist that if you want to use an Adobe or Macromedia product in any scale, you take your left hand out from under your bum and place it on your keyboard. Take the time to learn the program if you intend to use it. And never be afraid of asking me a ‘dumb’ question…it’s only dumb if you ask twice
Any tablet will do, but my preference is the Intuos series of Wacom tablets. The current beast is an Intuos2 6x8 Limited Edition that seems to withstand everything aside from nuclear war. If you’ve got a Bamboo or similar cheap tablet fear not, they CAN do this sort of work, but you’ll reach the end of your tether pretty quick. Don’t let anyone tell you that you are not good enough for an Intuos! Your hands and your rage will thank you for spending the extra cash.
OS-wise, you’ll find this tutorial either lists both key combinations or expects you to know the difference; as I write, I am on an Athlon single core running Windows XP and Photoshop CS2. You’ll notice parts of the tutorial suddenly appear to be on a Mac running a newer CS; we’re on 27” iMacs at work currently, with 8GB of RAM and a four-core 2.8ghz chip running OS 10.6 and CS5. A more drastic change between operating systems is hard to find, particularly in one day… hopefully this will calm the nerves of a few people that have been scared of the rivals. Files, key combinations and settings are universal across the board these days. Just remember that sometimes I say cmd (command, ie: ‘apple key’) and sometimes I say ctrl (control key). The former is for Mac users, and the latter is for Windows users. If it looks like ‘the wrong one’, that’s what they map to.
Scary stuff – colour management
This is something the world of Graphic Design is having to become more and more aware of.
As you can imagine, stuff looks different between a near decade-old 17” Samsung flatscreen and a brand-spanking new state of the art 27” Apple screen. What looked quite normal with a healthy green tinge for a Romulan at home suddenly looked RADIOACTIVE GREEN HOLY FUCK when I got to work! DO NOT WANT. Needless to say, I recalibrated both screens.
Furthermore, you will find that if you take a screenshot then try and paste that into an existing file, chances are it’s going to be disgustingly WRONG WRONG WRONG in the colour department. To cut a long story short, this is because ‘absolute’ values in colour actually look different from screen to screen, printer to printer… (no shit). Computer software compensates for this by tagging files with ‘colour profiles’; the very simplistic way of looking at it is, colour profiles are translation services. They know what you are looking at, sort of – they will happily translate this ‘look’ to the new place, be it a screen, printer or whatever.
If you are not colour managing your projects, you will probably find a few very nasty surprises from time to time. The easy way out, within the same machine, is to set the MAIN project to something simple like ‘sRGB’ colour profile. Everything you drop in should come in like that and stay the correct colour.
I’m not going to banter on too much about this as I’m fairly fresh into colour management myself (and I’m sure someone with more knowledge about it can elaborate), but in short, if stuff is doing stuff and stuff on things that you’d rather it kindly stop…consider colour management.
In short, I found that using sRGB as my colour profile for this project eliminated a lot of my colour issues once I did a quick tidy up and un-greened my Romulan.
Typography
Yes, there is a bit of that in this piece. Notice I’m using a six-column grid; sometimes there’s one fat column one thin, and other times there are two even ones, and it DOESN’T look too squiffy? Yeah, grids. Do it. Do it now.
Just as a thoughtgasm. Nothing special. If anyone wants to geek over typography, or my poor font choice, feel free to talk
The Actual Character…
This is Torek T’Mor, my main Romulan character for several stories. Rather than re-explain… here are some nifty links with moooooar on our scruffy, intrepid lad.
[link]
[link]
[link]
[link]
[link]
Credit for model:
DeviantART stock: [link]
And, final note:
Finished artwork: [link]
Lineart sketch: [link]
This is an open forum. Feel free to share your comments, questions, seething hatred, idol worship and DEAR GOD WOMAN WHAT DRUGS ARE YOU ON here
And as always… please to not trace my stuff without permission kthx kindly. I OBVIOUSLY support using reference for learning purposes, but at least give credit where credit is due.
Aaaaaand...just finally...if you find this tutorial beneficial, please don't hesitate to linkwhore it up and post it in the comments below
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Comments: 29
I used this technique here! [link]
It's not as smooth since I don't have a tablet, but it really helped, and I'm astonished that I can actually paint something digitally that does NOT require line art to be visible!
In other words, this was INSANELY helpful!
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Now you see, sometimes lack of smoothness is a GOOD thing. It looks more like it was painted lovingly with a real brush rather than an airbrush, which gives it a far more tactile appearance. Reach out and touch
Glad you found this helpful - it's a great feeling to discover you can actually do something you thought you couldn't, doesn't it!
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Hey there, I like the technique you've described here; I've wondered for a long time how to get that skin-like texture on PS, and any attempts I've made so far only involve using a hard spatter brush set on 100%, so I will definitely try this.
Thanks for putting this up! That's a lovely skin colour you're using there by the way.
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Cheers 
I'm thinking of continuing part II soon - looking at the wee fine lines, stubble marks, bit of freckling etc...just because it's a bit of a challenge.
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I would love to see a tutorial bit on freckling and stubble, because frankly I have no clue how to go about that.
Best of luck with that then, I will be looking forward to it.
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Once I figure out how to do it, then I'll share XD I've got a few ideas, but will have to experiment.
Want to to be thoroughly realistic...so I'm going to have to reddraw the eyes in places too.
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Goodness. I'll actually read through this properly someday. But I basically color up to the shadows and highlights point and that's where everything goes to heck...ehh colors.
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Yeah, it's a scary scary thing. But my method is both random/scratchy so you can let your hand do what it thinks is best, and methodical where to go first, then next, so the random scratchies have guidance.
I think most people hit the wall when they get bored and scared after an hour :/ I used to go at it for a few, freak out, and push the delete button. ><;
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My hand is very unsure...
Yep yep. My main problems are the unrealistic colors and Photoshop burning my eyeballs slowly from their sockets...
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Sounds familiar. Amazing what six years in Graphic Design will do to a gal though 
These poor boys though eh...
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Good lord, six years? I suppose that would help...
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...where the HELL is my dead smiley?! RAGE.
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Oh yes. I'm DEFINITELY going to be using this when I finish my round entry. I'll probably try and use when I do the holiday gifts I promised people. I loooove how thorough you got with the directions because I'm not ashamed to admit that I sometimes need things spelled out to me.
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Don't worry, me too when it comes to new concepts.
It's time-consuming but simple... Tandomus and co would look insanely awesome with full 3D colour
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I appreciate the effort you put into getting this together!
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Huzzah for useful stuff
Hair and eyes are a bastard. The way in the tut here is about the only one I've found that yields a good result in less than a month's solid work
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Holy camole, this is a right beast. 
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Dahaha... hey, everyone starts somewhere. If you DIDN'T use the ol' smudgy brushes, you could use the first few tips to block colour then block shade with one single shadow and one single highlight...just to lift it all a bit if you felt adventurous
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Oh yeah, I've experimented a bit with cell shading before. It's just time-consuming, strangely enough. XD I might go back to colored pencils...
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Cel chading is like that. Not THIS time consuming but let's face it, any form of shading that looks reasonable is a time-eater
I envy your ability to use pencils. ><;
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nice one
for one, id like to add something to the color paragraph: copying a part of a painting that works perfectly fine, and pasting it into another painting, or half finished painting, or whatever, has pretty much a 100% chance to look strange and somewhat off, and at least a 75% chance of looking completely out of whack, color wise.
that, obviously is because paintings tend to have different value and color keys - different parts of the spectrum is what makes them up, so to say. so, a painting with an ochre-ish key will have anything close to neutral gray look like blue - but copying that and paste it into a painting with a different color predominating, and its that strangely uniform bown ugly blob all of a sudden. same with mismatching values and stuff.
it can even happen you are working in different keys in different parts of the painting because you kept zoomed in deeply all the time, losing track of the whole.
also, its interesting to see how you start from a base value and work towards the shadows and lights, whereas i start with the major distinction of "these be lights, thar be shadows" and work from there
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From an art point of view yeah, you can get a bit of eyebleach if you stay zoomed in. I certainly don't, I'm in and out all the time because with those shadows and such, I zoom all the way out frequently to get the overall effect. From a more technical point of view I note colour management, ie: 'oe olde booke of colours' that your file is reading from. There's a native one for each screen, the option NOT to colour manage, and the ones you apply. I tend to work in sRGB for RGB files and I'm still trying to decide on a good CMYK working space. You'll notice that if you start a new file it won't automatically be colour managed, but if you take a screencap it's in your screen's working space. The difference between them when you paste one into the other is HUGE! It's only colour managed if you tell it to - my answer: Set your file up with a profile matched from the very start! When you open your screencap or other painting, set that temporarily to the SAME profile and paste away. No moar shifts.
This is all because colour management, the new gold standard in "WHY IS THIS PURPLE NOT BLUE" avoidance, doesn't believe in ABSOLUTE values. They look different across every medium, even when printing, due to dry media and ink qualities, the press' 'personality', moisture... colour management takes all this into account and that 'ochre' you start out with will come tagged. If it IS tagged, it SHOULD appear on someone else's screen as it did on yours provided it's not a blown-out old CRT where everything is green. It should then leave either machine via, say, PDF with its colour profile tagged, and arrive at the press' machine with a printed proof. These should still look the same. It's sent through to plate, which translates from your working space to its own, and if everything is managed properly it should STILL look like your printed proof.
Same goes for home printers too. Assigning a profile is a good way of ensuring your ochre-ish painting isn't printed red.
But yes, that's the designey-computery explanation for what you possibly may be seeing.
TL;DR over.
My initial shadows are actually a midtone, oddly enough, and the base colour becomes somewhat of a lighter midtone. I guess it's kind of like chiselling the colour out; I sculpt. Whereas you call a spade a spade and work inwards from there. You most likely have a sharper eye for positioning, whereas I'm all touchy-feely about it
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haha, naah, im reworking stuff all along the way. im just a big fan of smacking some statement there, basically demarking the extremes, and then reworking it to make it all sound a little more gentle
i was so incredibly relieved to see iain mccaigs gnomon dvds because he, a master draughtsman i deeply admire, would draw, erase, draw, erase, draw, erase...
re color management: no, i wasnt actually referring to the technical portion of files being assigned to color profiles, but paintings (or photos) coming with their own "calibration" qua pictorial content. say, you have a high key b/w photo that goes from #ffffff to #888888 only, and a low key one that only goes from #000000 to #888888. no way how perfect your color management is and how well your screen is calibrated, cutting out that pale girls head in the low key photo and pasting it in the high key one will result in an ugly black blob in that bright photo and not at all look like a pale girls head.
same with color casts in painting - lets say you paint a neutrally skincolored face (if a face looks like having a neutral skincolor in a pic of you, its probably slightly on the yellow side) and we copy/paste it into something i painted thats basically shades of green, that face is going to look very weird, even if we agreed on color profiles beforehand.
point being: color management and calibration goes a long, long way in making stuff consistent (im working on a 24" tft with an old 19" crt as secondary screen - its quite impossible to match them exactly -.-), but its not the only thing to look out for, and it doesnt cure everything.
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Oh I see what you're getting at there. Yeah I'd just assumed that as a given, considering my chosen career path, so I hadn't even considered that as an option XD I actually match things automatically before slapping them in without even thinking. I've not had anything like that happen before as a result. Say, Taniwha Chronicles... I painted the people on a white background but intentionally made them very dark, then when they were 90% there I dumped a black background in to check it looked alright. When they were done I had to flatten a copy onto the starfield background because as it was, the file was over 300MB in size. No chance to sit and edit details so they had to be DONE done.
The result: I painted what looked like poos to the untrained eye, because I knew its destination would have the effect as above. It's all part of the job.
But the above banter IS going to save someone trouble once people start reading the comments. Trust me on that.
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jup *highfives*
also, i commend your ability to paint poo that will look alright once it sits where it goes. i dont know if i could pull that off, but i highly doubt it (especially because im so darn good at slapping down a big fat something for context first thing
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Open forum is a brilliant thing, and I wish there was more of it on DA. Most of it is "HOMG LAWL NICE!!!11111" and nada beyond that, so it's actually exciting to have an intelligent conversation
For me the painting of poo to start with is all part of planning. Starting off as an artist you make pretties as they come, but with graphic design you've gotta plan stuff out ahead for clients...there's such an intense process that you eventually know off by heart, and you can't ignore it when it comes to art. I'd say the career path is what made the art truly step up to the plate.
The downside is that I'm clinical in my execution; it's fairly obviously planned and executed. Yours is far more organic and flowing from what I've seen...a lot of passion involved and following the pen/brush.
Ah, art. One of the few industries where there's no 'wrong', just a zillion different ways of doing it and two zillion more things you can learn from others
And I just realised I don't have you on watch. I must fix this.
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indeed - good discussion is a wonderful thing. but then, it usually takes a nerd in these ages. (two, actually, or the discussion will be one-sided)
i see what you mean about planning. i have to say, im getting a bit better at this. i remember when i basically did doodles of more or less elaborate finish. i just could not at all bring myself to sit down for a second time on a painting. good thing that i have been drawing during classes a lot of time. youre either really fast or you get caught.
ever since delving more deeply into the whole matter (composition, storytelling, gesture...), i find myself painting and drawing less (also, time left over from uni is a limiting factor) overall, but finished pieces usually have more than one sitting in them, or much more pre-planning at the very least. maybe its a result of having more levels to think about. or its just me getting older. or both
also, thanks a lot for the watch
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I'm forgetful as fuck. And I did a little ragequit for a few years too
There's a product of maturity right there. Less sheer volume of drawings et al, but the overall quality and time spent is far higher. There's a better understanding of it all too IMO. Its drawback is we become less experimental because we 'know' how stuff is meant to be...but heck, it's worth it for the pretty shineys we always used to wish we could do
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