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Tutorial - Common Digital Painting Mistakes
Published: 2012-06-07 04:07:53 +0000 UTC; Views: 231570; Favourites: 12210; Downloads: 4631
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Description
A guide to common digital painting mistakes that I've either seen or done myself...hopefully it helps
UPDATE
If you have questions please visit my journal for a list of FAQ first, you might find them answered there.
[link]
Otherwise, ask away!
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Comments: 759
Well, as you can see the smudge tool on the right just swirves the colors about all "willy-nilly", honestly if you do it that way, you're just creating a puddle of colorful muk! Not really blending!
However, if you really want to blend, I suggest tools like the water tool - I use the water tool in my works, or even the blur too - gradients are great at blending - its better than just taking two colors and mixing them forcefully with the smudge tool - its not that the smudge tool is bad, its just that thats not what it's made for.
Kind of like the burn/dodge thing.
People are literally "burning" their drawings when shading with that as the colors are plain, bland and just....off.
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well, i don't have sai...yet...and i use photoshop...
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You can primarily blend with just the brushes. Photoshop has a huge variety of brush settings and you can play around with them and see what works for you.
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i don't have SAI either...I would recommend the comment earlier that says use the default brushes and you'll get a similar result.
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That's only the watertool, but I used photoshop for years. You can take advantage of it easily.
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this is very helpful indeed! thank you very much for putting this together! great job!
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Thank you. Some of those I was aware of and some was woefully new to me.
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You are so great, thank you so much! These are so stright to the point, easy to read and remember. Like a reipe! Really, this is a recipe to a good digital drawing ^_^
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Now I can finally tell why my art sucks! Thanks!
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This is what I needed! Seriously thank you, thank you, thank you! *le favs for future reference*
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Veery helpful. 
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This is so true.I have a tablet,i have a Photoshop and i usually don't paint :/
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Oh I was wondering these days what errors I'd be doing, Overblending was one of them. Thanks for this, It helps and will help me A LOT!
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Thank you for this! I make a LOT of these mistakes, aha.
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Holy cow, this is so useful!!! Thanks for breaking it down!
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Thank you SO much for making this tutorial!
It's really helpful!
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Thanks for this, I need all the help I can get!
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Wow, this tutorial is fantastic (both in information and presentation/organisation). It's very similar to one I've been thinking about doing. I hope everyone reads this and takes it to heart. Definitely something I'll be coming back to if I have trouble.
I'd also like to add 'using small brushes for large areas'. Tends to make shading streaky and messy. Using the largest possible brush for what you're doing gives a nice painterly feel (at least before final rendering if you want to make it tight), and is much faster and bolder.
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that's a really good tip I hadn't thought of! thanks for sharing
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^^ iΒ΄will become a digital artist one day itΒ΄s a promess!!!
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I've always said to myself... "NOT ENOUGH CONTRAST! D8" But even after I try picking the colours, I still end up with not enough contrast. ;--;
By the way, this tutorial is extremely helpful. Thank you so much for sharing!
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Yeah, I sympathise. I had that problem recently too. There's something intuitively hard about making shadows too much darker than the middle tones.
One thing ~sinix recommends is starting out with a very dark base colour, and then adding light on top. (This might be harder if you're doing anime style rather than rendering, but let me know what you think if you try it.
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this is a really good idea! start REALLY dark though, even if you think it looks weird.
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Yes!
You know what, just now I tried that technique, and it turned out like this: [link]
I still think there's not enough contrast in my doodle, but in term of figuring out the light source and where to shade darker/lighter, I find it easier this way! O:
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Awesome.
You might try with starting with an even darker colour (my first attempt actually looks very similar to yours, too). This video series is pretty cool for demonstrating the concept: [link] (see -- lots of them start out very dark brown. counter-intuitive but effective!)
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Yeah! Thanks for pointing me out to that technique (and for the youtube link!). Maybe now I can work on my lack of contrast. xD
That looked like a very useful video! Is he using Painter X? I'm very tempted to watch it and try it out, but I have to finish some projects first.
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Pretty sure he uses Painter 12, although I don't know how different the versions are. (He has a video of the tools/brushes he uses on his channel if you want to compare.)
But I don't think it matters much which program you use. It's similar enough to Photoshop's hard round brush (with optional opacity settings), and most half-decent painting programs have some kind of equivalent. That's a nice thing about this digital painting method -- it's quite simple and doesn't heavily rely on particular tools.
(Also, tip in case you haven't heard this before: when digital painting use the biggest brush you can, only going down to smaller brush sizes when you need to. It'll make blending look a lot cleaner instead of streaky, give a nice painterly feel, and will be a lot faster and less fiddly.)
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Oh, yeah. I've tried Painter 10 before, and the brushes are really nice. It really has some realistic looking brushes from various traditional media, if I'm not mistaken.
*nods* Yeah, good ol' photoshop or SAI are still my true friend. But I'd love to try out Painter again, or maybe try some designing with Illustrator. : D That is, when I figure out as much as I can about shading and colors and all that.
Ahh, thank you again for the useful tips! I will keep that in mind. : D
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monochromatic shading, here I go : /
I know skin has colors like red and blue, but still IΒ΄m never quite sure which color-palette I should use...
Feels like, I pick them absolutely random
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This might help: [link]
Another thing is just look at references hard and try to see the subtle hue shifts. (Messing around with the saturation of a photo ref in an image editor might help if it's too subtle.)
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ah, thank you : )
I know those three "color-zones" from another tutorial, but still... I have this feeling to use way few colors.
I guess, I just have to practise more. But I will try to follow your advise and look more at references : )
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sometimes I feel like i'm picking really random colors too...but that's usually the best. If you think about colors that suit your environment you are placing your character in you can pick skin accents better. For example, if you are making a supernatural type picture you might pick blue and purple. Stay in a pastel palette for this. Generally, use as many shades as possible in skin to make it look more realistic.
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Great guide, helped me out a lot
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Great tutorial, this is extremely helpful! Although I am new to digital painting, I can greatly improve upon this. Thank you!
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I have the WORST time digital painting. I can paint with paint, shade with pencils and even markers but when it comes to Photoshop I just suck. Digital doesn't work the same as real live pigment and it drives me CRAZY! Still working on it!
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i feel you! they follow the same rules of color but they do work differently mechanically. I always had a harder time with traditional though I guess because I learned digital first...also the absence of the undo button is a real killer
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it's nice to see some good tutorials in deviantart! Very well written and very true, looking forward to see more tutorials from you
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great collection. the only thing i miss is something like " lack of foundational/anatomical skill"...
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You're right. I was thinking of putting that in, but I figured it was another tutorial for another day!
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yeah i undersrand^^
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Agreed, although that is more drawing problems than rendering/digital painting problems.
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weh, true.. but if the question is - "why my painting doesnt look like imagine fx cover" it also would fit as an answer^^
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well your stuff looks awesome, so no worries
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heh, thank you, though i was just trying to make suggestions to improve this even further
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very very helpful
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