Marta I wonder what brushes and settings you used for the early sketches of this image. Do you do your sketches with low opacity also? They seem very crisp and opaque (more so then what I get with the ragged hard round on it's default settings).
I recently attempted to make a painting from start to finish with only transparent brushes, the blending and defining of features was easy and real fun to do but my values ended up very bad. It completely lacked contrast, something I didn't notice until it was too late. Any tips on how to avoid ending up with low contrast using this technique would be very appreciated. The workflow with transparent brushes feels very natural to me as my background is in oils and I always layer my color very carefully in my oil paintings. Perhaps in digital it's different and I need an opaque sketch prior to layering color (at least that is what I suspect). Please correct me If I'm wrong. :)
Here goes, I hope you'll find it helpful :) In general to get the cripsy look to my sketches I do the following:
I usually start with very transparent brushes to determine the shapes, proportions and whatnot. After I have a low opacity basis done, I turn the opacity up and run over the shapes with a very opaque brush, on a color a bit more saturated than the basis.
Afterwards, if the sketch still looks muddy, I duplicate the sketch layer and merge both. Later, I use the median filter to smooth the inside color blend and sharpen the edges. And afterwards, if it still needs more work, I run over the sketch yet again with a half-transarent brush, this time on a slightly altered color to enrich the look.
One question: did you eyedrop colours often while working?
One thing which is super important when working with low opacity brushes is NOT to eye-drop the colors too early on. If for eample you paint in a fleshy tone on top of a green background and eyedrop the colors when the skintone is only slightly visible, the developed palette will end up looking muddy or low contrast etc. On the videos you often see me eyedrop the color and then open up the palette and correct the color choice. That is exactly why I do it - to avoid that muddy look.
When you work on an opaque basis, eye dropping colors is much easier and effective, but still has to be done only as an addition to the created palette. It's always a good idea to saturate and slightly darken the color you just eyedropped before applying them onto the skintone - this way you will still end up with a saturated, lovely color, even after applying it on a low opacity.
Whew, I hope you found the info helpful... If you need anything else, please let me know. :-)
Here goes, I hope you'll find it helpful :) In general to get the cripsy look to my sketches I do the following:
I usually start with very transparent brushes to determine the shapes, proportions and whatnot. After I have a low opacity basis done, I turn the opacity up and run over the shapes with a very opaque brush, on a color a bit more saturated than the basis.
Afterwards, if the sketch still looks muddy, I duplicate the sketch layer and merge both. Later, I use the median filter to smooth the inside color blend and sharpen the edges. And afterwards, if it still needs more work, I run over the sketch yet again with a half-transarent brush, this time on a slightly altered color to enrich the look.
One question: did you eyedrop colours often while working?
One thing which is super important when working with low opacity brushes is NOT to eye-drop the colors too early on. If for eample you paint in a fleshy tone on top of a green background and eyedrop the colors when the skintone is only slightly visible, the developed palette will end up looking muddy or low contrast etc. On the videos you often see me eyedrop the color and then open up the palette and correct the color choice. That is exactly why I do it - to avoid that muddy look.
When you work on an opaque basis, eye dropping colors is much easier and effective, but still has to be done only as an addition to the created palette. It's always a good idea to saturate and slightly darken the color you just eyedropped before applying them onto the skintone - this way you will still end up with a saturated, lovely color, even after applying it on a low opacity.
Whew, I hope you found the info helpful... If you need anything else, please let me know. :-)
Thank you for the quick reply! :D
Yes, I tend to use the eyedrop tool a lot. I do however keep in mind to enrich saturation with the HSB sliders. Now I must be doing this to early on. To eyedrop when the skintone is only slightly visible is something I'm guilty of doing a lot. It's just a thing with me that I tend to not see the lack of contrast until it's to late. I even tried for a while to do what Henning Ludvigsen does as contrast is easier in greyscale but I failed miserably at the part when your supposed to add color. Besides I love to play with color so I often got bored working in greyscale. The low opacity brushes are by far the most fun workflow I've discovered since going digital, I greatly appreciate these tips and am sure they will make a difference in my work. I do have one wee question, what spacing do you use on the ragged hard round? The reason I ask is that I recently came across a tutorial by Melanie Delon in which she said that it's important to turn the spacing up to 25% for the hard round brush or the computer will never follow you. I wonder if same principle goes for the ragged hard round and any custom brush I may make for general painting?
Oh, and I do actually have yet another question and that is simply if you have any tips to improve your speed while working? Given that you do these workshop's monthly I assume you work quite fast. I was told by an art teacher once that I work in a turtle pace and that has sort of been nagging at me since.
Once again thank you for taking the time to reply to all my silly questions. :)
The 25% thing is set on the typical hard rounds by default, isn't it? Anyhow, that's what I keep for the ragged ones too. Eventually, I raise it by a few addiional % to get a rough colour blocking feel :) The lower the spacing, the more a brush lags, so indeed it's a good thing to always keep it at atleast healthy 20%.
As for speed, it's a tricky question. I wouldn't really say I work super fast... Sure, I got faster with time and practice, but I still need a couple of evenings/nights to paint something. It greatly depends on the piece I work on: if it's looser, then 15-18 hours will do. If it's more detailed (and it usually is), then we're talking about 30-45 hours on average.
What, from my experience, helps to improve speed is some preparation before painting a piece. Doing practice sketches, searching for references, and creating custom brushes before painting the actual piece. Once you know how to handle anatomy for a partiular painting and have the tools to do so, the actual painting process is much smoother.
Also, mastering the shortcuts speeds workflow up, but uhm... I kind of suck at that to be honest ;) Aside from ctrl-z for undo and alt-click for eyedropping I just don't seem to be able to use the other shortcuts.
Aside from those, one thing that works for me is concentrating the time you spend painting into huge 'chunks'. I found it more effective to work, for example, two evenings 5 hours each, rather than five evenings 2 hours each. What I therefore try to do, when a deadline is approaching, is devote whole evenings/nights to painting, and move anything else I can on other days. Makes your life a mess, but improves painting efficiency ;)
Well, I hope I helped. Working speed is an extremely subjective thing, but I tried to share some key insights from my eperience :/
Thank you once more for your reply and saving me from my painting woes. :)
My computer doesn't seem to lag so I've never paid much attention to the spacing option before but after increasing it to 25 I've most certainly experienced a difference. I finally see those ragged edges and it works wonderfully with the median filter. I guess I've finally learned how to do it the right way, thank you!
Great tips to improve your workflow, I guess the key is to be well prepared. Damn, I need to really work on that. :p
I have this silly habit of just jumping into things and when I'm about halfway done I get disappointed as it doesn't meet my expectations for it. I will make a real effort to plan my future paintings better as I think it will save me from some heartbreak.
Awesome tips Marta, thanks from everyone who's been secretly keeping an eye on this thread (you know you're out there!)...
I've posted a couple of times on issues about blending looking muddy particularly when trying to do shadows (like this attempt of mine http://community.imaginefx.com/forums/post/233237.aspx) and I think the eyedropper tip should really help on that. One thing I still don't understand fully is the difference between value, hue, saturation etc and it's often tricky to follow workshops and tips without this basic knowledge..ah well, when I do figure it out I'm going to make a little card up with the definitions on and tape it to the side of my monitor!
Value defines how light or dark a color is... It basically means moving between two extremes which are white and black (the higher the value, the lighter the colour etc.) If you open up the Hue/Saturation panel in Photoshop (ctrl + u), this will be the "lightness" slider.
Hue is the colour's shade, for example when you change red into pink. There is no minimum or maximum here, it's continuous, so you just basicallly go: red -> pink -> blue -> green -> yelllow -> orange -> red again etc...
Saturation is the "strength" of color, it measures how intense the actual hue is against a grayscale. The two extremes here are the intense version of a color (e.g. a default Windows red) and a gray shade.
I hope this clears it up :)
I found a link that you might find helpful. It's quite scientific but has loads of info and explains the whole issue really beautifully:
Marta, that's awesome - thanks! When are you doing a workshop in the mag next btw? I try to do your workshops when they're in and really enjoy them - I have to say the tips in this thread will definately be a big help.
I have a tut in the upcoming issue 48th. I am not sure whether I can reveal what it is about, but I think I can say it has no character in it... or well, not a two-legged one! :))
Ohh...sounds interesting - not your usual stuff huh? Well, I won't ask youto give anything else away, but just between us, is it a dog? cat? horse? centaur? cow? sheep? dragon?
Wait, is it a donkey? it's a donkey isn't it? Aw shucks...
Yup, I'm busted, it's a cat! It's not the essence of the tutorial, however, but merely a narrative element, so nope, no spoilers here :-)
Also, thanks for the kind words , glad you like my tuts =) I'll be in issues 48 and 50. After that - no idea, depends whether Claire will want me in :P
blackeri:
