I know we have a tips forum, but noone seems to post there.
i figured this could be more specific.
here’s something i’ve been working on completly in photoshop.
i was wondering.
-any tips on how to do better linework?
-any other advice in general?
i love the look of the invincible comic, and was trying to replicate it.
it still looks too…crappy/childish…dunno if thats exactly what i mean,
i guess i want the whole thing to be tighter. i wanted clean.
obviously i left she sketch parts so you guys could see how i was working.
Inking in ps isn’t so great. I’d just do it by hand if i were you and then color it in ps. Now inking in painter is better. You won’t get the wiggly line effect. Still, inking by hand is by far the best.
did you use the pen tool? I think the freeform pen tool in Photoshop 5 was the best. It smoothes the most w/o changing the intention of your lines too much.
You can turn off auto fill and either set it to stroke, or path. then right click>stroke>brush/pencil (set your pencil or brush to the right width first)
i just CAN’T get a handle on this digital painting thing. i feel like i’m not improving.
are there any good books or toutorial out there?
should i just read up more on regular painting?
ha ha
i just had to try this. sorry for taking up so much space.
I’m probably not the best person to be giving advice since I’m still very much still learning when it comes to painting (digital or otherwise), but here’s my $0.02 for what it’s worth:
IMHO what would help your pics most would be to develop a stronger sense of using values (light/dark) to give the illusion of volume. I think your colour sense is very nice (choice of colours, saturation, etc), but your placement of light/shadow seems arbitrary at times. Perhaps work in black/white for a while to take a break before going back to colour?
Also another trick to use in PS: when using the brush tool, holding down the Alt key temporarily brings up the eyedropper tool… use this to get smooth blends between areas.
Keep in mind that highlights pop (move forward) while shadows recede (move backwards). If the creature’s brows both have highlights, that means that the forehead between the brows is facing the light source – and therefore will also have a highlight.
Sharp transitions in value denote abrupt changes in topography of a surface. This can be seen cast shadows – eg; the browline, side of the nose, etc.
Might also help to think of your light / dark areas in terms of masses that help your viewer understand what is going on in the pic. Is this surface receding or advancing? How about relative to another part of the pic?
rook…too f’ing good man. what brush do you use? i use either the round one or i go to natural brushes and use 12. like sfmc…but who am i kindding right?
also like i usually start with 60% opacity and move down to like 30%…i think its the actualy selecting and blending thats giveing me a huge issue as well (also the lighting, issue)
thanks for the time you’re taking btw. i appreciate it a lot.
I don’t have a fixed brush that I use (I’m still finding my way around), but the paintover above was done using one of the oil brushes, I think. It’s somewhere in the last 15% of the default PS brush list… Default size is 36 or something like that.
I use a whle range of opacities (100 to 20), but nowadays I’m working at 20% flow. I dunno exactly what flow does but I like how the colours / linework / etc comes out.
Just adding on to what rook already posted. If you want to get good at just digital painting, you have to get good at everything first. Digital painting is just a medium. What I think you’re missing from your work are strong core shadows.Thats the area between the shadow and the midtone, which is usually darker since thats where the least amount of light will hit. You have nice contour lines but the shading is very loose. Concentrate on the core shadows first, then move on to the mids and lights.
