IntroductionWelcome| 00:00 |
(music playing)
| | 00:04 |
Hello, my name is Daniel Lieske, and I'm
a digital artist and trainer at video2brain.
| | 00:10 |
In this course, we will learn a powerful
collection of Photoshop digital painting techniques.
| | 00:16 |
We will explore the vast number of Brush
Settings available in Photoshop and we'll
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create express tools for your works.
We will then experiment with Layers and
| | 00:27 |
Blend Modes.
Afterwards, we'll apply the Transform
| | 00:30 |
andUNKNOWN Warp tools to parts of your
painting.
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We'll be working completely from scratch,
letting our intuition guide us through
| | 00:39 |
the process.
After finishing this course, you will
| | 00:43 |
have the knowledge and the tools that
will allow you to bring your imagination
| | 00:47 |
to life.
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|
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1. SetupCreating a new document| 00:02 |
In this course, we want to focus on
digital painting.
| | 00:06 |
This means that we will not only look at
the ways that traditional painting
| | 00:11 |
techniques translate onto the digital
canvas.
| | 00:15 |
But that we also want to explore purely
digital techniques that are unique to the
| | 00:20 |
medium, and that will help us to create
our artwork.
| | 00:24 |
Now, to begin, we have to create a new
document.
| | 00:29 |
And we do that under File > New.
Creating a new document requires us to
| | 00:36 |
put some thought into the right
resolution of this document.
| | 00:41 |
And to answer the question, which is the
right resolution of a document, you have
| | 00:45 |
to know where your artwork will end up.
If it ends up in print, you probably know
| | 00:52 |
the physical size of the print and you
can switch over to a metric system here
| | 00:57 |
on the right.
Maybe centimeters, maybe inches, and you
| | 01:03 |
can put in the actual dimension of the
print.
| | 01:09 |
Only make sure that the resolution, here
in this field, is at least 300 DPI.
| | 01:16 |
Now, in my case, normally I'm publishing
my artwork directly on a screen, maybe on
| | 01:21 |
the Internet, on my website, on a blog.
In an online forum, I do not care so much
| | 01:28 |
for the size of my artwork, in
centimeters or inches, what I'm looking
| | 01:33 |
for is the size of the artwork in pixels.
Now I know that a lot of artwork that I
| | 01:41 |
post online ends up to be approximately
800 pixels wide.
| | 01:46 |
And if we're talking about a four by
three landscape format, that would be 600
| | 01:51 |
pixels high.
So this would be the actual size of the
| | 01:56 |
image file that I would copy onto my
server and put onto my blog or website.
| | 02:03 |
But this doesn't necessarily mean that we
have work in that size.
| | 02:07 |
In fact, it is better to create your
artwork in a higher resolution, and as a
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general rule of thumb, I normally work at
at least double resolution.
| | 02:20 |
So in this case that would be 1600 by
1,200.
| | 02:28 |
This is a very common work size for me,
and only if I want to keep my artwork
| | 02:32 |
printable, I triple the resolution of the
final, Internet-sized image, but in this
| | 02:37 |
case, this is not necessary.
Now, we have our new canvas its clean,
| | 02:45 |
its white and the first thing we'll need
to start our exploration of the digital
| | 02:51 |
painting realm is brushes, we need a nice
set of brushes.
| | 02:59 |
And these we will create now.
| | 03:04 |
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| Creating a detail brush| 00:00 |
The standard brush that is set up right
now is not really suitable for what we
| | 00:07 |
are going to do.
So the first thing I'm going to do now is
| | 00:13 |
to create a nice brush.
I need a brush that is small-sized and
| | 00:18 |
that I can use to create small details.
I want to give this brush a special feature.
| | 00:28 |
I don't want it to be of circular shape.
I want it to be angular.
| | 00:34 |
For that reason, I picked up the Marquee
selection tool and I'm making a
| | 00:38 |
rectangular selection.
And by holding down the Shift key, by the
| | 00:43 |
way I'm constraining this selection to a
perfect square, and that's it, that's
| | 00:48 |
our, our square, our selection, and I
will now use the Paint Bucket tool to
| | 00:53 |
fill the square with black.
And while the square is still selected, I
| | 01:01 |
hit the Ctrl+T shortcut.
This is a shortcut to open up the
| | 01:06 |
Transformation tool, and I want to tilt
my square in order to get it to a diamond shape.
| | 01:15 |
And again, by hitting Shift you can
constrain the rotation so that you only
| | 01:21 |
reach certain angles, and this is a
perfect 45 degree angle now.
| | 01:29 |
I hit Enter, I hit Ctrl D to deselect and
this is the shape of my new brush.
| | 01:38 |
Now, we have to create a brush tip from
this shape.
| | 01:41 |
And for that, again, I'm picking up the
Marquee selection tool.
| | 01:45 |
Making my selection around the brush.
Shift key helps to constrain the
| | 01:50 |
selection again and I will capture this
portion of my canvas to create a new
| | 01:55 |
brush tip.
For that, we go into the menu > Edit >
| | 02:00 |
Define Brush Preset.
Now here we can give a new name to our
| | 02:06 |
brush tip.
I will call it Diamond.
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Deselect, Ctrl+D.
Now we go into our Brush Pallet, and it's
| | 02:18 |
all gray just because I haven't selected
the Brush tool, so there it is.
| | 02:26 |
There are all the options for the brush.
And first thing we have to do is we have
| | 02:31 |
to find our brush tip.
There it is, the Diamond.
| | 02:37 |
And this is how our brush currently looks
like.
| | 02:41 |
Now I will make it a lot smaller.
About that size, and you will notice the
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small jagged lines here.
In this small size, it nearly doesn't
| | 02:59 |
show, but if I make it a little bit
bigger, you'll see that this stroke is
| | 03:03 |
quite segmented.
And we can remedy that by decreasing the
| | 03:09 |
spacing here, add another point spacing
to 1%, that's a good setting, and now our
| | 03:16 |
stroke is perfectly smooth.
Now, is this our final brush?
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Not quite, we want to have some more
dynamic in it.
| | 03:30 |
For example, I want to go under Shape
Dynamic, and here we have several
| | 03:36 |
controls, that we can drive with the
pressure of our Interest for Grip Pan.
| | 03:45 |
And out of these control pull-down menus,
we can choose Pen Pressure.
| | 03:51 |
And now what you can see is that our
brush size depends on how much pressure
| | 03:57 |
we put on the little grip pan.
And there's already a minimum diameter
| | 04:06 |
selected for this brush.
I want to increase it a bit to like 35%.
| | 04:12 |
We can also do a numeric input here for
accuracy.
| | 04:23 |
The width of the brush stroke is not
always the same size, but it doesn't drop
| | 04:28 |
below 75% of the original diameter.
It's a very, slide variation that we have
| | 04:35 |
now on this brush stroke, but it shows.
Now I can decrease the size again.
| | 04:46 |
This starts to look like the brush that I
was looking for.
| | 04:52 |
I will now use an option that is not
included in the Brush Pallet, but in the
| | 04:56 |
Option box above here.
It is the Flow attribute.
| | 05:00 |
Default, it's on 100%, but we will
decrease it to 30%, and that gives our
| | 05:08 |
brush stroke a nice smooth and creamy
quality.
| | 05:16 |
See it in direct comparison to the other
stroke.
| | 05:23 |
You see that the starting point and the
endpoint of the stroke are a little bit
| | 05:27 |
blurred, and also the overall contour of
the stroke is a little bit blurred.
| | 05:33 |
And that is a quality that I really like,
and I like to use it in this brush.
| | 05:40 |
Now in the last option I want to use is
under transfer.
| | 05:46 |
Here you find a very important option,
it's opacity jitter.
| | 05:50 |
And I want to control the opacity of my
brush stroke with Pen Pressure.
| | 05:54 |
Now, I have a stroke that I can apply
with high opacity if I put a lot of
| | 06:02 |
pressure onto my brush.
But I can also do some very low opacity
| | 06:10 |
painting with it.
And that is the perfect brush for
| | 06:16 |
creating small detail.
And as you can see, the diamond shape of
| | 06:24 |
the brush tip gives it a distinct look.
It's not so round and ordinary like most,
| | 06:34 |
circular shaped brushes, it has a bit of
edginess to it, and that's a nice
| | 06:41 |
quality, at least in my eyes, for a
detail brush.
| | 06:50 |
Now that we have this brush, we want to
save it and my preferred way to save my
| | 06:56 |
brushes is to create a tool Preset from
it.
| | 07:02 |
And you may have a lot of tool Presets in
your pallet default tool Presets.
| | 07:09 |
For this course I will just kill them off
and make a clean slate so that we can
| | 07:13 |
concentrate on the tools that we will
create in this course.
| | 07:18 |
Now the tool Presets are empty and now I
want to create my first own tool Preset.
| | 07:25 |
I want to create my brush and I call it
Diamond Detailer.
| | 07:29 |
Now that's a nice name for a brush.
We don't want to include the color just
| | 07:33 |
for the case you're wondering.
If you check include color this tool
| | 07:38 |
Preset will remember which color was
selected when you save the brush and
| | 07:42 |
every time you open up the tool Preset,
you activate the tool Preset.
| | 07:48 |
It will switch to this color we don't
want to do that.
| | 07:52 |
We want to use our brush with different
colors, so we hit OK, and there it is,
| | 07:59 |
our first tool Preset, a wonderful, small
detail brush with a distinct shape and
| | 08:06 |
with a lot of character.
| | 08:12 |
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| Creating a big, soft brush| 00:02 |
I want to create another brush.
And this time, it's going to be the exact
| | 00:07 |
opposite of the brush that we created
before.
| | 00:11 |
I want to create a very big and very soft
brush to make very soft, cloudy brush strokes.
| | 00:21 |
And for that, we will take one of the
Photoshop Standard Brushes.
| | 00:26 |
These Standard Brushes can be adjusted by
our different parameters, like Hardness
| | 00:32 |
for example.
And to create a big soft brush,
| | 00:36 |
obviously we have to decrease the
hardness of our brush.
| | 00:42 |
And we'll make a little test stroke.
Yeah.
| | 00:47 |
Now this brush obviously is soft, but it
is not big and therefore we increase the
| | 00:56 |
size of it.
That's looking more like a big soft brush now.
| | 01:07 |
What we can do is we can, in fact,
increase the spacing of this brush in
| | 01:12 |
order to make it a little bit faster,
especially if we use a very big size.
| | 01:20 |
I think that I will make it 200 pixels.
Again, the numeric input helps us to hit
| | 01:27 |
the exact point.
And this is the type of brush that I was
| | 01:32 |
looking for.
Very big, very soft.
| | 01:37 |
And we have inherited some of the
settings from the brush that we had
| | 01:45 |
created before.
We still have Size Jitter driven by our
| | 01:52 |
Pen Pressure in it.
Again, that I will cancel that out.
| | 01:58 |
We don't need that, and therefore, we can
turn off the Shape Dynamics completely.
| | 02:04 |
And we have in the Transfer, the opacity
driven by Pen Pressure, and that is
| | 02:09 |
perfectly okay.
I want to have some control here.
| | 02:14 |
The harder I press my pen onto the
tablet, the more opaque my paint gets on
| | 02:25 |
the canvas.
Now, this is the type of brush I was
| | 02:33 |
looking for.
And that means we can now close the Brush
| | 02:38 |
palette and Save it.
And again, we save our brush as a tool
| | 02:45 |
Preset, and we call it Big Soft.
And now you can see why the tool Presets
| | 02:54 |
are quite handy.
It can change between the brushes.
| | 03:00 |
Take up as much space as the Brush
palette.
| | 03:03 |
Of course, you could just save the brush
as a Brush Preset and access it in the
| | 03:07 |
Brush palette.
Or, even by the Brush Preset palette,
| | 03:12 |
that would also be a possibility.
But there are some reasons why I really
| | 03:18 |
like to use the tool Preset.
And that's mainly because if you use the
| | 03:24 |
tool Preset palette, you cannot only have
your set of brushes over here.
| | 03:31 |
But if you happen to work with other
tools, too, like the Smudge tool or the
| | 03:35 |
Eraser tool, they all can be collected in
this tool Presets.
| | 03:41 |
And if you uncheck Current tool Only,
then you can access all the tool Presets
| | 03:46 |
no matter what tool they are from.
And effectively, you can change your
| | 03:53 |
tools by just clicking inside the tool
Presets palette.
| | 03:58 |
And as I said, it's a very small
palette.
| | 04:01 |
So that we can even afford to keep it
open and put it into our interface permanently.
| | 04:11 |
So, I will position it over here, beneath
our Layer palette, and now we can access
| | 04:18 |
our different brushes all the time.
That's very convenient.
| | 04:27 |
All right, that's our second brush.
We still have some to do.
| | 04:33 |
Let's go on to the next one.
| | 04:38 |
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| Creating a big bristle brush| 00:02 |
The next brush that I want to create is
going to be a big brush that I can use to
| | 00:07 |
block in colors, large forms.
It should have characteristic shape and
| | 00:16 |
for achieving all that we will choose one
of the New Natural Media Bristle brushes,
| | 00:24 |
that Photoshop CS5 provides.
We take this flat fan one, and by the
| | 00:32 |
way, you can find the Natural Media
Bristle brushes in the brush pallet, if
| | 00:37 |
you look out for these little icons that
look like traditional brush tips, and I
| | 00:43 |
pick the last one here.
And what you can see is, that we even get
| | 00:51 |
a little preview in the top left corner
of our brush.
| | 00:57 |
And the special thing about the Natural
Media Brisstle brush is that they are
| | 01:03 |
simulated in 3D space.
And you can see that, that simulation in
| | 01:10 |
this little preview over here.
What you can see also is the brush ghost,
| | 01:16 |
our cursor that has now turned into a
ghosted form of my brush tip.
| | 01:23 |
And you can see that I have a lot of
dynamic in that.
| | 01:28 |
I can rotate it.
I can tilt it in different directions.
| | 01:33 |
And this gives us a lot of creative
power.
| | 01:37 |
What I have to mention is that you can
only access the full amount of this, if
| | 01:43 |
you use an interest for Art Pen.
And that's because, the Art Pen is the
| | 01:51 |
only tool that registers the rotation of
the pen itself.
| | 01:56 |
So, what you can see here is, that I'm
rotating the pen itself, and the brush
| | 02:01 |
tip rotates too.
Now how does this brush look like?
| | 02:07 |
It's bristly, it's quite big.
So it comes very close to the brush that
| | 02:16 |
I'm thinking about, in fact.
But never the less, we want to have a
| | 02:22 |
look on the different settings that these
Natural Media Bristle brushes provide us.
| | 02:30 |
In the Brush Tip Shape dialog, you find
these five sliders over here.
| | 02:36 |
And with these you can control different
aspects of the brush.
| | 02:41 |
The first slider here controls the number
of bristles.
| | 02:45 |
Personally I like to decrease the number
of bristles, to give the brush a more
| | 02:51 |
coarse look.
I think you can see what I mean.
| | 02:58 |
You can also adjust the length of the
bristles that hasn't a very big effect,
| | 03:04 |
for this brush now.
But we will see later how the length of
| | 03:10 |
the bristles can help us to create
certain characteristics in our brush.
| | 03:18 |
And here we have the thickness of the
individual bristles especially if you
| | 03:24 |
using fewer bristles.
The thickness of the individual bristle
| | 03:31 |
is, an important variable.
And then we have the stiffness of the
| | 03:37 |
bristles, and this is a very interesting
feature.
| | 03:42 |
If we lower the stiffness of the
bristles, the whole body of bristles
| | 03:45 |
becomes much more flexible.
If we press harder, the bristles will
| | 03:52 |
thin out, like that.
And we can create very expressive forms
| | 03:59 |
with that.
this attribute, in fact, we will use in a
| | 04:07 |
different brush.
But for now we want to keep the bristles
| | 04:15 |
stiff, quite stiff and I think that we
can nearly keep the brush as it is.
| | 04:28 |
However, I want to turn off the pen
pressure on the opacity because I want
| | 04:34 |
this brush to make very distinct strokes,
very opaque, very stark strokes, and the
| | 04:41 |
opacity shouldn't change for that.
However, we can lower the flow a bit.
| | 04:51 |
Can experiment with that.
So that, takes a bit of the harshness
| | 04:56 |
away, that I created by turning off the
pressure sensitivity and the opacity.
| | 05:10 |
And it makes for some, some transparent,
portions here in the stroke.
| | 05:15 |
And that now looks really nice.
That's in a big brush that can cover huge
| | 05:24 |
areas quite effectively with a distinct
shape.
| | 05:31 |
Yeah that definitely is the brush that I
was looking for.
| | 05:37 |
To keep this brush, we will edit to our
tool presets, and I call it Big Bristle
| | 05:43 |
Brush, the three B's.
That's our third brush.
| | 05:52 |
We still lack some brushes.
So let's directly go on to the next brush.
| | 06:00 |
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| Creating an expressive bristle brush| 00:00 |
The next brush that I want to create is
also going to be a Bristle brush.
| | 00:07 |
But now, I want to have a brush that is
smaller, that has a round pointed shape,
| | 00:14 |
and that is very expressive.
And now, let's see how we end up with a
| | 00:22 |
brush like that.
I picked the round pointed brush shape.
| | 00:32 |
This already looks quite nice.
Yeah, I already like that, but I want to
| | 00:42 |
have a bit more freedom in expression of
this brush stroke.
| | 00:49 |
And for that, we lower the stiffness of
the bristles, to a point when this Stroke
| | 00:57 |
Preview here, gets a bit out of shape.
That's the point I want to be able to
| | 01:05 |
reach with a brush.
And now, you see that when I'm pressing
| | 01:10 |
harder, you can see it very nicely in the
preview above here.
| | 01:16 |
When I press harder, the bristles get
fanned out on the canvas.
| | 01:23 |
And that's a very nice effect that we can
achieve over here.
| | 01:29 |
Now, I want to increase the flow a bit to
make the stroke a little bit darker.
| | 01:42 |
That's more like it.
I want to be able to create very distinct
| | 01:48 |
shapes with this kind of brush.
Now, you can see we have a brush that can
| | 01:57 |
be used very delicately to make very
small details.
| | 02:03 |
But simultaneously, you can push it to
its boundaries and fan out the bristles
| | 02:10 |
and cover large amounts of canvas.
And this is a very nice brush.
| | 02:23 |
I really can't stop working with it.
But I have to.
| | 02:29 |
(LAUGH)
So, this is nice brush.
| | 02:32 |
One of my favorites, to be honest.
And of course, we want to keep it, we
| | 02:38 |
put into our tool Presets, and I will
call it Expressive Bristle Brush.
| | 02:46 |
That's a nice brush.
I bet that you can, can do a, a nice
| | 02:51 |
Japanese calligraphy with it, not that
I'm able to do it, but I imagine that it
| | 02:59 |
would work just perfectly.
All right.
| | 03:09 |
I think we have to start the painting
soon.
| | 03:11 |
I'm eager to use all the nice brushes
that we have created, but not so fast.
| | 03:18 |
There's still one brush missing in our
tool Presets, and that one, we're going
| | 03:25 |
to do now.
| | 03:28 |
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| Creating a texture brush| 00:02 |
Now for our last brush, I will take our
Expressive Bristle Brush and create some
| | 00:10 |
random detail.
I want to create a Texture Brush, a brush
| | 00:18 |
that we can use to apply, a fine texture
to break up surfaces.
| | 00:26 |
And with my Expresive Bristle Brush, I'm
creating this texture now that we are
| | 00:34 |
going to turn into a Custom Texture
Brush.
| | 00:43 |
And using a brush inside Photoshop, for
creating this texture has only one option.
| | 00:50 |
There're several possibilities for you to
create nice textured brushes.
| | 00:55 |
You can take portions out of a photo.
You can take some, some, some tinfoil,
| | 01:02 |
form it into a ball, and dunk it in black
ink, and then make some marks on paper.
| | 01:14 |
Or you can take a sponge and make some
marks with black ink.
| | 01:22 |
There are so many possibilities.
You can take up a real brush, and use
| | 01:30 |
black paint to make a nice texture.
Just experiment with that.
| | 01:38 |
Now I'm working against the black, I have
picked white from the cameras and now I'm
| | 01:46 |
trying to break up some of the strokes
that I made before.
| | 01:55 |
What I'm generally looking for is to let
the marks get smaller at the edge of my
| | 02:04 |
texture, so that the texture fades out to
the edge a bit.
| | 02:14 |
| | 02:19 |
Also, I'm trying to eliminate any marks
that look too prominent, which would be
| | 02:26 |
very easily spotted in our texture, which
could lead to a repetitive result in our
| | 02:33 |
Texture brush.
We don't want any detail this texture to
| | 02:41 |
stand out too much, because we will be
able to distinguish it later when you're
| | 02:47 |
drawing with this brush.
Now, I think that's something we can work with.
| | 02:56 |
All right.
Now we have to capture this this texture
| | 03:03 |
here in order to use it as a brush tip.
I'm using the Marquee selection tool again.
| | 03:11 |
Holding Shift to constrain it to an even
square proportion, and now under Edit >
| | 03:18 |
Define Brush Preset.
We can define our brush tip, and I call
| | 03:25 |
it simply Texture.
And in the brush pallet, when we select
| | 03:32 |
the Brush tool that is, we will find our
tip, somewhere.
| | 03:40 |
There it is, I was waiting for the tool
tip it calls me that this is the right
| | 03:47 |
brush tip.
Let's pick up some black from the canvas
| | 03:51 |
now, so that we are able to paint with
our brush.
| | 03:55 |
Yes, Yes, yes, yes.
That is very nice.
| | 04:01 |
It's still a little big, I will decrease
the brush size to 200.
| | 04:08 |
Oh, yeah.
Now, what can we do to this brush, to,
| | 04:14 |
make it perfect for our needs?
Definitely we have to change the spacing
| | 04:22 |
of the brush a bit, and the point we're
looking for is when the individual brush
| | 04:28 |
tips just go overlapping each other a
bit.
| | 04:34 |
Not too much don't want to have this
segmented effect.
| | 04:39 |
And when they overlap too much, so we
spread them out, so that they have some overlapping.
| | 04:44 |
And that's okay.
We want to give the brush some dynamic,
| | 04:49 |
so that the texture gets more chaotic
more random.
| | 04:53 |
We don't want to work with the brush
pressure here, so I turn it off.
| | 04:58 |
But we want to work with an angle jitter,
and we just, pull it out to 100%.
| | 05:05 |
Now every brush tip is rotated
individually.
| | 05:15 |
And I will clear our canvas, so that we
have some more space to test out our, our
| | 05:22 |
texture brush.
Yes, that's looking good.
| | 05:31 |
And let's have a look here on the
transfer.
| | 05:34 |
Nothing is selected, we'll select the pen
pressure.
| | 05:38 |
Because we want to be able to control the
amount of opacity of our texture, when we
| | 05:43 |
paint it.
| | 05:45 |
| | 05:47 |
I guess that this is the Texture brush
that I was looking for, can create some
| | 05:57 |
nice noisy texture with it.
That is a nice addition to our set of brushes.
| | 06:08 |
This is our last brush that we need for
Digital painting.
| | 06:14 |
And I call it the Texture Brush.
All right.
| | 06:22 |
Well, now we are ready to start to
finally get to the fun of Digital painting.
| | 06:31 |
And I think you are as eager as I am.
| | 06:39 |
| | Collapse this transcript |
|
|
2. Intuitive Color CompositionShapes and layers| 00:02 |
We want to start with a Digital Painting
now finally.
| | 00:05 |
And for the start, I picked up the big
bristle brush form our tool set.
| | 00:11 |
And now, I'm going to zoom into our
cameras a little bit more, and also I'm
| | 00:15 |
hitting the F key on the keyboard.
The F key on the keyboard toggles through
| | 00:22 |
the screen modes of Photoshop.
And the second Screen Mode gives us some
| | 00:28 |
more space on the screen, and also allows
us to move our cameras around freely.
| | 00:34 |
And this really feels nice and I like to
work in that mode very much.
| | 00:43 |
Before we paint, we want to create a new
layer.
| | 00:45 |
I don't want to paint on the background,
I want to start my painting on an
| | 00:49 |
individual layer, and there it is.
And everything we are going to paint now
| | 00:55 |
will end up on this layer.
Why this is important?
| | 00:59 |
We will see in a few minutes.
First, we will choose a color now.
| | 01:04 |
And I want to start by painting with a
dark orange, a reddish-orange.
| | 01:13 |
Also I will scale my brush up a bit.
And now, we start to paint.
| | 01:21 |
And the important thing is that we have
no idea what this painting is going to be.
| | 01:29 |
Really, I have thought up nothing.
I have no plan.
| | 01:35 |
I have a very, very lose direction and,
into which I want to go.
| | 01:41 |
I know that I want to end up with a, a
forest, a jungle scene in which a
| | 01:47 |
character will be visible, too.
But where this character will be, how the
| | 01:55 |
scene will look like, I honestly have no
idea.
| | 02:01 |
The whole concept behind the painting
that I'm doing now is to loosen up and to
| | 02:08 |
get inspired by what happens on the
canvas.
| | 02:20 |
And what I'm concentrating on right now
is to create interesting shapes.
| | 02:24 |
Anythign that comes to my mind.
Also, I'm going to, I'm going to change
| | 02:32 |
the color now getting a bit lighter and a
little more yellow, but still it's
| | 02:40 |
orange, and just react to what's on the
canvas.
| | 02:50 |
Add shapes to, to the mix, create
something.
| | 02:56 |
This really is a very enjoyable workflow,
you're not bound to anything you can just experiment.
| | 03:11 |
I need another color, I guess.
And this time it's going to be a little
| | 03:18 |
bit more darker and greener.
Yes and now I pick up my expressive
| | 03:27 |
bristle brush.
You might remember this one as very
| | 03:33 |
suitable for creating expressive shapes.
And the nice thing about htis brush is
| | 03:40 |
that it is very random.
It is very controllable which exact shape
| | 03:48 |
will be created by it.
That's a quality that I really enjoy in
| | 03:55 |
this phase of the painting.
Because, you know, there are people that
| | 04:03 |
say that Digital Painting isn't painting.
That it is only pushing buttons, and that
| | 04:09 |
the computer is doing the work for you.
That, of course, is not the case.
| | 04:15 |
but, there is something true to it.
The fact is that a long time, the Digital
| | 04:23 |
Painting tools were very stiff and very
predictable.
| | 04:29 |
Well, that caused that you normally could
see when a painting was created digitally
| | 04:36 |
because it was often very clean, very
controlled.
| | 04:43 |
Or that, at least to some count, was
caused by the very predictable and
| | 04:49 |
Digital Painting tools.
But in my opinion, these times are long gone.
| | 04:58 |
And a brush like the, like this
Expressive Bristle Brush here causes a
| | 05:03 |
lot of happy accidents, a lot of chaos, a
lot of unpredictable detail.
| | 05:11 |
And I think it's safe to say that and
Digital Painting now has matured, and is
| | 05:18 |
on eye level with traditional painting.
Now, we have created an area of different
| | 05:27 |
shapes and different colors, on a
separate layer.
| | 05:33 |
And what I'm going to do now is I'm going
to duplicate this layer.
| | 05:39 |
And for that, I'm just grabbing it and
dragging it onto this little document icon.
| | 05:45 |
And by that, it is effectively copied.
And now I can change to the Move tool,
| | 05:51 |
for example, and see that it is indeed,
sitting on its own layer.
| | 05:57 |
It has transparency, you can look through
the holes.
| | 06:02 |
And what I want to do is I want to
transform this layer now, and the easiest
| | 06:08 |
way to do that is to hit Ctrl + T to fire
up the Transform tool.
| | 06:17 |
And now, I want to rotate and size
everything, scale it up in order to mix
| | 06:22 |
these two layers into a new result.
And now, you can see that we have made
| | 06:32 |
our composition more complex.
But this technique works the best if we
| | 06:42 |
don't keep our layers in the Normal Mode.
You can see over here, every new layer is
| | 06:51 |
created in Normal Mode by default.
But in this Pull Down menu here, we have
| | 06:58 |
a lot of options for the Layer Modes.
And we want to have a quick look at the
| | 07:04 |
most important Blend Modes.
Well, a very important Blend Mode, of
| | 07:10 |
course, is the Normal Mode.
And the next important option is the
| | 07:15 |
Multiply Mode that you can see here.
And that effectively takes the content of
| | 07:22 |
the layer.
And with that content, it darkens
| | 07:26 |
everything beneath it.
The exact opposite of that is the Screen Mode.
| | 07:32 |
It lightens up everything beneath it.
And then, there is a Mixed Mode which is
| | 07:39 |
called Overlay.
And the rule for that mode is that
| | 07:44 |
everything that is lighter than 50% gray
in the layer lightens up the elements beneath.
| | 07:53 |
And everything in our Active Layer, in
our Overlay Layer that is darker than 50%
| | 07:59 |
gray, darkens the elements beneath it.
So, these are the three most important modes.
| | 08:06 |
When you're working with layers, of
course, there are many more.
| | 08:09 |
And some of them yield very strange
results.
| | 08:15 |
The Difference Mode, for example, makes
some very wild coloring.
| | 08:20 |
You should experiment with all of them,
and the three that I showed you are just
| | 08:25 |
the most common.
And those that I use the most, but you
| | 08:29 |
sould definitely put some time into
experiment with these modes.
| | 08:35 |
I think I will keep this layer in
Multiply Mode.
| | 08:40 |
And the next thing I'm going to do with
the layer is to change its color.
| | 08:45 |
And to do that, we go under Image >
Adjustments > Hue > Saturation.
| | 08:54 |
Now, with this little dialog here, we
can shift the hue of the whole layer into
| | 09:01 |
a new direction.
And here again the name of the game is,
| | 09:09 |
get inspired and choose.
It's not so much about planning what you
| | 09:16 |
want to do, it's about choosing things
that happened by accident.
| | 09:23 |
Experiment with a different slide as you
can.
| | 09:25 |
Also adjust the saturation.
Can experiment with the lightness.
| | 09:33 |
And I think that I favor this color
composition the most.
| | 09:39 |
Well, let's have a look.
Some blue is nice, too.
| | 09:44 |
But I really like the combination of
reds, oranges, and greens in this one, I guess.
| | 09:51 |
Maybe on the other side.
No, it's nice.
| | 09:55 |
This one, I favor this one.
And that's it.
| | 10:00 |
You just pull around the sliders and see
what happens.
| | 10:05 |
And if you like something, then you keep
it.
| | 10:08 |
And I will keep this one here as I really
like the result.
| | 10:13 |
Now that you have changed the color of
this layer, you can still, if it is selected.
| | 10:19 |
That is, you can still move it around,
and now you can watch out for interesting
| | 10:24 |
shapes that emerge.
Maybe you have the feeling that at some
| | 10:29 |
point, it snaps, it magically snaps into
a position where you'll say, that's it.
| | 10:36 |
That's a nice composition.
And again, the, the point here is to
| | 10:41 |
surprise yourself with random results
that are created by the software.
| | 10:49 |
I really like this position for the
layer.
| | 10:52 |
And the last thing I want to do is to get
rid of the white of this composition
| | 10:57 |
because I don't see a lot of white in the
final image.
| | 11:03 |
so we will choose a color for the
background here and I will just fill it
| | 11:08 |
with a green that was already selected.
Because now I'm, again, I will fire up
| | 11:16 |
the hue and Saturation Setting.
But I'm not going through the menu for
| | 11:22 |
that, I'm hitting the keyboard shortcut,
Ctrl + U, to open hue saturation.
| | 11:32 |
And now just as we did before, I am
taking this slider to find the right
| | 11:37 |
background color for my composition.
Here, it might be useful to experiment
| | 11:47 |
also with the lightness and the
saturation.
| | 11:55 |
I really like the gray that is emerging
here in the background.
| | 12:00 |
It's a nice contrast to the saturated
colors in the other shapes.
| | 12:09 |
And as a rule of thumb, you can keep in
mind that saturated colors look even more
| | 12:15 |
saturated if you contrast them with
unsaturated colors.
| | 12:20 |
So, I guess we will keep this gray over
here.
| | 12:27 |
Yeah.
Now, this is our first abstract color composition.
| | 12:35 |
And this will be the base for our next
steps.
| | 12:40 |
And I really like what emerged here from
all the happy accidents, from all the
| | 12:48 |
dynamic processor that we used.
| | 12:53 |
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Using the Polygonal Lasso tool| 00:02 |
Now this is our abstract color
composition.
| | 00:06 |
And in this step I now want to use
another technique to work on this composition.
| | 00:14 |
And this technique will hover around the
Lasso tool.
| | 00:20 |
And as a quick introduction, I want to
tell you that my preferred mode of the
| | 00:25 |
Lasso tool is the Polygonal lasso tool
and not the Standard lesser tool.
| | 00:32 |
Why is that?
Because, with the Standard lasso tool if
| | 00:36 |
you make a selection.
And now you release the pressure of your
| | 00:39 |
pen, you automatically close it.
But with the Polygonal lasso tool, you
| | 00:46 |
can click several points.
And if you don't click the selection is
| | 00:53 |
not closed, you can continue selecting
anytime.
| | 00:58 |
And by holding down the Alt key, you can
change, you can switch into the Standard
| | 01:05 |
Lasso tool anytime.
Make your round selection with the
| | 01:10 |
Standard Lasso tool.
And if you release Alt, you can then
| | 01:14 |
switch to the Polygonal lasso tools
again.
| | 01:19 |
And this gives you a lot of freedom to
experiment without having to commit to
| | 01:25 |
your selection too fast.
Now I want to use this tool to make a
| | 01:31 |
selection that is inspired by the shapes
that I see in the background.
| | 01:41 |
I kind of snap to some forms in the color
composition.
| | 01:46 |
And try to use these forms, and to
augment them, with my selection.
| | 01:53 |
And this, again, is really intuitive, and
inspired process.
| | 02:01 |
It comes very close to our very first
step when I created random shapes only
| | 02:08 |
that now I'm trying to orient myself on
the shapes that are already here.
| | 02:19 |
And I'm now getting close to the start of
my Lasso selection, and I guess that will
| | 02:27 |
close it now.
Now, what I do now is I hide my selection
| | 02:35 |
by hitting Ctrl+H.
You hide your selection, but it's still active.
| | 02:44 |
And now I totally forget about where my
selection was.
| | 02:48 |
I don't know, well what did I select?
I don't know.
| | 02:51 |
And I pick my big bristle brush.
And now I'm still keep forgetting where
| | 02:56 |
my selection was I'm not interested in my
selection anymore.
| | 03:01 |
And I'm taking a color out of my color
composition.
| | 03:06 |
Any color that grabs my attention.
And I'm really liking this muted green
| | 03:11 |
brown color here.
And now, I have to create a new layer,
| | 03:17 |
and I begin to paint.
| | 03:21 |
| | 03:23 |
Now, why did I turn off the visibility of
my selection?
| | 03:35 |
I want to implement even more chaos and
even more happy accident into my composition.
| | 03:41 |
I only want to hit my selection by chance
at this point.
| | 03:47 |
And by that I'm making sure that, yeah, a
lot of happy accidents can happen again.
| | 03:56 |
And I guess that this should do it for me
now.
| | 04:01 |
And you know I'm starting right now and
by hitting Ctrl+H again you can make your
| | 04:06 |
selection visible again.
But I will deselect it now, Ctrl+D to Deselect.
| | 04:15 |
And now, very vaguely I begin to see a
scene in this color composition.
| | 04:24 |
And as I told you I'm roughly thinking
about a forest or jungle scene.
| | 04:32 |
And what I have created here is in my
eyes a very big root of a big tree.
| | 04:41 |
You might see too, it's covered with
dogmoss.
| | 04:45 |
And it's going around the corners here,
and it's splitting up, and I begin to see
| | 04:51 |
this, now, very clearly.
It's a bit like looking at random patterns.
| | 04:59 |
You know these Rorschach tests where you
are presented random pattern.
| | 05:04 |
And you have to see things in it, and
that happens here too.
| | 05:09 |
In these random color composition, I
begin to see a scene.
| | 05:14 |
And I will try to enhance that scene by
emphasizing the forms that I have encountered.
| | 05:23 |
So if this is a very big tree root here
that maybe goes around here.
| | 05:32 |
I want to select that root
and maybe it's going here too.
| | 05:41 |
I'm losing the root somewhere over here.
But maybe I'm just going to fantasize it,
| | 05:49 |
where it might go.
And I'm introducing even more random
| | 05:55 |
shapes into the design of this thing.
And now, I'm hiding my selection again.
| | 06:07 |
Ctrl+H.
Picking up the expressive bristle brush,
| | 06:11 |
for example.
Now I'm picking the color here right out
| | 06:15 |
of, of the canvas and I'm going to
lighten it up a bit.
| | 06:22 |
And making it a little more greenish.
And now, I'm going over this, well
| | 06:31 |
actually I know that I, selected this
ridge here.
| | 06:37 |
Don't quite know, what the selection was.
And the lower part was I gather here yeah
| | 06:46 |
and here somewhere, yes.
They sort of create some texture here
| | 06:56 |
with this expressive bristle brush.
Now, this is a really big moss covered
| | 07:07 |
tree root.
And I will use the lasso tool now to give
| | 07:13 |
the scene some more form, some more
shading.
| | 07:20 |
And to do that, I select a part of this
tree root, over here.
| | 07:31 |
And now I'm going to use the big soft
brush I'm picking a darker color from
| | 07:40 |
the, from the canvas.
Maybe making it a little blueish.
| | 07:50 |
And now I will change my brush mode to
multiply and before I can apply my color now.
| | 08:02 |
I will have to merge down my layers.
And that's good idea anyways because I
| | 08:09 |
prefer to work with as less layers as
possible.
| | 08:15 |
So I say, Flatten image.
And now I can work on this canvas.
| | 08:23 |
There's no transparancy left here that
can get in my way where it can confuse
| | 08:27 |
the layer or anything like that.
I have just my plain canvas, I have my
| | 08:33 |
slecetion, I have my brush.
And now I can begin to do some shading
| | 08:37 |
over here.
And now, I'm going to do that again in
| | 08:46 |
other places.
The whole reasoning of that is, that by
| | 08:53 |
applying these dark shades, I'm giving
the things form and meaning.
| | 09:02 |
I'm trying to create the impression that
we are seeing into a physical scene here
| | 09:09 |
where light exists.
And by creating darker areas, our
| | 09:16 |
interpretation of that is that the light
get blocked here and there.
| | 09:24 |
And therefore, we have darker areas.
And this transforms our abstract color
| | 09:32 |
composition into an actual physical
scene.
| | 09:38 |
Well not too much yet but it's it's
starting to begin.
| | 09:44 |
And I can enhance that feeling by
selecting again, with the Lasso tool,
| | 09:50 |
this tree root, separating it effectively
from the background.
| | 10:01 |
Selecting this part here.
And now, for a nice little trick, if you
| | 10:05 |
have made one selection, you can append a
new selection to that.
| | 10:11 |
Just hold down the Shift key.
There's a little plus popping up at the
| | 10:16 |
Lasso tool.
And now you can create a new selection,
| | 10:23 |
and just add it to the existing
selection.
| | 10:30 |
And I have now selected the area that is
perhaps the background of my scene.
| | 10:40 |
And I will now, pick up my big brush
again.
| | 10:45 |
Make it even bigger.
And now I take a very light color, light
| | 10:56 |
blueish color.
I even decrease the opacity here in the
| | 11:04 |
Opacity slider.
And now I'm painting, oh not in multiply
| | 11:09 |
mode, you know it gets complicated at
some point.
| | 11:14 |
We want to apply this layer.
Color now and not remote, cuz I don't
| | 11:19 |
want to darken the background, I want to
cover it up, with this little slight haze.
| | 11:27 |
Also here behind the tree root, I want to
create this haze.
| | 11:35 |
As if our scene had depth and admosphere
would fill it up, yes.
| | 11:44 |
If you zoom out now, I think you too will
begin to see this scene with this curled
| | 11:51 |
tree root in the foreground.
And an abstract, still abstract scene in
| | 11:59 |
the background.
But we might be able to enhance all that
| | 12:04 |
in the next steps so that we really end
up with an illustration of an actual
| | 12:09 |
physical scene.
So, we will call it done with the letter
| | 12:17 |
tool at this point.
| | 12:21 |
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Separating the foreground from the background| 00:02 |
In this step now, we want to cut our
artwork into some pieces.
| | 00:07 |
And transform some of these pieces, in
order to enhance our scene further.
| | 00:13 |
Now, cutting out is best done with the
Lasso tool.
| | 00:17 |
And what I want to do now is to separate
the foreground of our scene, from the background.
| | 00:27 |
And I'm just following the edge of this
tree root here, and cut it off from the
| | 00:37 |
background, and do that here too.
And the edge isn't completely defined
| | 00:49 |
here, and you can be a bit roughly.
That's no problem.
| | 00:55 |
And again by pressing Alt, I'm switching
between the Polygon Lasso and the
| | 01:08 |
standard Lasso tool.
Now, this is our foreground.
| | 01:18 |
And I think I want to exclude a little
part from that here.
| | 01:25 |
And what I just did is I started a new
lasso selection by holding the Alt key.
| | 01:31 |
And this makes the Lasso tool, not clear
the existing selection, but it appends
| | 01:37 |
the next selection to the existing one.
And that's very handy to create complex
| | 01:44 |
selections where you have to cut holes
out of the selection and things like that.
| | 01:52 |
Now this is our foreground and now that's
a really nice keyboard shortcut to
| | 01:56 |
position this foreground into it's own
layer and it's Ctrl+J.
| | 02:01 |
And what happen now, is my selection was
directly copied into a new layer and
| | 02:08 |
that's a really handy shortcut.
Now, I have successfully separated the
| | 02:15 |
foreground from the background, and now I
can directly do some experimentation.
| | 02:22 |
I really like to experiment at every
stage of the painting.
| | 02:27 |
I'm firing up the Hue/Saturation slider
again with Ctrl+U.
| | 02:32 |
And I'm going to adjust the color of the
background a bit, and see if it does any good.
| | 02:44 |
I'll maybe make it a little lighter.
That will enhance the depth of the scene.
| | 02:53 |
Maybe pulling it a little into the green
direction.
| | 02:57 |
that's a good idea.
I think I will keep that, and now I want
| | 03:05 |
to demonstrate another interesting
technique to you.
| | 03:12 |
And for that, I'm going to select a part
of my foreground, a part of my tree root
| | 03:24 |
here, and again I'm hitting Ctrl+J.
To put this cutout onto it's own layer.
| | 03:41 |
And now, I'm going to position this piece
of the root behind the main root, you see?
| | 03:53 |
And now I'm going to use a very nice tool
and I have waited a long time to see this
| | 03:59 |
tool be implemented into Photoshop, it's
the Puppet Warp.
| | 04:05 |
That is a tool that already existed in
After Effects and now you have it in
| | 04:11 |
Photoshop too and with the Puppet Warp
tool you can project your layer content,
| | 04:18 |
onto a 3D mesh.
Or, well, it's a 2D mesh, in fact, and
| | 04:26 |
you can distort it, like crazy.
As you can see, this technique helps us
| | 04:36 |
to create this little branched off root,
to make our scene more complex.
| | 04:47 |
And I hit Enter, and there it is.
Branched off from the original root.
| | 04:54 |
And now I will do that a few times, in
order to create a nice, complex root.
| | 05:10 |
So the basic idea is, to pick content
that's already there and make something
| | 05:20 |
out of it.
And that is really a revolutionary
| | 05:27 |
approach if you ask me.
That goes so much beyond traditional
| | 05:32 |
painting, without compromising it in any
way, if you asked me.
| | 05:38 |
Because this is content that we have
created, that we have painted.
| | 05:42 |
And now we're just using this content in
another context to enhance our scene.
| | 05:48 |
And if we have a little edge like here.
Where the new piece doesn't fit into the
| | 05:55 |
existing one, we just pick up the Eraser
and erase this edge off.
| | 06:02 |
And make a smooth transition between the
existing parts of the images and the new ones.
| | 06:09 |
And I want to create yet another one.
Ctrl+J, and I want to put some root over here.
| | 06:32 |
Puppet Warp tool helps me doing that.
You can add these little points here at
| | 06:41 |
any time.
Also, to change the proportions of the element.
| | 06:58 |
And maybe after you have distorted, you
want to scale it a bit.
| | 07:05 |
Ctrl+T, fires out the Transform tool, and
you can change the size and the
| | 07:11 |
orientation of the element.
Again, I'm doing some, eraser work here.
| | 07:23 |
Now, this tree root looks very
interesting.
| | 07:33 |
Obviously, we could repeat that several
times to create even more branches of the
| | 07:40 |
root, even smaller ones.
We can make very quick trick here.
| | 07:46 |
We will duplicate the last root we
created, by pulling it over this little
| | 07:50 |
document icon here on the Layer palette.
I will position it at the very top.
| | 07:59 |
I take it, and I scale it.
Ctrl+T for the Transform tool.
| | 08:09 |
And I put it here to create yet another
branch.
| | 08:14 |
And again, I guess you begin to see the
pattern here.
| | 08:21 |
It's all about inspiration.
It's about seeing what stuff fits, and
| | 08:27 |
finding that out by experimentation, and
now this looks nice and complex.
| | 08:36 |
And what I'm going to do now is I'm
selecting the root that is lying beneath
| | 08:40 |
all that, and I'm going to paint some
shading into it.
| | 08:45 |
Again, I'm switching to the multiply
mode, and I'm going to make my brush a
| | 08:51 |
little bit smaller.
And now, under these tree roots that I
| | 08:59 |
created I have to increase the opacity a
bit here.
| | 09:08 |
Under these branches of the roots that I
created, I darken the element behind it,
| | 09:12 |
beneath it.
In order to give everything more dimension.
| | 09:22 |
This is light, being blocked by the,
these new roots, darkening everything
| | 09:28 |
behind it.
We'll do that, also here.
| | 09:32 |
And also we can do the same with the
individual roots.
| | 09:40 |
Here's a nice little feature of the Layer
palette.
| | 09:43 |
Click this little checkerboard icon here.
This locks the transparency of the layer,
| | 09:49 |
which means that I'm only painting on the
pixel that are in this layer.
| | 09:55 |
I can paint over the edge and helps me to
put some shading into these roots.
| | 10:07 |
Now I have to find out which is which and
to put some dark shading on the back of
| | 10:11 |
this root, for example.
Now.
| | 10:15 |
And I also want to put some shading on
the down-facing parts of this root,
| | 10:23 |
indicating that there's really no light
hitting there.
| | 10:37 |
All right.
Our scene begins to emerge.
| | 10:42 |
In my eyes it's already a very clean
scene.
| | 10:45 |
It's a giant tree root that comes from
above, that sits on some rocks.
| | 10:52 |
And in the background there is some green
jungley chaos.
| | 10:57 |
This is a very good base to start with
some brush techniques, some more
| | 11:02 |
traditional painting techniques, that we
will now use to develop our scene further.
| | 11:12 |
| | Collapse this transcript |
|
|
3. Painting in DetailEnhancing the light in the scene| 00:02 |
Now we want to do some large scale
adjustments to our scene, and we want to
| | 00:07 |
try to model it out with light a little
bit more.
| | 00:12 |
Now, to do that we ill use two
techniques.
| | 00:16 |
The first one is modelling light and
atmosphere with a very large soft brush.
| | 00:21 |
So, I'm picking up my big soft brush.
Making it a little bit bigger, again.
| | 00:29 |
And I'm, will now try to enhance the
feeling of the background.
| | 00:35 |
The background is very light at the
moment, and that's good.
| | 00:38 |
Because it, gives a nice contrast to the
saturated foreground, an so.
| | 00:44 |
Background and foreground are separated
nicely, but it's looking a little bit
| | 00:49 |
dull back there.
So we will try to apply some color to
| | 00:54 |
remedy that.
The first thing I want to do, is to
| | 00:58 |
change my brush mode to Overlay.
Which is a very nice mode to to change
| | 01:03 |
the atmosphere of your image.
I will pick up a very light orange-yellow
| | 01:12 |
and now I'm going to paint in the
background.
| | 01:19 |
And as you can see the background takes
this yellow, orange, very nicely, giving
| | 01:30 |
it a very sunny and warm atmosphere.
And now, I'm going to take a cold color,
| | 01:42 |
a blue, and I will put it here in the top
region.
| | 01:52 |
And I will switch my mode to Multiply.
Now I will darken the top most edge of
| | 01:58 |
the background a bit.
Give it even more depth and atmosphere.
| | 02:06 |
So we have light and shade.
In this background and the important
| | 02:11 |
thing is that it still seperates nicely
from the foreground.
| | 02:16 |
Now I want to model with light a bit and
I'm using a nice little trick for that.
| | 02:23 |
First what I'm going to do is I'm going
to merge all the layers that make up the
| | 02:28 |
foreground, all the pieces of the roots.
And we create it with the Puppet Warp tool.
| | 02:35 |
I want to merge all these layers, and
there's a keyboard shortcut for that too,
| | 02:39 |
Ctrl + E, merges all selected layers.
By the way, you can select several
| | 02:44 |
layers, by holding down the Shift key.
Now I am duplicating this Foreground
| | 02:50 |
layer by dragging it, on the little
document icon.
| | 02:54 |
Now I have a copy of my Foreground layer
and I'm switching over to the Screen mode.
| | 03:01 |
With this layer and this effectively
lightens up the whole scene.
| | 03:06 |
But I don't want to lighten the whole
scene up.
| | 03:10 |
I only want to lighten certain parts of
it up, so I'm giving this copy of my
| | 03:14 |
Foreground layer and Layer Mask.
And I select the Layer Mask by clicking
| | 03:21 |
onto it, and I hit Ctrl + I in order to
invert it.
| | 03:25 |
Now the layer is mask is black, and that
means that nothing of my copied
| | 03:30 |
Foreground layer is visible right now.
Now I select the mask and I pick up my
| | 03:37 |
expressive Bristle brush, and this is
loaded with white right at the moment.
| | 03:44 |
And when you are painting with white into
a mask, you will reveal part of the layer
| | 03:49 |
that is masked off.
So, by painting white into the mask, I'm
| | 03:56 |
revealing those parts of the layer that
are lightening up my scene in the foreground.
| | 04:05 |
And I do that to create the effect that
some parts of my foreground are hid by light.
| | 04:19 |
And I've chosen a light direction from
right to left.
| | 04:27 |
And all parts that face right where we
see some of this sunlight that is coming
| | 04:40 |
from there.
Not only the roots will receive some
| | 04:48 |
light from there but also the rocks those
roots are sitting on.
| | 05:04 |
And by leaving some parts out of that,
I'm able to create some texture, some
| | 05:09 |
additional texture here.
And now we can have a look.
| | 05:19 |
We can turn this layer on and off and we
can see that it is like turning off the
| | 05:24 |
light or turning it on.
It's like a light switch now, what we
| | 05:29 |
have here.
And of course we want to keep the light on.
| | 05:34 |
Also, what we can do now is, we can make
a little color correction to our light.
| | 05:40 |
For that, I'm opening up the Color
Balance palette.
| | 05:43 |
There's a nice shortcut for it.
If you don't want to get it over Image >
| | 05:48 |
Adjustments > Color Balance, you can use
Ctrl+B.
| | 05:54 |
With this color lalance I will now try to
change the overall color of the sunlight
| | 05:59 |
that is hitting our surfaces now.
And it normally is a good idea to distort
| | 06:04 |
it a little to the yellow and the reds.
Like this.
| | 06:10 |
Now, with that we have now effectively
modeled our scene with light.
| | 06:18 |
And with these large scale adjustments.
We have reached a point where we now can
| | 06:25 |
use some brush work some traditional
painting, to detail our jungle scene.
| | 06:35 |
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Painting the foreground| 00:02 |
Now we can do some traditional painting
on our artwork and for that I'm going to
| | 00:08 |
merge these two layers that make up the
foreground of my scene.
| | 00:15 |
Ctrl+E is the shortcut to merge selected
layers.
| | 00:20 |
And now we're going to go in, and I
picked up my expressive bristle brush and
| | 00:27 |
now we're going to do some hands-on
painting.
| | 00:34 |
I set the opacity of my brush to about
60% so that the color application, isn't
| | 00:42 |
completely opaque.
And I'm working with constantly
| | 00:50 |
switching between painting and picking a
color.
| | 00:58 |
You can pick a color from the canvas by
hitting the Alt key.
| | 01:04 |
And personally, I put the Alt key onto
the rear button of my Intuos4 grip pen so
| | 01:11 |
that I don't have to reach out for the
keyboard every time I want to pick a
| | 01:17 |
color cuz color picking really happens
often in this workflow now.
| | 01:27 |
As you can see, I always pick a color,
paint a little bit with it, then change
| | 01:34 |
it again.
I really want to keep the complexities of
| | 01:43 |
the colors that are in our artwork right
now.
| | 01:49 |
This mixture of color happened during our
abstract color composition in the beginning.
| | 01:57 |
And I don't want to cover all these nice
and rich colors up with my painting, so
| | 02:03 |
I'm constantly picking a new color, and
try to keep the colors really complex, here.
| | 02:13 |
This root here isn't very
nicely separated from the background.
| | 02:23 |
We will have to fix that in the
background later just seeing that right now.
| | 02:34 |
And basically what I'm doing is I'm
creating some detail, that wasn't created
| | 02:39 |
by the rather, chrotic processes that we
had in the earlier steps.
| | 02:58 |
Trying to flesh out these roots here, and
the plants that are growing on it.
| | 03:09 |
The moss and, I'm constantly getting
inspired by the things that are already there.
| | 03:24 |
I try to come up with ideas what I'm
seeing over there, I see some green stuff
| | 03:31 |
so perhaps I'm letting it hang down here
a bit.
| | 03:40 |
And here, this gray is the rock I use
this color to create some rocky texture
| | 03:50 |
and maybe where the color ruins the
impression of rock, I will paint over it.
| | 04:06 |
Now, as we paint like a painter with a
brush, choosing color, applying the color
| | 04:14 |
to the different places in the painting.
We make sure that what we
| | 04:24 |
see hear and what we paint makes a bit
more sense.
| | 04:36 |
The fact that this scene emerged from
abstract color composition means that
| | 04:41 |
some of the parts make sense, and some of
the parts don't make sense at all.
| | 04:47 |
What we are trying to do with our brush
is to bring sense to the most parts of
| | 04:52 |
this painting now.
However, we don't cover up everything for
| | 04:58 |
example, this red color here, you might
come up with the idea to cover it up
| | 05:03 |
completely because you say, this is all
rock here.
| | 05:09 |
We don't want to have this red there.
But I keep some of the red because it 's
| | 05:14 |
part of the interesting color scheme of
this illustration.
| | 05:20 |
And if we cover it up, if we separate
everything clearly, this is rock, this is
| | 05:26 |
a root, this is moss, then the scene will
become a bit predictable, a bit boring maybe.
| | 05:35 |
So we leave some of the red in the rocks
over there, and we don't bother so much
| | 05:45 |
what the red is.
Maybe it's a kind of plant, a kind of
| | 05:57 |
lichen with a red color and in fact, as
we have it there on the rocks, we might
| | 06:02 |
as well have some of it on the other
rocks too.
| | 06:07 |
And that again makes sense and if the
viewer sees these elements and sees oh,
| | 06:15 |
okay you have these red spots on the
rocks maybe it's some kind of lichen,
| | 06:22 |
some kind of mushroom fungus.
maybe it's just iron oxide, maybe these
| | 06:35 |
rocks have a lot of iron inside of them
and it's just rust on the surface.
| | 06:48 |
Whatever it is, by applying it to several
places in the scene, it begins to make
| | 06:57 |
sense and, you're beginning to tell a
little story here.
| | 07:08 |
Also implying some leafy structures over
here, but to make this plant detail like
| | 07:17 |
little leaves and things like that.
I have another technique in mind that we
| | 07:28 |
will apply just a little bit later so I
won't get into this too much now.
| | 07:39 |
I'm trying to do is to render out this
scene with the roots and give form to
| | 07:54 |
that whole scene.
Yes.
| | 08:14 |
Now I will increase the opacity of my
brush because what I want to do is some
| | 08:21 |
very opaque detail here on the down
facing side of the road.
| | 08:29 |
I want to create some plants, hanging
plants and I want to have very strong
| | 08:38 |
silhouette against the background here,
and for that I need, really opaque color.
| | 08:59 |
That is very effective, by the way,
silhouettes, shapes, dark shapes against
| | 09:05 |
light background.
That's working very nicely.
| | 09:10 |
And the good thing is you don't have to
put much work into these shapes.
| | 09:18 |
They can be really simple, but they work
and they are attracting the eye because
| | 09:28 |
there's so much contrast in them.
In fact, we have to be careful that they
| | 09:38 |
don't have too much of the attention of
the viewer, because we might want to
| | 09:46 |
focus that attention at other places.
But to lower the focus on these parts and
| | 09:57 |
these shapes and sillouttes we can adjust
the likeness in the background when we
| | 10:05 |
come to that.
And that will give us all the options to
| | 10:13 |
fine-tune this element of the
illustration.
| | 10:20 |
Now, I'm using some of this very and
since I'm not painting silhouettes
| | 10:28 |
anymore, I'm going to lower the opacity
again so that the color application
| | 10:36 |
doesn't cover up everything.
That's the basic idea behind the lower
| | 10:46 |
opacity here.
We have so much interesting shapes and
| | 10:50 |
textures in our painting, and if we paint
over that with full opacity we just cover
| | 10:55 |
everything up.
It's not like in a traditional painting
| | 11:01 |
where you would keep some of the texture.
That's not happening on the digital canvas.
| | 11:13 |
So you have to make sure that all these
nice details that are already on the canvas.
| | 11:23 |
If you don't cover that up completely or
you will lose a lot of the complexity
| | 11:30 |
that was achieved by the steps that we
performed before.
| | 11:39 |
Now this is starting to look really
interesting.
| | 11:49 |
I will do some hanging plants over here
too and this is looking very organic and
| | 11:58 |
the jungle feeling works very nicely, I
think.
| | 12:07 |
Of course, we have to create some more
silhouettes over here.
| | 12:28 |
Again I have increased my opacity to
100%, again, to create these shapes here
| | 12:34 |
and also here, I want to have some nice
shapes.
| | 12:44 |
Yes, I just love these little details and
dark areas where the light doesn't shine
| | 12:51 |
and where you can, where your imagination
can model out the scene for you.
| | 13:01 |
What's hiding in these dark places?
What kind of creatures will you find if
| | 13:07 |
you lift up the rocks there?
These are the kinds of questions you want
| | 13:14 |
to raise in the mind of the, of the
viewer of your artwork.
| | 13:25 |
In their mind, they are supposed to go on
an adventure inside your artwork and to
| | 13:34 |
achieve that by the way you shouldn't
become too specific with your painting.
| | 13:48 |
I started to loosen up my painting style
some time ago.
| | 13:54 |
And my experience is that the looser your
paint and the more you imply detail
| | 14:00 |
instead of rendering it out, the more the
viewer is able to make his own guesses
| | 14:07 |
about what's going on.
And you can't possibly create a better
| | 14:16 |
image, an image that is better than the
imagination of the viewer.
| | 14:24 |
So, take advantage of that.
Don't render too much detail in your
| | 14:34 |
artwork, just enough to get the point
across.
| | 14:45 |
The detail that is needed in this image
here only has to say we are in a wild
| | 14:50 |
jungle scene.
It doesn't have to say what exactly is in
| | 14:55 |
this scene.
It just needs to imply it and so the
| | 15:02 |
viewer can make his own guess, can use
his own imagination to put in the details
| | 15:08 |
that you maybe have missed.
Now I'm going to cover some parts up here
| | 15:17 |
that are still a bit rough that do not
quite fit the rest of the painting.
| | 15:28 |
But then, we are very close to finishing
off this foreground scene and we can then
| | 15:40 |
put some attention onto the background.
The cracks in the rocks, always nice, yeah.
| | 16:10 |
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Painting the background| 00:02 |
Now that we have defined our foreground
it's time to put some work into the
| | 00:07 |
background too.
I'm selecting the background layer for
| | 00:13 |
that and well I figure since we have this
root coming from above.
| | 00:21 |
That we are in a scene with giant trees,
and we should see something at, in the
| | 00:28 |
background too.
And I take from my tool presets, the big
| | 00:34 |
Bristle brush, and I'm going to pick some
of the dark colors here in the background.
| | 00:43 |
And I will use them to paint some
structures, some giant roots to reflect
| | 00:56 |
the foreground scene.
So this basically is a scene, an exotic
| | 01:09 |
jungle or giant roots come from above.
And I'm changing to the Expressive
| | 01:17 |
Bristel brush to create some smaller
detail in these roots.
| | 01:37 |
What we can see in the foreground is one
really giant root goes way up into the sky.
| | 01:48 |
into giant canopy of leaves, treetops,
and I also want to give these structures
| | 01:56 |
a little bit of shading, scale down my
brush.
| | 02:03 |
I want to indicate the same light
direction as in the foreground Layer.
| | 02:14 |
Light is coming from the right side,
illuminating these roots.
| | 02:31 |
I will now take an even darker version of
the color that I was painting with and
| | 02:41 |
now I'm going to paint the very dark
parts of these structures.
| | 02:53 |
And again I'm putting some, vines in
here, some hanging plants so that the
| | 03:01 |
background begins to fit to the elements
in the foreground.
| | 03:12 |
Repeating these shapes, these patterns,
really ties the two layers together, the
| | 03:23 |
foreground and the background layer.
And now what I'm going to do is, I'm
| | 03:35 |
going to take my Big Soft brush, and, I'm
going to change the mode to Multiply.
| | 03:48 |
And I'm darkening the top of the
background even further so let only, at
| | 03:57 |
the horizon, so to say these bright spots
remain.
| | 04:06 |
The roots grow up into this dark ceiling,
so to say, creating a cave like atmosphere.
| | 04:17 |
Darkening the lower parts here too and by
that I further enhance the feeling of a cave.
| | 04:32 |
Personally I love caves, and I love
jungles and forests so the combination of
| | 04:39 |
the two is very, very attractive to.
I add some more detail here, a little part.
| | 04:49 |
And you can see now that the problem we
had at some point at this root here
| | 04:55 |
wasn't visually separated from the
background enough.
| | 05:01 |
This problem has vanished, we fix it in
the background, so to say and that's very
| | 05:08 |
convenient now.
Now, I want to go for some really bright highlights.
| | 05:19 |
I want to indicate that sunlight, is
shining, through the roots, and I will
| | 05:26 |
undo this stroke.
That didn't quite land where it was
| | 05:31 |
supposed to.
I'm defining the shapes of more roots in
| | 05:42 |
the background by painting the spaces
between them.
| | 05:48 |
These big roots here were painted by
painting the roots themself.
| | 05:54 |
But in the background I'm indicating even
more roots by painting the bright spaces
| | 06:02 |
between them, and that is something you
should keep in mind.
| | 06:13 |
There's always two posibilities to define
a shape.
| | 06:17 |
You can paint the shape, you can paint
the negative space between the shapes.
| | 06:25 |
Always choose the method that is most
effective.
| | 06:38 |
Yes.
We're zooming out a bit to see what I
| | 06:42 |
have created here and I have a lot of
blue now in the background, and a lot of
| | 06:48 |
green and red in the foreground.
And those are not quite fitting right at
| | 06:57 |
the moment so I'll take, once again, the
very big brush, make it even bigger.
| | 07:06 |
Pick some of the greenish-yellow colors
here in the foreground, and I'm switching
| | 07:13 |
to Overlay mode.
Now I will paint this color over the
| | 07:18 |
background, and this is quite dark, so it
darkened.
| | 07:25 |
And now I'm picking a lighter version of
the color and by that I'm lightening on
| | 07:31 |
the background.
And now they fit together a little better
| | 07:37 |
but, they also got fuse together a bit.
The visual separation between them isn't
| | 07:45 |
quite perfect anymore.
So, I'm changing my mode to Normal and
| | 07:51 |
introduce a little bit more haze to the
whole scene, and this again I'm going to
| | 07:58 |
paint in a very light blue with a very
low opacity.
| | 08:07 |
And I have to watch out that I don't
paint everything blue again when I have
| | 08:13 |
just made adjustments to get rid of the
blue.
| | 08:19 |
What I have to do is I have to lighten
things up a bit so that the scene gets
| | 08:23 |
more depth, like that, and you don't see
much of the blue, it's a very subtle affect.
| | 08:31 |
But it's effective because haze, if
normally of blue color, and that enhances
| | 08:39 |
the depth of the scene a lot.
Now I will say that the background is
| | 08:47 |
quite finished, but I want to use, for
the first time, by the way, the texture
| | 08:53 |
brush in order to overlay a little bit of
texture over the background so that it
| | 08:59 |
looks more complex.
Because we have right at the moment, we
| | 09:06 |
have quite the same sight of brush
strokes.
| | 09:08 |
In the foreground and the background, and
for that reason the background lacks the
| | 09:13 |
bit of detail.
Things are farther away, and we would
| | 09:16 |
expect them to be a lot more detailed.
I don't want to paint all the detail, I
| | 09:22 |
just want to indicate it and for that I'm
using the texture brush.
| | 09:27 |
And what I'm going to do is I'm choosing
a 50% gray for this texture brush, and
| | 09:34 |
I'm going to change the mode to Overlay.
When I paint now, nothing happens,
| | 09:44 |
because as I explained earlier the
overlay mode works that way.
| | 09:50 |
That if you have a color lighter than 50%
gray you paint lighter you brighten up
| | 09:56 |
and if you use a color darker than 50%
gray you darken the things you paint over.
| | 10:05 |
Now if you pick 50% gray you do nothing.
And so I leveled the brush to a point
| | 10:10 |
where it does nothing and now if I get a
little bit lighter like 55% gray, you can
| | 10:15 |
see the amount of brightness here besides
the little b.
| | 10:22 |
100% brightness is white and 0%
brightness is black.
| | 10:28 |
So 50% is grey and if we increase this by
maybe 5% we now will make very subtle
| | 10:38 |
light adjustment to the background.
I will zoom in for you to see this effect.
| | 10:50 |
There you can see it.
We have created a very light texture,
| | 10:55 |
now, over our scene.
And we will now do the opopsite, we will
| | 11:02 |
go 5% below 50% gray, and we will make
some dark texture too.
| | 11:14 |
And this creates some visual detail from
noise that indicates detail for the eye
| | 11:21 |
so that the background looks a bit
farther away.
| | 11:28 |
Of course this effect is limited to a
certain degree, but in most cases it's
| | 11:34 |
quite a nice, technique to, save some
time and give several elements of the
| | 11:40 |
scene a bit more of complexity.
Now we finish our background and we look
| | 11:48 |
at our painting and I think that we can
put a bit more detail into the foreground.
| | 11:56 |
And I have a special technique for that
in mind that we will explore in the next video.
| | 12:03 |
| | 12:07 |
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Creating a leaf brush| 00:02 |
Now I want to create some additional
detail in the foreground, and for that I
| | 00:07 |
want to use, a custom brush, and this
custom brush will be created inside a new document.
| | 00:15 |
We'll make a new document, and it doesn't
have to be a big, 800 x 800 is enough and
| | 00:24 |
this custom brush, should include some
leaf detail.
| | 00:34 |
Now, I'm using the Lasso tool, to create
some leaves like that.
| | 00:44 |
And now I'm using my big soft brush, I
make it a little smaller, change the
| | 00:53 |
color to black.
And now I paint only the tips of these
| | 01:02 |
leaves really black, and I let it fade
out to white at the bottom.
| | 01:09 |
I Deselect, and to make sure that it
really fades out to white in the bottom,
| | 01:13 |
I pick white from the background and
paint some white over the bottom of the
| | 01:18 |
leaves here.
And that is a brush tip I want to use.
| | 01:24 |
I capture it with the Marquee Selection
tool, and I define a new brush preset
| | 01:32 |
called, leaf.
And we have a look inside our brush
| | 01:40 |
pallet,so like our Brush tool.
And there it is, our leaf brush.
| | 01:47 |
And it's looking like that right at the
moment.
| | 01:53 |
And now you can see that, you maybe can
guess what my plan is.
| | 01:58 |
I want to create a brush that creates
some dense leaf detail in one brush stroke.
| | 02:07 |
And for this we will adjust some more
parameters.
| | 02:12 |
We want to have some shape dyanamic in
here.
| | 02:16 |
We want to have size jitter so that every
leaf is a little bit scaled randomly.
| | 02:26 |
We want to have a minimum diameter so
that the leaves don't get too small.
| | 02:30 |
We want to have the slight angle jitter.
And we also want the angle to be adjusted
| | 02:37 |
by the direction of the stroke.
And this is a very important point, and I
| | 02:44 |
want to demonstrate to you.
This is the normal behavior of the brush.
| | 02:51 |
If I'm drawing a circle, and, let me
clear the canvas so that, that I have
| | 02:56 |
enough space to show it.
If I'm drawing a circle normally the
| | 03:03 |
brush tip will always point up.
Now if we use direction on the angle jitter.
| | 03:11 |
The brush tip will rotate around the
circle when I draw a circle, and you can
| | 03:17 |
see already in this little stroke that I
made here, that this is a very nice brush
| | 03:23 |
to create leaf detail around forms.
So, we also want to have some (UNKNOWN)
| | 03:34 |
that means the brush tip is randomly
flipped in the X axis.
| | 03:43 |
We don't want to flip it in the Y axis,
because then some of the brushes will
| | 03:47 |
point down and we don't wish that.
Now, this is the brush that I was looking
| | 03:54 |
for, and as always, we keep that brush in
our tool Presets, and we call it, the
| | 04:01 |
leaf brush.
Now, we go back to our illustration.
| | 04:11 |
And here, we can use this leaf brush to
grate effect.
| | 04:17 |
I will create a new layer, and on that, I
will now paint with my leaf brush.
| | 04:26 |
And you can see that now with this brush,
it is easy as pie to create interesting
| | 04:34 |
detail on these roots.
Just as if they were covered in moss.
| | 04:46 |
And it's really easy to do.
Got a bit excited here.
| | 04:57 |
What I'm doing now is I'm picking these
shades of green from all over the canvas,
| | 05:07 |
and I paint these leaf details in all
sorts of shades of green, dark and light
| | 05:15 |
everything to create this detail here.
And our brush is nicely following
| | 05:29 |
contours of our objects.
Now, this space here looks a bit flat.
| | 05:43 |
I use the leaf brush to create some nice
detailed texture.
| | 05:55 |
And you see this edge here, it looks very
clean and hard.
| | 06:00 |
And with our leaf brush, we can make it
look very organic in no time.
| | 06:06 |
| | 06:08 |
And we can further enhance our scene if
we now get even a little bit lighter, and
| | 06:21 |
draw light leaves at the outlines.
This gives some perspective, and form to
| | 06:38 |
the elements here, in the scene.
And you can't imagine that, this sort of
| | 06:48 |
brush is not only very practical for
painting leaves, but also for painting
| | 06:53 |
grass, for painting hair, for basically
everything that is composed out of very
| | 06:59 |
small elements that repeat.
And that are aligned along the surface.
| | 07:11 |
For all these elements, this brush is
very, very useful.
| | 07:21 |
Now, we have some really nice detail.
And let me turn it off just to see the difference.
| | 07:27 |
Before, after.
That's some really nice detail we created here.
| | 07:37 |
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Painting a character| 00:02 |
Now I want to put a final element into my
illustration, and this is going to be a
| | 00:07 |
character, because every scene becomes
more involving and more attractive to the
| | 00:12 |
viewer if there's a character in it.
And for this character I will finally
| | 00:22 |
pick up our Diamond Detailer brush, with
the coolest name, for the last detail.
| | 00:31 |
I'm picking a random color from the
canvas, and I'm going to do now is to, to
| | 00:37 |
draw the silhouette, the shape, of my
character.
| | 00:45 |
And I have painted this character a lot
of times and know most of it by heart.
| | 00:58 |
you could do a preliminary drawing to
create the shape.
| | 01:04 |
But I suggest to you to give a try to
create an element like character just by
| | 01:12 |
painting it's shape.
That's really an interesting experience.
| | 01:18 |
And you will find out I guess that the
human brain is thinking in shapes anyway,
| | 01:23 |
and that when you play around with it a
bit you will see that it's not so hard to
| | 01:28 |
come up with the right shape, of a
certain element.
| | 01:35 |
And the cool thing is that you can always
trim the shape.
| | 01:40 |
You could use the eraser or, in my case I
just, use the Lasso tool to trim the shape.
| | 01:48 |
And it is a bit like, using a
paper-cutting technique.
| | 01:55 |
You create the shapes, the silhouettes
and the character emerges from it.
| | 02:05 |
It's the protagonist from my digital
graphic novel, The Wormworld Saga, and
| | 02:12 |
he's the one who has ventured into this
weird forest we created.
| | 02:23 |
Again, I'm trimming here.
You can not only trim these shapes.
| | 02:30 |
You can also use, for example, the
Transform tool.
| | 02:36 |
You can use the Move tool to move them
around.
| | 02:38 |
You can, and by hitting Ctrl+T use the
Transform tool, you can adjust the pivot
| | 02:44 |
point of the rotation and rotate it until
it fits your needs, and then you just
| | 02:51 |
finish it off and just play around with
it a bit.
| | 02:59 |
Perhaps it needs some fixing, some
adjustment but in the end, I guess, you
| | 03:06 |
will come up with a nice result.
A very big advantage of this technique is
| | 03:14 |
that if you draw a character, if you draw
anything, it always comes to the
| | 03:19 |
question, if you create a compelling
silhouette.
| | 03:25 |
You always should try to paint a view, or
to draw a view of an object, where it
| | 03:32 |
takes on its most prominent silhouette.
So, just to make the point If you were
| | 03:42 |
painting a teapot, you wouldn't paint it
this way.
| | 03:49 |
No, you would paint it this way.
So that you can see the prominent
| | 03:57 |
features of the teapot.
They are here too in this silhouette, but
| | 04:05 |
it is rotated in a way that you can't see
that.
| | 04:09 |
So it's always about finding the
prominent silhouette, the most iconic
| | 04:14 |
silhouette of something.
So that's the reason why I have the sword here.
| | 04:22 |
He could also hold the sword closer to
his body and the silhouette might merge
| | 04:26 |
with his body and.
But that would in fact make the
| | 04:30 |
silhouette less attractive and less
easier to read.
| | 04:38 |
Now, I have finished the silhouette of
the character and now I'm going to lock
| | 04:42 |
its transparency with this little
checkerboard icon here, and what I can do
| | 04:47 |
now is I can paint inside this silhouette
and and I won't be able to paint over the edges.
| | 04:55 |
So I can now take on different elements
of the character, like the backpack for example.
| | 05:08 |
And what I do now is, I choose one color
for each element, creating again simple
| | 05:16 |
silhouettes as the silhouette of the
backpack.
| | 05:23 |
Can use the same color, in fact, for the
wooden sword.
| | 05:28 |
I will now pick a color for the skin.
And here's an ear.
| | 05:39 |
The rest is hair.
I will now pick a color for the red
| | 05:46 |
jumper he is wearing.
It's a turtle neck color here.
| | 06:06 |
And in fact we have some skin color over
here where his hand is holding the sword.
| | 06:11 |
And by doing that you're creating new
shapes.
| | 06:17 |
Shapes and silhouettes and these are
shapes inside the character.
| | 06:23 |
And again you have the chance to choose
the right shapes so that you can read the
| | 06:30 |
forms effectively.
And if we had chosen to draw the shape of
| | 06:37 |
the sword inside the character, then it
wouldn't have shown up in the overall
| | 06:42 |
shape, but we would have, of course, the,
the chance to show the silhouette inside
| | 06:48 |
the character with its own shape.
And now, nearly every element of the
| | 07:01 |
character has its own color.
The shoes are made of two materials, a
| | 07:09 |
light plastic one, and the red.
And now that we have created the
| | 07:17 |
different parts of the figure, it already
works.
| | 07:23 |
You can completely see what's going on
here.
| | 07:26 |
You have this boy, he has a backpack on
his back and he's carrying a wooden sword
| | 07:31 |
and he's wearing jeans.
Everything already works.
| | 07:36 |
All it lacks right now is some shading in
order to let it look more three dimensional.
| | 07:47 |
For every element we have here we will
pick another color.
| | 07:52 |
In some cases, it will be a darker color
to show, or to paint elements that
| | 07:59 |
receive less light.
And in other cases, it will be lighter
| | 08:07 |
colors to show that things are receiving
more light, and this depends on which
| | 08:14 |
color you chose to paint the silhouettes
in the first place.
| | 08:23 |
In my case, a lot of, a lot of the shapes
were painted in their lighter version.
| | 08:31 |
And I now pick darker colors to bring the
shading into these forms.
| | 08:49 |
And you will see that as soon as you have
painted your object in this case, your
| | 08:54 |
character, but this really translates to
any type of object.
| | 09:01 |
Soon as you have painted your object with
only two colors or two levels of
| | 09:11 |
brightness, you'll see that it's already
looks quite perfect if you zoom out a bit.
| | 09:27 |
Now let me give some lighter color to the
wooden sword now and we will zoom out.
| | 09:40 |
And you will see that this figure is
working quite nicely already.
| | 09:45 |
Well, in detailing an object like that, a
character like that, now it's just
| | 09:51 |
picking more variance of the existing
colors, so we can go even darker here.
| | 10:00 |
I pick an even darker color, and pick a,
a smaller brush and paint in the areas
| | 10:09 |
where even less light is hitting, like
here under the backpack, or here.
| | 10:22 |
And that way you can flash out your
character or your object, whatever you're
| | 10:31 |
painting, step by step.
Always getting a little bit darker, or
| | 10:43 |
getting a little bit lighter, and by
that, defining the surface.
| | 10:54 |
And detailing an object is really nothing
but that.
| | 11:01 |
Rendering the form, with light and shade.
And if you do that in discreet steps, it
| | 11:09 |
might be a little bit easier for you to
do.
| | 11:14 |
Because I know that a lot of people are
struggling with how to start.
| | 11:20 |
How to start such a painting, how to
start such a character, it's so complex,
| | 11:24 |
so complicated.
And it is.
| | 11:29 |
My suggestion would be take it one
problem at a time.
| | 11:33 |
First, get the silhouette right that
really important.
| | 11:39 |
And a good drawing will help you to do
that.
| | 11:41 |
So, that really is the reason why you
should draw a lot.
| | 11:45 |
Cuz drawing will make you think about the
silhouette, about the outlines of objects.
| | 11:56 |
And then If you have a good silhouette,
then, futher define your object by
| | 12:04 |
creating the smaller silhouettes inside
the object.
| | 12:12 |
And if you have that, then divide your
silhouettes Into a light part and the
| | 12:21 |
dark part.
And then if you have that you just have
| | 12:27 |
to decide where the object gets even
lighter and even darker.
| | 12:32 |
And as soon as, as you have these steps,
you are pretty done.
| | 12:38 |
Because then, it's only rendering and
smoothing things out.
| | 12:43 |
And for example, if you then have a
border, an edge like that here on the
| | 12:48 |
leg, and you have the light part here and
the middle part there and the dark part
| | 12:53 |
there, you can just take a brush, pick
out the middle part and paint very
| | 12:58 |
lightly over the edge, and the two will
blend into each other.
| | 13:07 |
That way you will get your object shaded.
That's the whole secret to it, no secret no.
| | 13:18 |
All right, I think the character now has
enough detail to fit into our scene,
| | 13:24 |
perhaps he's lacking a little shadow.
We have a light from the right, and I
| | 13:34 |
guess he should cast a shadow on the on
the root that he's standing on.
| | 13:47 |
And this shadow, again, is a chance to
create some silhouettes of some leaves
| | 13:53 |
that are now in the shadow.
That overlap leaf that aren't in the
| | 14:00 |
light, and I have painted this shadow on
a separate Layer so that I can all also
| | 14:06 |
adjust its intensity.
I don't want it quite so black.
| | 14:14 |
So, we'll decrease the opacity a bit so
that we land at a point that we like.
| | 14:20 |
And now, we have all the elements in our
illustration, foreground, background, a character.
| | 14:30 |
And now, our illustration basically is
finished.
| | 14:36 |
| | Collapse this transcript |
|
|
4. PostprocessingAdjusting the color balance| 00:00 |
We want to start our post processing with
a color balance and for that we will
| | 00:09 |
clean up our artwork a bit.
We have several layers in here that we
| | 00:17 |
don't need anymore.
We have the Background layer, that one we need.
| | 00:23 |
But we have the Foreground, which is
separated into the character, its Shadow,
| | 00:27 |
the Leaf detail.
We will select all these layers with
| | 00:32 |
Shift, and with Ctrl + E, we merge them.
So that we have now a layer for the
| | 00:39 |
Foreground and we can label it that way,
and we have a layer for the Background.
| | 00:48 |
And now we can do some color balancing
for both elements individually.
| | 00:54 |
And I will want to start with the
foreground because we just finish that
| | 00:59 |
off with a character, Ctrl + B pops up
the Color Balance dialog, and now we'll
| | 01:05 |
do some experimentation.
Just like in the beginning of our
| | 01:13 |
project, when we experimented with
different colors in our abstract color compostion.
| | 01:21 |
We, again, want to see if we find another
way to color our illustration that we
| | 01:27 |
find more suitable than the existing one.
And I have encountered that I like the
| | 01:36 |
illustration a lot better, when it is
transformed into the cyan side of this slider.
| | 01:48 |
I like the greener coloring.
And I will experiment with the with this
| | 01:57 |
slide also a little bit of blue.
Its also not bad but I think I will keep
| | 02:05 |
the green one, that's really green and
lush.
| | 02:11 |
I like that.
I will keep that, and now to the
| | 02:14 |
background again Ctrl + B.
Now you can see that you can really do a
| | 02:25 |
lot to the atmosphere of an artwork by
using the Color Balance.
| | 02:29 |
Especially if you have the separate
layers.
| | 02:32 |
This blue, for example, look quite cool,
in my opinion.
| | 02:37 |
It's nearly cyan and I think that's
really looking quite nicely.
| | 02:44 |
Not too blue, if it's too blue, it looks
like underwater.
| | 02:50 |
On the other hand, the red one looks
quite nice too, it's a bit like a sunset feeling.
| | 02:57 |
I can't decide.
I think I will keep the blue one.
| | 03:04 |
Yeah, this one.
I like it better right at the moment.
| | 03:07 |
Yeah.
All right.
| | 03:09 |
So, this is our color balance and let's
see what we can do next for our illustration.
| | 03:21 |
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Adding a tint and a gradient| 00:00 |
In this step of our post-processing, I
want to do some Overlay.
| | 00:07 |
And for that, I will duplicate the
Background Layer.
| | 00:13 |
And I now select the Background Layer and
the Foreground Layer and I hit a
| | 00:20 |
shortcut, Ctrl + Alt + E, and this
copies, the content of all selected
| | 00:26 |
layers into a new layer, and put it on
top.
| | 00:34 |
And now, I can use this layer as an
overlay.
| | 00:38 |
So to say, I'm overlaying the artwork
over itself, and for that, I'm choosing
| | 00:44 |
the Overlay Blend Mode for this layer.
And this doesn't look too good, but let's
| | 00:52 |
do some changes to this Overlay Layer,
and you will see what I'm aiming at.
| | 01:00 |
So, the first thing is that I want to
desaturate the Overlay Layer.
| | 01:06 |
And now, you can see that in fact the
Overlay works like a contrast of function.
| | 01:20 |
The darks get darker and the lights get a
bit lighter.
| | 01:23 |
And we can enhance this effect now, if,
again, we use the Hue and Saturation
| | 01:30 |
slider and colorize this layer with a
fixed color.
| | 01:37 |
And I made good experiences with the
color blue and now just so you can see
| | 01:44 |
what we, what we've done here.
If you look at this layer in Normal Mode,
| | 01:53 |
it is a Grayscale layer with blue tint.
And in Overlay mode, we now achieve with
| | 01:59 |
that layer that we have enhanced the
contrast of the image, and we have given
| | 02:05 |
it a blue tint, but the effect is much
too strong at the moment.
| | 02:12 |
I will therefore decrease the Opacity of
this layer.
| | 02:17 |
And you will see that if we reach the
level of about 25%, the effect is the
| | 02:23 |
most pleasing.
Normally, it's this amount that works best.
| | 02:28 |
So, we can see now if we turn it on and
off that the slight contrast adjustment
| | 02:33 |
that this Overlay Layer makes to the
illustration has a nice effect.
| | 02:38 |
And also this very slight blue tint makes
for a very nice effect.
| | 02:44 |
Now, when I want to make another Overlay
and for that I create a new layer and I
| | 02:51 |
switch this layer to Overlay 2.
And now, I'm using the Gradient tool, and
| | 03:01 |
I'm using a dark not too saturated blue
now.
| | 03:08 |
And what I want to do is I want to lay a
Gradient from the bottom of the
| | 03:13 |
illustration over the whole thing.
And you can see that by that, I'm
| | 03:20 |
achieving a higher focus on the character
because all the textured detail down here
| | 03:27 |
gets muted by this Overlay.
We could even see if multiply would do
| | 03:35 |
better, but I think it's getting too dark
with multiply so we keep Overlay.
| | 03:45 |
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Adding a glow effect| 00:00 |
As a last adjustment, I want to put a
Glow effect into my illustration.
| | 00:07 |
And for that, I'm selecting everything in
the illustration save for the Background layer.
| | 00:17 |
And again, using Ctrl+Alt+E I duplicate
the whole scene, and now I change the
| | 00:24 |
mode to screen.
Now, this lightens up the whole
| | 00:30 |
illustration, and the effect is not quite
nice.
| | 00:36 |
But we will make some adjustments to it,
so that it is exactly the effect that
| | 00:41 |
we're looking for.
Now, the first thing we will do, we'll
| | 00:46 |
pop up the levels dialog, hitting Ctrl+L.
And by doing that, and by sliding these
| | 00:56 |
little arrows here, from the left to the
right, we make sure that only a portion
| | 01:04 |
of the layer keeps its lightness.
I hit OK, and we will see what, what the
| | 01:13 |
effect was of that.
If we go into Normal mode here, we see
| | 01:18 |
that we have dramatically raised the
contrast of the image, so that all the
| | 01:23 |
middle parts are black now, and only the
lightest parts remain bright.
| | 01:31 |
And this means that, in Screen mode, only
the lightest parts now light up the scene
| | 01:36 |
behind it.
And to make a Glow effect from that,
| | 01:42 |
we'll just have to blur this layer with a
filter.
| | 01:47 |
And under Blur, you'll find Gaussian
blur.
| | 01:51 |
And we have a preview here, and you can
see that I now increased the size of the blur.
| | 01:57 |
It gets really blurry, I guess you
weren't expecting that, and we can see in
| | 02:04 |
the image here in the preview that it's
getting really glowy.
| | 02:13 |
Now, we can further adjust this Glow
effect, by opening up the color balance
| | 02:21 |
again, Ctrl+B, and shifting the color of
this glow into the reds and the magenta,
| | 02:30 |
for example.
Now we have a very fantastic and fairy
| | 02:38 |
tale like glow effect around the bright
spots especially over here.
| | 02:45 |
And this is a little bit strong at the
moment.
| | 02:50 |
But we see the difference when we
decrease the opacity of this glow layer
| | 02:55 |
to zero.
We can now experiment.
| | 02:59 |
It's a matter of your own taste, how
strong you want the Glow effect to be.
| | 03:05 |
I guess I will go with 50% here.
And this Glow effect, adds some
| | 03:11 |
atmosphere to our illustration.
It's not too much right in the face, it's
| | 03:19 |
subtle in parts.
But if you turn it on and off, you will
| | 03:24 |
see that the character of the painting is
changing quite a bit with this Glow effect.
| | 03:31 |
Whoa, and that, is it, we have finished
our illustration, we have finished our
| | 03:37 |
post processing.
I will now hit F, two times, to go into
| | 03:43 |
the Full screen mode, here in Photoshop.
And this is the illustration we created,
| | 03:52 |
from scratch, from the completely
abstract color composition.
| | 03:59 |
This what, is jungle scene emerged.
And we enhanced it with detail, we put a
| | 04:05 |
character in it, and we did some nice
post processing on it.
| | 04:11 |
And now it is finished.
I hope you enjoyed the process.
| | 04:16 |
I hope the you learned a bit from it.
And I would really love to see you again
| | 04:23 |
in the future sometimes.
| | 04:27 |
| | Collapse this transcript |
|
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