Digital Painting - latest work...
-
Thanks Solo - much appreciated. Mouse for the SU work, and a tablet for all the Photoshop stuff. Never use a mouse for PS anymore, even for stuff which doesn't technically require a tablet. Feels so much more natural, and as a result is a lot faster.
cheers,
Andy.
-
Thanks modelhead. I'd love to give a step-by-step. Trouble is it would be more of a lesson in how-not-to-do-it
It's a fairly organic, chaotic process. I tend to constantly swich from working on small details, to large areas, allowing the painting to sort of evolve as I go along. I usually paint entirely on one layer in Photoshop - which is really, really bad practice - but having to switch between, and keep track of layers really seems interupts the painting process 
As the painting nears completion, I usually add a couple of adjustment layers, to allow fine-tuning of the colour values. Occasionally I'll overlay a few bits of photo reference - but just to add some noise and texture to the image, not actual detail. Other than that, I just keeping painting until it looks sort of finished. They are never really finished, but sometimes you need to just walk away.This one was painted without any reference. As this project progresses I'll probably work to some reference material, just to add to the general detail / believability level.
Sorry, just re-read those ramblings, and they were probably no help at all
Andy
-
Intuos or cintiq or even bamboo. What's the deference? This man knows something about light. Great work!
-
Beautiful work Andy.
-
OK, ok I'll try and be a bit more helpful
This was all painted with one brush (except for the blue glow at the centre). It's a standard round brush, with a roundness of 60% and an opacity of 50%, with the stroke width and opacity determind by the pen pressure. Keeping the opacity down around the 50% mark means that you can gradually build up colour in smoother transitions. And reducing the roundness of the brush just makes the strokes a bit more natural. Then using the eyedropper to sample the colours in the graduated areas allows you to paint with these intermediate tones as well. The blue glow was created on a new layer: a rectangular selection with heavily feathered edges, filled with blue colour, with the layer mode set to 'screen'.
This scene has two light sources: the centre blue light, and the 'sun'. The sun direction and shadows were provided by the SketchUp output, and I just eyeballed the blue lighting.
This was all done with the most basic Wacom Bamboo tablet.Hope this helps a little?
A.
-
great artwork, Andy - please let us see more!:)
-
Impressive as usual.
-
Amazing model and render
we want to see more !!! -
Thanks All.
Attached one more piece - can't show much more, as I'm working under a load of NDA's at the moment
This one was produced in a similar manner. The front end of the vehicle was taken from an existing 3dwarehouse model, the rest was done from scratch. Half the sky was taken from a photo, extended with hand-painting.
cheers,
A.
-
Nice. I wish I could do that. But alas!
-
aw man, that's awesome... you totally need to do a time lapse video for us!
-
Interesting work, and great illumination.
I have made something like that that i'll show here next week (The Hole, The Hole 2 and The Hole 003)...
-
Really nice stuff - your work gets better every time you post...
I was interested by this comment, though:
@unknownuser said:
Keeping the opacity down around the 50% mark means that you can gradually build up colour in smoother transitions.
While this is true, I think it's a good way to hold yourself back in your painting, as well. I used to paint with really transparent brushes a lot, and it makes you work like a (really) old school painter, building up layers of colour in stages. Problem is that it tends to make the work a little bit 'muddier' than it might otherwise be - there are few areas of pure colour (if that makes sense).
I forced myself to stop using tranparent brushes for a while, and sometimes even worked with no opacity control at all on the tablet. My work got a lot worse for a while, and then a lot better than it was before once I'd learnt to paint a bit bolder. If you don't have any pressing client deadlines on a piece, I'd highly recommend trying this out. It'll be frustrating as hell, but it might let you push your painting to another level once you get your head around it.
Hope that helps. Thanks for posting...
AJ
-
Hi Alex - really useful info - thankyou.
The 'muddiness' is something I am conscious of. I'll bite the bullet and try your approach on my next piece. Guess this approach really forces you to think about your colour choices too... Once again, thanks for taking the timeA.
Advertisement