Saturday, October 26, 2013

Wk 2 Digital Painting - Head Value Study And Animal Drawing

     For the longest time, it's been my desire to learn how to paint digitally in Photoshop. Now that I have the time, I started taking an online digital painting course last week. Even though I'm not exactly a beginner in drawing, I am a beginner in digital painting especially in Photoshop.  I am pleasantly surprised, that I became comfortable with Photoshop quickly, after learning a few tips on how to navigate the interface. That week was sort of a warm-up.
     
     This week, I got a taste of how it's like to paint digitally.  Oh boy.... it's was quite a challenge. I didn't realize that painting takes longer, and requires a lot of patience.  After watching my instructor's painting demo, I started to do the assignment,  Using the sketch of the Vienna statue that I did last week, I scaled it up to just focus on the head for this week.

     My first difficulty was blending.  I didn't know how to digitally blend the colors using the brush tool and the color picker.  I spent hours and hours struggling on this till my hand hurts. This was what I managed that day... She looks angry at me already. Haha... (click to enlarge)

                                                         

     The following day, I worked on it again,and managed to get the hang of blending that I was pleased with the outcome. I managed to soften her expression.  At least she doesn't look angry anymore. I blocked out the hair and arm roughly. This allowed me to focus on other areas, when I got tired of working on the face.


                                
      On the third day, I continued on. The face keeps evolving as I work on it. At one point, I painted the lips much too luscious, it looked like Angelina Jolie's lips.  I have to tone it down.  A good tip Anne told us is to flip the image to get a fresh eye. I knew that, but forgot about it until Anne mentioned it. That helped a lot. I saw some distortions and managed to fix it on this version below.


        I was pleased with what I've done with the head so far and decided to take a break from it for awhile. I decided to work on the other part of our assignment, which was to draw animals in interesting poses on a black background. So I did this....  
                                               Photo Image by Leslie Thief
      The following day, back to the head painting, I decided to finish it up already, because there's more animal drawings to do. I worked on the hair, neck and arm area, plus a bit of the background, I tried to fix the face a bit of any distortions.  By this time, my hand started to really hurt, due to my previous RSI.   I decided to leave the head study for now and proceed with the animal drawings, and if there's still time, I will work on it later.  At this stage, I was happy with the result.

                             
     So after painting intensely for a few days by now, drawing animals was a welcome break.  I enjoyed drawing them that I drew 6 more animals over two days.
                               
Photo Image by Draco Art Stock
Photo Image by Draco Art Stock
Photo Image by Bahaloo
Photo Image by Chunga Stock
Photo Image by Hot N Stock
Photo Image by Deseo Nocturno
      Whew.... I've finished all the assignment for this week and I still have a few days left to spare.  So, I thought of going over the head study again and see if I can polish it up a bit. After a few hours of tweaking it, I decided to let it go.  I don't want to mess it up unnecessarily.    So here is the final head value study.

     It's been a very intense and productive week for me, I started out fumbling over how to blend the colors. After hours and hours spent just figuring it out, I managed to get the hang of it by the end of the week. Not too bad.... It's not perfect by any means, but for a start, this is really, really promising. :)

     To see previous weeks, click here : Week 1

                                 
                          

Saturday, October 19, 2013

Absolutely Enjoying This...


    I'm at it again - another online drawing course!   I'm taking a break from animating, now that I'm out of work and jobless again. So I should just as well use this time to hone and improve my drawing skills, and learn how to digitally paint, while avoiding getting depressed over the instability of the animation industry, and my joblessness.

    So...this time I enrolled in a Digital Painting 8-week course.  I have been waiting for a chance to do this course to finally learn how to handle Photoshop. I have been putting off learning Photoshop, because after having to learn a very technical 3D program Maya before and found it hard, learning another digital program seem daunting to my non-technical brain.

     I had some initial confusion and unfamiliarity with the user interface of PS CS5, compared to that of my instructor's CS6.  The good thing is she helped me immediately through live chatting on how to navigate and learn a few tips to help me on our first week's assignment,  After that, I was able to managed well this first week.  Fortunately for me, Photoshop isn't that scary after all.  I'm presently using Photoshop CS5 Trial version. If I eventually find that this is a program I would like to use for drawing and painting, then I'll probably invest in the full version later on.  

     I chose this course because it both involves figurative and animal drawing.  And I thought what could be a better way to learn Photoshop than to learn it by drawing and painting humans and animals at the same time, which I both like. So I'm sold! 

     For the first week, we're asked to do some exercises doing figure and animal drawings to get use to drawing with a tablet while using Photoshop.  Fortunately for me, I don't have to struggle drawing digitally with a tablet, because I have a Cintiq.:P

       These are what I've done so far.....(click to enlarge)

                            





                                 
Photo Image by Cyborg Suzy Stock
Photo Image by Lesley Thief
Photo Images by Draco Art Stock


Photo Image by Tala Stock


       I did these quick sketches below, using the Animal Practice tool from this website - Figure and Gesture Drawing  
Setting the timer for 2 minutes,



         And here's a preparatory sketch of a Vienna statue, for our week 2 lesson. Can't wait....



            ***Human and animal references used here are from http://artists.pixelovely.com ; http://characterdesigns.com; http://www.deviantart.com