Artists' Discovery Thread [Share ideas and techniques here]

[GeminiJuSa]

One thing to note when using tablets is that the ratio of the tablet's drawing area very rarely is exactly the same as the screen, which means that the tablet adjusts to it. As a result of this, you may notice that making a perfect circle on the tablet surface doesn't make a perfect circle on screen. The difference isn't much and mostly you learn to draw watching the screen anyway.

I only noticed the difference the other week when I was in a slump for not being very good with digital lineart and thinking I had lost skill, then I drew by hand and realized I didn't such as much as I thought I did ;P


@Tuna: The watermarks?

[Smilin' Assassin]

http://news.deviantart.com/article/64044/

I don't think he could make it any more explicit without getting tl;dr
take the time to read it; it's probably already common knowledge for some of you, but might be a revelation to others ~

[Chicken of the Seas]

Originally Posted by GeminiJuSa

@Tuna: The watermarks?

Yes.

12 chars

[Perynne]

You make them as a new brush in Photoshop.

First, you draw/write what you want your signature to be. Make sure to draw it large enough, so that it will look good even in larger drawings. Then, you make it into a new brush (tutorials here and here, found them with a quick google). And you're finished! You can use your new signature brush on any drawing you want to mark your own without needing to copy by hand the same signature over and over again.

Another way to do a watermark (the see-through one that's almost solely text) is to first make a new canvas, write down the text you want for it, then save the page. Then, copy paste the text to the drawings you want the watermark on, and change the opacity to make it more see-through.

[Chicken of the Seas]

Ah I see, thanks! I just asked because it seemed like everyone had similar ones. (You, Charlie, Tommy, anyone else I may have missed :P) And they look really cool.

[Perynne]

Yeah, I just made a proper one during my last drawing. Gonna be using it from now on, they are a fun and easy way to show what's made by you.

[Tommy's]

Omai thank you for asking this Tuna! I always draw my signature and then save it in a layer and duplicate the layer into my new file. But saving it as a brush is way better ^^ *feels silly for not thinking of that*

Eastern artists often have signatures with a border. I think thats what both me and Charlie inspired them on.

[Tommy's]

Hoping anyone could help me out with this.
Recently I've been more and more trying out new brushes, adjust them to my liking and the way I paint. When you save a brush as a new brush set (so resaving an existing one, not creating one from black) you can tag off the box for keep current brush size. That way your brushsize doesn't jump to an odd big of small size when switching brush sizes, but it just remains the same.

Sadly enough I don't know how to turn this off for my existing brushes which do have a set size (other then recreating them, which is what I'm trying to avoid). Anyone has an idea?

[Aeronwen]

Tommy, sorry I cannot help with any technical stuff

Just wanted to make sure everyone has seen this

http://www.arena.net/blog/join-the-c...ketch-club-app

I hope you all have fancy phones ^^

[Smilin' Assassin]

here's a couple of useful links, that might be especially pertinent to Invertation's Landscape Contest

http://features.cgsociety.org/story_...id=3275&page=1 - quick n to the point

http://www.wetcanvas.com/Articles2/135/120/ - really detailed but even a nonartist like myself learned something new, and that helps me appreciate art better :}

[Ravenhawk]

Speaking of brushes (here and my own thread)

Anyone know how to achieve a similar effect as below?:

http://aditya777.deviantart.com/art/Ai-220609-126800951

I want to practice the same technique in studying dynamic poses (just nice and quick like that because I spend way too much time on finished drawings) but I dunno how to get the same brush effect >_<

[Tommy's]

I'd say that is a simple hard egde airbrush. Take one of the standard photoshop ones, put Transfer on, vary in size jitter and put pen pressure on and voila. Its really a pretty standard brush.
I think what is so appealing about it is that (s)he uses the erraser well. I think very little people use the eraser a lot (I think Morag D is a good example of someone who knows when to use the eraser ^^).

You can also perhabs try to mess around with wet edges.

[Ravenhawk]

Originally Posted by Tommy's

I'd say that is a simple hard egde airbrush. Take one of the standard photoshop ones, put Transfer on, vary in size jitter and put pen pressure on and voila. Its really a pretty standard brush.
I think what is so appealing about it is that (s)he uses the erraser well. I think very little people use the eraser a lot (I think Morag D is a good example of someone who knows when to use the eraser ^^).

You can also perhabs try to mess around with wet edges.

whoa thanks Tommy *hug*! I can't wait to try that at home now. I didn't think about using the eraser before..you mean to say use the same brush as an eraser with different opacity settings?

[Eastern Magik]

lasso tool (set on "add on" option) and eraser can do the trick too.

[Tommy's]

Oh btw I just tried the standard photohop brushes and their flow is a bit messy I think (they more look like a lot of dots behind eachother if you know what I mean ). I uploaded a smoother one for ya . Though I think (s)he uses the standard photoshop ones, if you look at the raffled dress just beneath her hand/sword, and at the legg underneath the sword you see the lotsofdotsbehindeachothereffect

And I think he/she uses eraser at different settings yeah, but the nice thing with erasers is that you can get different (more pointy) shapes then with a brush alone. If I make something raffled or something I always use eraser rather then brushes (same goes for the glyphs on the ribbon of Nians monk I'm working on). And you can use the same brush as eraser or a different brush, doesn't matter just depends on what you want to acchieve I'd say the artist used a normal (so same as the brush) eraser on that one. It looks pretty basic (like in use of brushes, I'd say just one ).

[Verene]

Definitely a regular hard brush with flow turned down. It looks like the sort of effect that I initially have while painting before blending and cleaning up stuff, and my 'standard' brush is just the regular hard brush with size jitter turned off (I hate having it on pen pressure - I just manually adjust the sizes), opacity and flow set to pen pressure, and both turned down to about 50%.

[Ravenhawk]

Thanks guys! Esp you Tommy. I tried that brush. It's awesome. Might play with the settings a little bit. I haven't tried Verene's settings yet and lasso tool as Eastern suggested. *hugs*

[Invertation]

Playing around with Lineart (Via Egnki's works), in particular, the pen tool on photoshop.



I rather like the effect of a pressure gradient, but at the same time, it creates something of an implied outline. Anyone have any tips on how they do lineart, or perhaps ways to make this method a bit crisper?

[Verene]

I love the pen tool for lineart, and I love the pressure thingy with it. The look it gives is awesome. I actually use that quite often, but sometimes to give it a bit more definition I'll stroke each line twice - first with the pressure on, and then again with the brush a bit smaller and pressure off.

[Tommy's]

As crazy as it might sound, most people don't use pen tool as far as I know. After a shitload of practice your hand gets so steady, you just make the strokes from your hand (and use ctrl+z a lot ). If you want to stick with pentool though, you should check (asuming you use photohsop) Brush setting box, go to shape dynamics and play around with the minimum diameter jitter. That way you can have more different lines and you are able to make lines actually touch (with no min. diameter, you get the result as you have it; lines don't really touch). Hope it helps