Curse

subarucar · Oct 11, 2009, 05:17 AM // 05:17

I got myself a Wacom Bamboo Fun a few days ago, and just got around to using it today.
I'm interested to see what blending and shading methods people use.
I like to create lines of different colours across the object. Then I select the darkest colour and use a brush with opacity controlled by pressure and slowly release pressure as I move the pen back and forth across the object. I then select and in-between colour and slowly blend it together, constantly selecting in-between colours. I use copied parts of layers and play around with the layer blend type to get extreme highlights and shadows.
Its basically the digital way of how I use watercolour pencils.

Example.
Painted lines: http://img59.imageshack.us/img59/4880/tabletspherex.jpg
Blended:http://img91.imageshack.us/img91/1139/tabletspherey.jpg

So after discovering that that way of blending worked pretty well for me I started work on this: http://img196.imageshack.us/img196/7...etmountain.jpg

I'm planning on doing some more shading and highlighting to make it more 3D.
Ill also be softening the edge with some Gaussian Blur. After that I'd like to add some clouds, I was thinking about playing around with the size, opacity and scatter jitters to see if something could work.
If anyone has any nice ways to make clouds it would be great if you could suggest them.

HadokenX · Oct 11, 2009, 12:35 PM // 12:35

It seriously depends on several different things, #1 being what you like the best as far as style and workflow are concerned. It also depends on what program you're working with as well.

For actual painting & drawing, I've found the best program to use is Corel Painter, but Photoshop has many of the same features for changing all the shapes/dynamics/spacing/etc of brushes, where Corel Painter has many more natural feeling brushes, with specific functions for different types of art such as water colour - in Corel Painter, water colour is dealt with in it's own layer seperate from the rest of the image....you would normally create a new layer for this type of thing in Photoshop anyway, but the dynamics are slightly different, as Corel Painter takes in consideration for things like "bleeding" and "smearing" with the water colour.

If you're not dealing strictly with hand drawn stuff in Photoshop, you can create a layer of "render clouds" through one of it's filters, throw in an alpha channel, and modify it to the image settings, which is much easier than it sounds (for the noobs).

Still, it's hard to say what approach would be best, since you could be using a program different to the ones I've mentioned, like GIMP or Paint.NET, or some other free program available.

subarucar · Oct 11, 2009, 07:12 PM // 19:12

Im using photoshop, I have a free version of painter that came with my tablet, so I'll give that a try aswell.

Im no newbie when It comes to photoshop, just with using the tablet in photoshop.

Gwee · Oct 11, 2009, 07:20 PM // 19:20

I used the exact same blending technique as you. I also don't use any fancy brushes especially for blending, I use only about 3 brushes on one picture. Hard round is not to be underestimated.

hoodiestarfish · Oct 12, 2009, 12:48 AM // 00:48

try 15 percent of a light color with soft edge for manual clouds.

Duranin · Oct 12, 2009, 02:50 AM // 02:50

Your first few days with a Bamboo > My last 6 years with my Intuos3 lol.

subarucar · Oct 12, 2009, 03:25 AM // 03:25

Quote:

Originally Posted by Araiia of the Songs

Your first few days with a Bamboo > My last 6 years with my Intuos3 lol.

Lulwut.

Your work is awsome! Especially the chibi stuff.