Curse

BlueXIV · Sep 30, 2009, 04:12 AM // 04:12

Disclaimer:

Despite the title, I am not "pr0" by any means. However, I do believe that this may help some of you who are struggling to start rendering stuffz in Photoshop.

Anyways, if it helps you, great. If it doesn't, well it was good practice for me drawing these XD. I can say "I halp'd Nolani" AND I can slightly tick espy off because of the gratuitous hard-edges and smooth shading

.

Intro:
While this tutorial pretty much assumes you have a tablet pen and photoshop, there are concepts here that I believe will be useful for any painter.

Render: To represent in a drawing or painting, especially in perspective. Here it means using color, value and shapes to represent your image realistically.

While not everyone wants/needs to draw realistically, it does help you stylize in a way that makes everything all the more believable. Rendering is something that can be hard for people to learn. However, learning to render light can be extremely useful in creating a immersive painting.

Personally, I hate rendering. It sucks. It's boring and micromanage-y. Still, I have to learn to do this if I want to become a better artist. This tutorial is something that is probably even more useful for me to create as it might be to you guys reading it.

I encourage taking a simple household object (preferably round-ish so you don't have to worry too much about perspective) and rendering it out. Art is interactive: it helps you much more to do it than just to read about it.

Feel free to post your attempts here, so that we can help you see where you did well and where you can do better. I PROMISE no trolling at ALL for those who are making a genuine effort :P

Tutorial:

First step, simple. Sketch out whatever you are drawing.
Try to include the shadow if you aren't too comfortable with just blocking in colors.

I personally use a hard round with shape dynamics turned on in photoshop do this part, as I feel like it gives more of a expressive line.

Do try to use long single strokes instead of many tiny ticks.

Second step. Start blocking in the colors. This can be hard to people who are not used to painting. Try to see the exact colors, and not just what you know the colors can be. The local colors can vary drastically under different types of light.

Try do things without using too many layers. It will give you a more visceral painting feel. I did this tutorial with one layer (actually 3, because I wanted to save the steps).

Like in this example, the harsh incandescent light made the onion a lot more yellow than it really is. The onion would be more red in normal daylight.

Do not use neutral grey or black for the shadows. There is almost always some color in the shadow, try to capture the warm or coolness in your colors.

If you are having real trouble getting the colors right, something that might help would be to squint at the subject so you block out all detail. See if you can pick a color for each of the major areas and just make yourself a mini pallette.

Third step. Start rendering out the shape of the subject. This is where you do blending and all that other good stuff.

Blending is the act of smoothening out edges when painting. In this phase, target areas that have smooth curved surfaces, and try to represent that by making a gradation of colors and values. Do not try to use the blur tool or the smudge tool here, as the results will look textureless and it's very possible you will reduce saturation of the colors by averaging the values. Do yourself a favor and use the brush tool :P

To blend with a brush tool, just use the [alt] hotkey to sample colors, then use a low opacity brush or a large soft brush to make a local gradient on the surface of the object.

You can technically blend with any brush, as long as you use opacity and flow dynamics. I do not recommend turning on size dynamics, because it can lock you in doing stuff with the wrong brush size. Just use the [ and the ] keys to change the sizes of the brushes.

I don't really have too much to say about rendering. Basically try to smooth out some parts that need smoothing out. Don't blend everything though. Remember hard edges give people hard-ons, so whenever you have a clear distinction between two objects or surfaces, a hard edge will give you those extra oomph points.

You can add some texture for more realism in this stage. Best way to do it would be to grab some custom brushes, or make your own. I'll do another tutorial for that later.

Edit: Changed the onion_3 picture because I realized the shadow should be cast further back. XD It's good to look over your drawings a couple times because you tend to find mistakes :P
================================================== ======

Well that pretty much wraps up how I render. Make whatever you want of it.

Ask me or any of the other artists here questions if you need it.

Espadon · Sep 30, 2009, 04:50 AM // 04:50

My ticks are off thx2u

Now I just need to treat my lyme disease qq

hoodiestarfish · Sep 30, 2009, 05:10 AM // 05:10

nice tutorial

BlueXIV · Sep 30, 2009, 06:30 AM // 06:30

Woo thanks Hoodie. Means a lot coming from you haha.

Anyways, if you guys are reading this, could you give me some feed back (comment/crits plz XD) on the tutorial? Is it helpful? hard to understand? pompous?!?

If people find this useful, I'll continue with the series and post a brush work tutorial next hehe.

Massive Impulsa · Sep 30, 2009, 10:22 AM // 10:22

Quote:

Originally Posted by BlueXIV

give people hard-ons

Good guide though

Tzu · Sep 30, 2009, 10:32 AM // 10:32

looks good, Blue!

couple of things though:

Quote:

Do try to use long single strokes instead of many tiny ticks.

I think you should branch out on this. It takes a bit of practice to get into drawing objects with neat, elongated lines. It may feel easier to make them from chopped up, untidy ones at first.
In most design schools I hear a significant part of the first 3 months of art classes are devoted to just that; drawing lines.

Quote:

You can technically blend with any brush, as long as you use opacity and flow dynamics. I do not recommend turning on size dynamics, because it can lock you in doing stuff with the wrong brush size. Just use the [ and the ] keys to change the sizes of the brushes.

that's a difficult sentence right there. Makes a lot of questions; What's blending? Why do you have so many brushes for it? How do I "blend"? What difference does it make? What are size dynamics and what's the wrong size for a brush? etc etc etc.

I'll try to paint a household object later, I haven't done that sorta stuff since grade school.
Could be fun!

KiyaKoreena · Sep 30, 2009, 11:01 AM // 11:01

Looking at your onion is making me cry. I really need to go practice.

Qing Guang · Sep 30, 2009, 01:28 PM // 13:28

Quote:

Originally Posted by KiyaKoreena

Looking at your onion is making me cry. I really need to go practice.

Isn't that what onions are supposed to do?

Anyway, great guide. It could use a little elaboration on step 3, but other than that I pretty much got it.

BlueXIV · Sep 30, 2009, 04:21 PM // 16:21

Ahh, okay. Yeah step 3 felt a bit short, I just thought it kind of felt pretty natural to me as long as you get step 2 correct. I'll try to rewrite it a bit.

eeks · Sep 30, 2009, 04:27 PM // 16:27

Hurr durr. I missed this, 'cause I'm silly and stupidly asked what to blend with in my own topic. :P Thanks for the tips!

Duranin · Sep 30, 2009, 04:30 PM // 16:30

Quote:

Originally Posted by Qing Guang

Anyway, great guide. It could use a little elaboration on step 3, but other than that I pretty much got it.

This is the main reason I gave up on painting tutorials ~ ~

Tutorials in general:

1. Sketch the shape
2. Block in colours
3. ???????????
4. Profit!

BlueXIV · Sep 30, 2009, 05:37 PM // 17:37

Well Araiia. I think the reason why most of the painting tutorials are like that is because blending honestly isn't the most important step in painting. You can leave something in the blocking stage and it's still a good painting.

Also, blending is something more you feel rather than know. Like de Certeau said in The Practice of Everyday Art, there is a fundamental schism between knowing and doing. I could detail every brush stroke I make and tell you exactly what brush I use for each mark, but it won't help you in anyway.

I don't expect anyone to see this tutorial and suddenly become AWESOME. Instead, I hope that this will serve as a demostration and as motivation for everyonthat might want to learn to try some basic studies that WILL make them AWESOME after some practice. I encourage everyone to try drawing some objects and posting them for some CnC. Thats where you will truly benefit.

Espadon · Sep 30, 2009, 05:50 PM // 17:50

You need to remember that your art is just an extension of your self. If you take someone else's mold and inject your work into it, the result doesn't have your identity in it; it won't be true to yourself. There will always be steps that are not covered. Those gaps are up to you to fill in with your own ideals.

Verene · Sep 30, 2009, 06:04 PM // 18:04

^^^ And what Espadon said is the exact reason why I prefer tutorials that just cover the basic techniques. Everyone has their own styles and their own preferences on how to do something.

I know personally I tend to over-blend, and the result always looks too smooth and lacking in texture. I'm trying to train myself away from doing that so much :P

Anyway, nice, Blue. I'd play around with it but I don't really have the time to mess about in PS right now.

Duranin · Sep 30, 2009, 06:59 PM // 18:59

@Verene - I definitely have the same issue. Not only that but they turn out like shapeless blobs and whatever sketch I had in the beginning ends up being horribly mutated xD

@Blue - When I was younger I used to do really rough lineless paintings that were essentially just blocking things in, and I liked it, but I just can't bridge the gap between a spontaneous paint and a refined final image. I'm thinking that what I lack is the technique, but who knows.

I'll try to paint an apple or something in my spare time this afternoon, though.

BlueXIV · Sep 30, 2009, 08:03 PM // 20:03

@Araiia, go for it. I think the only thing separating someone from blocked painting and smoothing is some time and effort.

YunSooJin · Sep 30, 2009, 08:03 PM // 20:03

I'm pretty sure Blue just photoshopped a picture of an onion he found online. Why are the mods allowing this kind of fakery? D:

Duranin · Sep 30, 2009, 08:08 PM // 20:08

I had the same problem with over-smoothing again.
Also noticed that despite having originally planned on just going to the colour-blocking stage I really had no distinction between blocking and refining, they seemed to flow into each other. Finding the right brush on Paint Tool SAI is also proving to be difficult.

Also -- what canvas size do you paint on? I'm a really small-canvas artist, all of my past commissions are ACTUAL SIZE. I don't resize down any of my arts.

YunSooJin · Sep 30, 2009, 08:12 PM // 20:12

Blue uses a 9x12 intuos3 iirc

Duranin · Sep 30, 2009, 08:17 PM // 20:17

I mean the actual canvas dimensions (such as 2000x2000 pixels)

I can't stand large tablets S: I have small hands that don't like making big strokes.