Graphics/Design stuff Q&A

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While we are posting up some Digital paintings, here is my most recent. I call him, Old Warrior ;)

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Okay, you guys are going to have to show me how to get the img to show in the comment :) how do you set the link to just the picture and not the page?...

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Oooh, Profound, isn't it?

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(img) url here (/img)

just use square brackets instead of paretheses. [ ]

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"I still don't know if snakes make good pets, but at least they've got your f****g back."

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edited it for you + nice work! Wish I could paint like that :P

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Thanks, but where did you get that bit of the url at the end?! My digital paint stuff rarely looks that good, unfortunately. I usually have a much more illustrated look.

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Oooh, Profound, isn't it?

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Open the dA URL and then right click on the image->view image (or copy image location).

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Testing...

YAY!! Thanks for the (embarrassing) help!...

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Oooh, Profound, isn't it?

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I'm really liking the dynamism in colour hues. I haven't got first clue how to make custom brushes successfully even, and I know even less about proper colour management the way I imagine you learn by actually painting irl. I take it these are scanned sketches and colourised in photoshop?

I need to sort a better workspace in my apartment also so that I can draw stuff on paper again. You get an overview and a much more accurate sense of composition and perspective than you do on a monitor.

In regards to colorisation of a b/w image like I asked about earlier, I think the impossible part is to have the highlights translate between b/w and colour. Typically, highlights on a certain colour actually veer towards a more lusterous (is that a word? I hope it's a word) colour rather than just losing saturation and colour the way they do on a monochrome image. The result is that even if I successfully make an area turn whatever colour I like, it's gonna look flat and dull unless I add those highlights manually anyway.

I think I just need to grit my teeth and learn how to paint with colours.

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I'm really liking the dynamism in colour hues. I haven't got first clue how to make custom brushes successfully even, and I know even less about proper colour management the way I imagine you learn by actually painting irl. I take it these are scanned sketches and colourised in photoshop?

I need to sort a better workspace in my apartment also so that I can draw stuff on paper again. You get an overview and a much more accurate sense of composition and perspective than you do on a monitor.

In regards to colorisation of a b/w image like I asked about earlier, I think the impossible part is to have the highlights translate between b/w and colour. Typically, highlights on a certain colour actually veer towards a more lusterous (is that a word? I hope it's a word) colour rather than just losing saturation and colour the way they do on a monochrome image. The result is that even if I successfully make an area turn whatever colour I like, it's gonna look flat and dull unless I add those highlights manually anyway.

I think I just need to grit my teeth and learn how to paint with colours.

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The problem with coloring with a black and white paiting/drawing as the basis is that well...shadows aren't always black and highlights aren't always white. Shading and highlighting with contrasts between warm and cool colors is kind of important for getting a nice sense of depth to it. Also people tend to drift towards percieved "natural" colors, like water is blue and grass is green and so forth, when it all really depends on the lighting in the scene you are trying to create. I mean, if you are painting a scene with a sunset, chances are that green might not be the best color for the grass even though grass is generally thought of as green. For me, my greatest problemw hen painting is that i use too little saturation, so my images always end up looking all washed out and then i have to correct for it afterwards. Thank god for photoshop :P Another little tip would be to not color against a white background, helps you see the contrasts and negative space a little better.

I bet you already know this stuff, but well, just in case i guess.

Does anyone of you actually paint for real? I did a few acrylic paintings in school, some clay sculptures and a few charcoal drawings but that's pretty much it. It'd be fun to pick up some more painting once i get a bigger apartment. My current 24 M2 (how do you make a raised little 2? Like Meters squared?) just doesn't cut it :)

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The problem with coloring with a black and white paiting/drawing as the basis is that well...shadows aren't always black and highlights aren't always white. Shading and highlighting with contrasts between warm and cool colors is kind of important for getting a nice sense of depth to it. Also people tend to drift towards percieved "natural" colors, like water is blue and grass is green and so forth, when it all really depends on the lighting in the scene you are trying to create. I mean, if you are painting a scene with a sunset, chances are that green might not be the best color for the grass even though grass is generally thought of as green. For me, my greatest problemw hen painting is that i use too little saturation, so my images always end up looking all washed out and then i have to correct for it afterwards. Thank god for photoshop :P Another little tip would be to not color against a white background, helps you see the contrasts and negative space a little better.

I bet you already know this stuff, but well, just in case i guess.

Does anyone of you actually paint for real? I did a few acrylic paintings in school, some clay sculptures and a few charcoal drawings but that's pretty much it. It'd be fun to pick up some more painting once i get a bigger apartment. My current 24 M2 (how do you make a raised little 2? Like Meters squared?) just doesn't cut it :)

"I still don't know if snakes make good pets, but at least they've got your f****g back."

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Posté par Megido

I bet you already know this stuff, but well, just in case i guess.

Well, I'm sort of in the transistion. I know that in different lighting conditions you're supposed to use different hues for things, but I didn't realise the same is somewhat true of highlights until only yesterday when I "successfully" managed to change the colour of the image to the desired ones and it looked awfully dull.

The problem is, though, that I have no clue what hues to use and when. My time would perhaps have been better spent going to a conventional art school than the comic artist one I went to.

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Start off by using warmer hues for highlights and cooler ones for shading. Sunlight usually has a bit of a yellow tint, bluer shadows offset that nicely. Also just experiment until you find something that works. Also if you use warm backgrounds, maybe try a colder rim light type of deal to accentuate. Also look at pictures you like and try to figure out what's going on in them.

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"I still don't know if snakes make good pets, but at least they've got your f****g back."

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Posté par Megido

Also look at pictures you like and try to figure out what's going on in them.

Truth of my creative life.

At 16 or something I just got hell bent on this idea of never copying anything (a forfeit endeavour of course since you do subconsciously anyway) and that has somehow persisted throughout my creative development since. It's something I've realised a long time ago is completely rediculous, and I can only benefit from learning about how things are done, looking at them critically and analytically, but it's kind of a struggle to "turn on" that intake. Old dogs and all that.

I've been better about using reference material in the last couple of years, though, and also gotten around to painting and drawing just for the heck of it without a definite goal or clear purpose in mind. Harder yet for me is moving away from drawing/painting characters, but I would do well to do more landscapes and environments.

A disgustingly talented friend of mine, Levente, who incdentally works for Blizzard, said that matte painting is one of the best ways to understand and simultaniously have a constant reference for how colour, shadow and lighting, and "materials" work. It's a daunting undertaking, but it makes sense for me to stop avoiding these things if I wanna evolve.

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[quote=Megido]Also look at pictures you like and try to figure out what's going on in them.[/quote]

Truth of my creative life.

At 16 or something I just got hell bent on this idea of never copying anything (a forfeit endeavour of course since you do subconsciously anyway) and that has somehow persisted throughout my creative development since. It's something I've realised a long time ago is completely rediculous, and I can only benefit from learning about how things are done, looking at them critically and analytically, but it's kind of a struggle to "turn on" that intake. Old dogs and all that.

I've been better about using reference material in the last couple of years, though, and also gotten around to painting and drawing just for the heck of it without a definite goal or clear purpose in mind. Harder yet for me is moving away from drawing/painting characters, but I would do well to do more landscapes and environments.

A disgustingly talented friend of mine, Levente, who incdentally works for Blizzard, said that matte painting is one of the best ways to understand and simultaniously have a constant reference for how colour, shadow and lighting, and "materials" work. It's a daunting undertaking, but it makes sense for me to stop avoiding these things if I wanna evolve.

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Like you said, it's impossible to be original anymore and besides...why take the long route to a goal when there is loads of information available? :)

You learn teh techniques, then put your own spin on them and bring out our own ideas and visions. The skills you learn by copying others or at a school are tools, not a stolen creativity. It's silly to think that learning and copying techniques somehow makes your work less relevant.

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"I still don't know if snakes make good pets, but at least they've got your f****g back."

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Yeah, absolutely. I think more than anything, as a kid it was a defense mechanism to avoid comparing my stuff to people in my class that were better. I hid behind "originality" and "not trying to do what they did" to feel good about stuff that was less technically impressive. Also, I had a friend with far better technique than me who kept "stealing" all the very things I did specifically to avoid being compared to him. Bad self esteem cocktail complete!

So that's probably why it stuck with me so long.

As you get older things in general get less black and white, and your sense of identity gets more complex too. Needless to say I don't really have any of those issues anymore. I'm still glad that I managed to avoid becoming a "manga" artist though because competition there is bizarrely focused on drawing something in an established style, and you're literally "better" the closer to it you get. What a horrible fate.

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I can sort of relate to that attitude of yours. Not so much because i've had the same problem (somehow my mediocre skills in drawing has always been the best in my circle) but man are there tons of idiots in denial at the art school i went to. Drawing or painting anything that is not some expressionistic BS cosisting of color splattered on canvas was not artsy, but rahter plebeian. Needless to say, when portrait painting and still life drawing was on the schedual their drawings were often rather bad, to put it mildly.

I think drawing from real life is a pretty great way to start though. Matte paintings might also be good practice, but i think it's a bit like smacking your head against a wall if you don't have some practice under your belt. Painting still life images from either a photo or real life is a pretty good way to get a sense of color, shading and highlights. If you do it digitally from a photo you can even cheat a bit and base your pallette off of the photo :P

Then again, i'm not that good at painting so maybe i shouldn't be giving out advice on the matter :)

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I can sort of relate to that attitude of yours. Not so much because i've had the same problem (somehow my mediocre skills in drawing has always been the best in my circle) but man are there tons of idiots in denial at the art school i went to. Drawing or painting anything that is not some expressionistic BS cosisting of color splattered on canvas was not artsy, but rahter plebeian. Needless to say, when portrait painting and still life drawing was on the schedual their drawings were often rather bad, to put it mildly.

I think drawing from real life is a pretty great way to start though. Matte paintings might also be good practice, but i think it's a bit like smacking your head against a wall if you don't have some practice under your belt. Painting still life images from either a photo or real life is a pretty good way to get a sense of color, shading and highlights. If you do it digitally from a photo you can even cheat a bit and base your pallette off of the photo :P

Then again, i'm not that good at painting so maybe i shouldn't be giving out advice on the matter :)

"I still don't know if snakes make good pets, but at least they've got your f****g back."

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I'd say try not to get tied down to what colors are "supposed" to be. I always like to throw in off colors, like green or yellow in the skin. Try even using totally "wrong" colors, and you can get some very interesting mood goin on. Photoshop is great because you do the layering and really experiment without impacting the rest of the image. If you want some really cool PS brushes, you should check out brusheezy.com- there are a ton of free brushes there. Also, setting up your brushes to take advantage of a Wacom's angle sensitivity is really cool too.

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Oooh, Profound, isn't it?

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If any of you guys could give me a few minutes of your time to create a login here and vote on this for me, I would really appreciate it. Every little bit helps.

http://www.designbyhumans.com/vote/detail/81123?pa...

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Not sure who it is, but someone came out of the blue (the proverbial blue, not the blue in your design although that's also very blue) on twitter and retweeted my tweet about the shirt to his 500+ followers. He's not on my list or anything, I still don't really know how twitter works behind the scenes.. but hey, he liked and retweeted, so. :)

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Awesome. I really should get on Twitter if not just for promotion. I don't know how much effort it would take to gain that much exposure though.

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I have a very modest 18 followers, so I've no idea personally. I think you prolly gotta remind people to follow you, but I've always sucked at self promotion. I sorta just sit around and hope people will notice whatever aspect I want to draw attention to. It doesn't work, of course.

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Do you guys know any good places for reference material mainly in regards to human anatomy, faces, eyes and stuff like that? Google image search has become a fucking horror show.

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@Simon-Search Anatomy for drawing, that should get rid of most of the unmentionables, lol...

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Oooh, Profound, isn't it?

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3d.sk has a lot of pictures, but to get any sort of decent resolution you need a membership :\

If you just want a figure drawing book, search for Andrew Loomis Figure Drawing For All It's Worth. It hasn't been in print for ages, but it's fairly easy to find a PDF version of it and it really is a great figure drawing book :)

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"I still don't know if snakes make good pets, but at least they've got your f****g back."

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Thanks for the tips both of you. I don't have much trouble with figure drawing, but I'm sorta having problems with how bones and stuff move in certain poses. For instance, right now I'm drawing/painting a girl close up that's resting her arms on her knees, and her head is hanging pretty low. I just dunno how to get the arms/keybones/torso/breasts to look quite right. I don't think I'll find this exact pose, but if I can look at a few different poses I'll prolly be able to figure it out.

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