Need help Digital Enviroment Painting
polycounter lvl 3
First off, Merry Christmas everyone. It has been a long time since I have last posted here as school and work have kept me busy. Now that I have some good time off I want to get back into art. I used to draw, sketch and paint 6 or so years ago and decided I wanted to try some digital work with Photoshop. Trouble is I am having a lot of issues getting down good lighting I have looked for tutorials but I can not for the life of me find any that go in depth specifically on environments. Anyways here is a some of my first paintings starting from my first to my last (I save all my work no matter how bad). Also one more question is it cheating to use some of the cooler brushes lol ![:\](https://polycount.com/plugins/emojiextender/emoji/twitter/confused.png ":\")
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PS: I need a tablet this mouse thing is killing me.
I did all these today just seeing if I still remembered how to make decent composition (apparently I need work:poly142:).
.PS: I need a tablet this mouse thing is killing me.
I did all these today just seeing if I still remembered how to make decent composition (apparently I need work:poly142:).
Replies
I think the main thing I can recommend regarding environment painting, is to point out that it's not really that much different than painting anything else. It's just a series of marks meant to portray certain shapes, values, or colors, painting a mountain does not differ much from painting an individual rock (unless your mountain is...next to your rock, in the same painting. :poly142:) So while you're painting, realize that you'll just be picking a brush and painting it to the best of your understanding with whatever tools you have available. If you're painting a mountain - do you understand mountains? Do you know how they are structured, and can you envision that in detail - or do you know just that they are large, sometimes triangular and have a rocky-ish texture? The former will help you to know how to use your tools to achieve your goal, the latter will result in content that is less than confident, and lacking in quality.
You may consider using a smaller, harder brush to paint. There's lots of soft brushwork right now, which doesn't communicate the information present with much clarity or confidence. And while there's nothing wrong with using custom brushes - you may discover that they're a lot easier, and more effective to use when you can paint the same thing with your basic round brush (counting for some size adjustments). They're helpful tools to be sure, but they are not magic shortcuts and you need to make sure they're not giving you a look you don't fully understand.
Also, yes, you totally need a tablet. For serious, look into that asap if digital painting is something you're serious about! There's a lot of information available on these forums in past threads about them, and feel free to ask if you want more direct information related to that endeavor.
But some things I can give my 2 cents on!
- Tablets
Definitely get one. They're great, a completely different experience to trying to use a mouse. The pressure and tilt sensors on higher end ones just make the experience so smooth (though if you're a hobbyist, low-mid tier is just fine too). If you haven't used one, I wouldn't say it's "just like painting for real!" or anything, it's not, but it's very handy and comfortable.
Wacom is always trustworthy (they have problems, but you know what you're getting), Monoprice, Yiynova and Huion have their own tablets that are considerably cheaper and supposedly despite poorer build quality have better drivers... once you can get them working. You get what you pay for, basically.
- Brushes
You can get every effect you can need with a Hard Round brush with Transfer/Flow (and opacity if that's your thing).
Using fancy brushes isn't a cop-out, just make sure you know what they're doing for you. I personally find/pick/make some custom brushes/smudge tools/etc AFTER I've painted something so much that I know what I need. eg, I have a custom leaf brush, but I made it myself after I had a few personal projects in a row with leaves painted in a similar way. I got sick of blending everything by hand, so I purchased and edited a textured smudge tool for my own use.
I would, however, stay away from the Dodge/Burn tools for a considerable while. They have their uses but early on it's hard to discern where you should/shouldn't use them and they're so easy to over use.
Despite not being aimed specifically at environments, I'd still watch and read all of these. It's good information you can apply to painting anything (and huge kudos to Twolisten for the composition links):
http://www.ctrlpaint.com/
http://androidarts.com/art_tut.htm
http://www.cgsociety.org/index.php/CGSFeatures/CGSFeatureSpecial/phil_straub_composition_tutorial
http://dantat.typepad.com/dantat/2010/10/notes-on-composition.html
Anyways, here is my latest WIP was browsing you tube today and saw this really cool tutorial on Matte painting and had to give it a shot ( my brain was, oh my god you can make paintings look that real lol). So far its coming out okay my shadows need some adjustment but I think I can flesh it out into something.