Teaching myself to paint

ZzzapZzzap

New guy here, I figured this'd be the place to post to get some brutal C&C.

I'm a young hobbyist artist, started doing art with crayons and pens in kindergarten and in recent years I've been dabbling with digital painting and 3d modeling.

I picked up some cheap entry-level tablet many years ago, but until recently I never did any serious work with it. This is my latest practise piece, googled for random sketches on the internet and stumbled across an illustration of the Hulk. Using the drawing as my guideline I've come this far.

So, I'm posting this in hopes of getting some good tips and crits from the other artists on this board, please take a look at the pic and tell me if I should keep going

hobodactyl

If you like making art then keep going, you shouldn't need us to tell you that :P Looks like you're doing a good job so far, but it's usually a better idea to do a rough layout of everything first and then work up the details.

ZzzapZzzap

Today's progress, I'm off to bed.

The original picture was drawn by a brazilian comic artist called Jos

okno

It's best if you start off with the general shape (bigger brush) then gradually end up doing the small details last, otherwise you might miss out really big parts of the shading. I don't consider myself a very good painter but here's a quick paint over animation:



So in this, I left the wrinkles outside his eyes until last so that I could define the shape in that area before hand and then work on top of it.

Also things I noticed: Eyes should be shaded more... people often wrongly keep eyes bright even when they're in shadow. Also shaded the teeth with this in mind. Lower part of the face would be darker because it's further away and angled away from the light. These shading issues should be done earlier on with bigger brushes.

Also, it's good to periodically flip the piece you're working on horizontally, so you can freshly see what looks good/bad.

Emil Mujanovic

I'm probably not the best one here to give painting advice as I'm still learning myself. But the comments you've been given seem really solid so far and the paintover above is great.

A few quick tips based on my workflow:
- I personally always start off with a brush that feels like its just too big, this forces me to focus more on the the forms and blocking in the rough shape of my painting without focusing on the minor details. I will eventually make the brush smaller and smaller as I build up. I always leave detailing to the very end and sometimes just skip that entirely, especially if its just a speed paint.
- I DON'T zoom in to my painting at all. You should be able to view your entire painting AT ALL times. This will stop you from getting caught up in a single area and it will stop you from detailing your piece so early on.
- Colour variation is really important. It brings your characters/creatures to life and adds a more interest to your piece. Sometimes I'll lay down a few variations on a new layer and use different layer blending modes (Multiply for shadows, Overlay for midtones and highlights - you may prefer using different ones, these are just the ones I use) and when I'm happy with it, I will collapse the layer down.
- I paint on a single layer, I don't like being caught up and confused with a billion layers except for special cases. If you make a mistake, don't be scared to just paint it out and start that area again.
- Finally, just keep painting, practice makes perfect.

I hope you find some of those tips helpful. They aren't the only way to digitally paint, its just the way that works for me.
Welcome to Polycount and keep posting your progress, mate

-caseyjones

ZzzapZzzap

Ok, back at it again, I gave him a new nosejob.

When I first saw that paintover, I had a tremendous feeling of inferiority wash over me. So anyway, after that episode, I picked my tablet up again and began following the advice you guys gave me. Most layers were set to multiply, I also threw in a couple of passes of dodge and screen. I'll let you judge the results, the thing that bothers me the most right now is the messy looking brushwork (look at his right cheek for example), I dont suppose you could give me a few specific pointers regarding that?

Also, I filpped the picture around a few times like you told me to, and I think the character's left ear is a bit off. This, however, is the original artist's mistake, and not mine :P

And I tossed the hair away as well, for now.

okno

About the brush-work: when shading I usually keep my brush at a very low percent opacity depending on how dark/light the colour I'm using is, so the difference between brush strokes is minimal. Obviously not too low or it would take forever. Also I sometime use the smudge tool if there is bad brush-work. For the record, my paint-over was all done on the same layer using multiply and overlay brushes.
Also... reading about how raytracing works can give you a real insight into how light behaves, I learned tons from that.