So the following are some tips for those just starting out at digital painting (as the person who asked my advice was). For more advanced things... well, see point 3 below.
There are no images in this post - I might rectify that at some point.
1) Know Your Software
When people think of Graphics software they usually think of Photoshop. If you have Photoshop you don't need anything else right? With Photoshop you can do everything! Well, yes and no. It's true that there are very few two dimensional tasks you can't do with Photoshop, but that doesn't mean Photoshop is the easiest way to achieve them, and also not the best way to learn to do them.
When I was first learning to paint digitally... Sorry, relearning to paint digitally, and of course I still am learning... I thought Photoshop would be the way to go. I have many years of experience with it after all, and, well, it can do anything. It wasn't though - the way I'd used Photoshop was to do specific things, and paint (textures mostly) in a specific way, and I discovered that Photoshop is crap for some things you want to be fairly fluid, like changing your color. It's improved a lot in that regard in the last few years, and of course I use it a lot for painting now. Still, there are enough technical restraints in place that it can detract from the process of learning to paint digitally in favor of just learning to use Photoshop.
There are other options, some of them much cheaper. Some of them you may take to like a duck to water, and others you may despise and never want to use again. Fortunately for this latter point, a lot of commercial software has a 30 day demo.
Personally I like ArtRage. It's what I started reteaching myself on, and as well as having a very naturalistic feel it also has a very intuitive UI intended to make painterly tasks such as switching or mixing color very easy. It has a limited set of default paint tool types, but a 'sticker' spray that has more Photoshop like power should you need it. It encourages 'real' painting, where once you put down a brush stroke you're more or less stuck with it, lacking many of the manipulation tools that Photoshop has (it does have some, but they aren't anywhere near as powerful, and of course you can undo, so you're not really stuck with it). As well as all of this, it's also extremely cheap! I believe the current price is $50 for desktop, $5 for tablets.
Other popular packages include PaintTool Sai (small, shareware, has a trial), Autodesk Sketchbook and Sketchbook Pro (smallish, cheapish, available for tablets), and Corel Painter (complex, pricey, powerful, has a trial), but there are dozens more, including the recent Paintstorm Studio, which has some bugs, but is currently very cheap and has even more powerful brush options than even Photoshop.
Even if you have several of these packages, it's worth taking the time to get to know what they can do, and how easily they can do it. As I've said, for what I wanted to do Artrage was the best way to go, and I've taken what I learned there and applied it to other packages (mainly Photoshop). Each package is capable of supporting a wide range of styles and techniques, but in some ways they're just like traditional media in that each one has it's own pros and cons, its own feel and limitations, and its own learning curve. The better you learn the software the better the stuff you can create with it, and just like traditional media, where you need something that makes a mark in order to produce 2D art, you need software to do it digitally (even if it's Notepad - yes, really).
So pick the one that feels best to you (within your budget), and stick to it for a while, branching out when you're more comfortable.
2) Pick Useable (but cost effective) Hardware
If your software is the pencil lead making the marks, then the hardware is the barrel of the pencil that you actually hold. If your pencil is too thin or too thick or too long or short then it's going to make creating with it more difficult, no matter how well sharpened it is. Same for computer hardware; I can paint with a mouse, but it's going to require more time and frustration than using a tablet, and the results won't be as good.
Tablet in this case can mean two things - A Graphics Tablet, such as the Wacom Intuos, or something like an iPad or Nexus. I don't much like using my Nexus for painting. I can do it, but I miss the pressure sensitivity the Wacom for my Desktop brings.
The price of these things may be an issue, but while I'm 'upgrading' to a Cintiq in the next week (like a monitor with a pressure sensitive tablet built in), I've been using the same small first generation Intuos tablet for the last 15 years, and it hasn't failed me yet. So they can cost a fair penny, but you don't need a large one, and they can last an extremely long time (I'll still be using this one to supplement the Cintiq).
The pros and cons of the Wacom style tablet are that it's highly sensitive (pressure, tilt, etc), and much easier and more accurate than using a mouse, but it takes some getting used to having to move your hand here, while the cursor moves over there. Cheap alternatives are available, but almost every professional will pick the Wacom brand over anything else.
A Nexus style tablet on the other hand has the advantage of being able to see exactly where you're going to put a stroke. On the other hand you lose a lot of the sensitivity, and keyboard shortcuts become problematic (there are gestures though, but they're on the same screen you're painting on).
I wouldn't recommend a Cintiq to someone starting out - they are extremely expensive, and surprisingly quite a few digital illustrators actually don't like them much.
And despite what I said above, it is possible to create amazing work with a mouse, if you have the patience.
3) Learn Art
This is of course a given, but it's surprising how many people don't realise it. Digital tools make art easier, a lot easier in some cases, but they don't replace the need to know the same fundamentals of art that traditional media requires. Things like composition, colour usage or anatomy. If you're a good traditionalist, then move along, but if not you'll still need to work on the same skills, just that you can work on them digitally and take advantage of the Undo option.
I'm not going to cover the fundamentals of art here, but there are a lot of tutorials out there on the web. I'd recommend the blog of James Gurney, Muddy Colors and Proko as reasonable places to learn more about the basics (and some of the more advanced things - you'll need to dig a little on the blogs to find the learny bits). You can also check out Deviantart or Pinterest and do a search for tutorials. There's libraries too - a lot of knowledge found in books has not filtered onto the Internet yet, which is why I have a bookshelf groaning under the weight of art tomes.
Anyone can learn to be a reasonably competent artist, but you need to work at it, Digital or not.
4) Take It Slow
So you've got some grounding in art, and you've moved to digital and... well things just don't look as good as when you use a pencil or a brush, what gives? Or maybe you don't have a grounding in art, but you can draw a stick man, and can't do one digitally.
Well, if you were an artist versed in the use of colored pencils or marker pens, you wouldn't be surprised if your first foray into oil paint wasn't a great success, because even knowing the fundamentals all the details are different. Digital is no different. Before you can really produce masterpieces (or any pieces really) you need to work out how the software (or the software's individual tool) handles color mixing, or blending or how big your brush is at any one time.
Unlike the previous point though, learning software doesn't take very long, and has some advantages if you need to make use of them for learning. The undo tool is of course the most obvious. Make a mistake? Undo it like it never happened. Most modern software has multiple undo states, so you can make quite a few strokes before you realise you went wrong and need to remove them.
One thing people used to painting traditionally - or who just learned about colour at school - can have difficulty is the way computers handle color. They use an additive system rather than the subtractive one most children first learn and painters are familiar with. This is less of a problem when you can see the color wheel right in front of you, as is quite common now, but it can be confusing when you need to mix red and green to make yellow rather than yellow and blue to make green. Just experiment with it for a bit and it will become second nature as will using the software in general. Don't work on serious pieces right out of the gate - simple experiments that don't take long are more disposable, and teach you just as much about how to use the tools (I should take my own advice going the other way there, and do small practice pieces with real paint).
5) Show People
Whatever you do, share it with people. If you want feedback or help then ask for it, there is probably someone willing to supply it. One nice thing about sharing (even the 'bad' stuff) is that people will see when you're improving and remark upon it. Artists are usually their own worst critics, and so relying upon their own view of their works can be discouraging. It can be difficult to gauge the quality of work without having fresh eyes upon it. Equally though, it is more than possible to get so hung up on that bit of the painting you hate that you completely missed that it looks like a flying penis instead of an angel (this has happened, allegedly). So again, getting other folks eyes on it occasionally can help.
One thing about critiques though; a well reasoned critique can help a lot, but you should never take a critique personally no matter how instructive or blunt they are. Some folks are not artists, but can still critique your work with valid observations. Other folks are artists but are terrible at supplying useable critique. "It sucks" or "You suck" is not helpful to anyone. If you get such critique you should ignore it, or at least ask someone why it might suck.
On the opposite side, if someone compliments your work, bask in the glory for a moment, thank the commenter, but then ask yourself why it's good. Or ask someone else. "This is awesome!" is technically no more constructive than "This is awful!", but it can still be a learning experience either way.
Positive comments do help the ego more though, and might result in more artistic drive, but that shouldn't be the only reason to share your work (if it is then the eventual "This sucks" will hurt all the more). Sometimes those compliments might make you feel odd that nobody can see how awful that piece is - it happens. Learn from it anyway.
6) Study Others
In addition to books and other sources that can tell you how to approach things, you can also learn a lot from studying how others do things. A lot of artists (of which I'm one, as are some of the amazing illustrators on Muddy Colors) will happily share their processes. Others will record video of themselves working and put it on YouTube, and some post their works to Pinterest as well as their own sites (or others post 'for' them - Often with no credit sadly).
Having someone walk you through it might be better, but you can still glean a lot from someone just demonstrating how they do things. Yes, it may be that is still seems like magic as they work, but they've studied at least a bit, and have been doing this longer than you. When you discover how a good magician does a trick, it doesn't mean you can automatically copy them. In fact for me it actually increases my level of respect for the amount of time it must have taken them to master something so complex and make it look simple and natural (or supernatural, given they're a magician), or even something so simple, yet make it look so very complex that nobody can work out how it was done.
The same is true of art. An artist is much more likely to share their 'tricks' with you than a magician, but it will still take a lot of practice to pull that off yourself. Even so, at least you know how the trick was done from the study of it, which puts you a long way ahead of those who think it was produced out of a hat with nothing more than some mythical natural talent*. It can also ground you with regards to how much work can go into a really polished piece, so you don't beat yourself up that you're not as good after only 30 minutes. Yes, they might be faster and better than you no matter what, but again, they've been doing it longer.
*There is such a thing as talent, but it just gives a head start - you need to work at it just like anyone else to make the most of it. That's the topic for another post, eventually.
7) Begin at the Beginning
No matter which artist's work you look at, the chances are they all started each piece in more or less the same way - they started simple, and built up from there. Starting simple can mean working out a basic line drawing or guide first, or it can mean building up layer after layer of successive detail.
Whatever it is, working simple first means you can often identify issues early and correct for them before you spend a lot of time on a piece. If a progression image consisted of a piece just filling in in a clockwise direction it wouldn't be very interesting, or very useful to you as a thing to study. Fortunately this is usually not the case, and you can see how the artist builds up the image in stages, with each successive stage including more and more detail or refinement.
The same applies to anyone, including you. You can't paint a room effectively without putting down primer first. Why would an illustration be any different? keep it simple to start, and build up on it as you go.
8) Use the Tools to Learn
Once you've dug into the software you've chosen for a while you'll notice that it has a lot of tools that can be used to make your life easier. Generally I try not to use too many of them as I don't want them to become crutches - but I do know how to use them (well, some of them) if I need to.
How you use them is up to you, but don't be afraid of them. I very rarely use a color picker tool to directly use the colour from a photograph these days, but I still use it on a regular basis to get a true sense of how much darker Area A is than Area B (see the previous A Musing posts on optical illusions if this being difficult is news to you). I don't use either of those colors, but to me this is the equivalent of viewing a scene through a pinhole in a black card in order to gauge true color (yes, many artists do that. Not all, but enough).
So learn to use those tools, and then use those tools to better teach yourself. But be honest about it - if you picked colours directly from a photograph it's okay to mention that, and there's less backlash if someone realises you have done so and never mentioned it (you don't have to recite a list every time, but if someone asks, be honest).
9) Embrace the Format
Digital painting is an odd thing. In a very real sense any piece you've produced doesn't exist. It's just a series of 1's and 0's floating around on a hard drive platter. And yet in another sense it has more presence than a real painting in today's society.
When was the last time you saw a real painting? If you own one it may have been this morning, but for many people it was the last time they visited a gallery, and it's slightly depressing how few people make it to even their local gallery every year (I'm sad to admit I hold myself in their number - I've not been to a gallery in far too long).
So the last time you saw a 'real' painting was probably online, or in a magazine, and in most cases such things are poor reproductions of the originals that can use paint in a way that catches the light and produces particular effects. You can't really see silver thread in a magazine or on a screen, you just see a photograph of it. With digital art though, what you see is what you get. You're painting it in the same basic medium that most people are going to see it in (well, there is some loss if it's going to be printed, but not much comparatively).
So embrace that. And embrace the things you can do with a digital work that you can't do easily, or perhaps at all, in a traditional work. One thing I love about painting digitally is that thanks to layers I can go back and work on the background separately from the foreground, and work on it as though the foreground isn't there. I don't always; a lot of my speedpaints are done on one layer, but often I do, and it's wonderfully freeing to be able to fully adapt the background without worrying that it might damage the foreground (you can mask a foreground in a traditional piece, but it's not as easy as jut adding a layer).
The end result, no matter how many layers are used, or which blending modes, or which post processing effects, is what you see on the screen - and it will be the same - bar some calibration issues - on the screen of the viewer. So use what you have at your disposal as you need to, to improve that final result.
10) Have Fun
At this stage, if you are a digital beginner, you're probably just doing it for fun, or as a learning experience. Well, the best way to learn is to do things you enjoy, so have fun with it.
Nothing is off the table as long as you're having fun with it, and learning as you go. If it's not fun, and it's not making you money, then why do it? You might be creating works that seemingly nobody else likes, but if it's fun for you who cares? If you want to make a career out of it then at some point you'll need to do things that are less enjoyable to you and more acceptable to others, but in the meantime do what you want to, do it how you want to and 'cheat' all you want (but be honest about it - I'm not sure it can be called cheating if everyone knows what you did because you told them)
Do it for yourself, don't be ashamed to be learning, and if others like it too then all the better for everyone.
Note: This was an impromptu post, and eventually I will get back to the A-Musing series I started way back when once more. Have patience, it's been a busy year.
No comments:
Post a Comment