Digital Painting Tricks & Techniques: 100 Ways to Improve Your CG Art

INTRODUCTION

Welcome to Digital Painting Tricks & Techniques: 100 Ways to Improve Your CG Art. I’m Gary Tonge, a professional digital artist working predominantly in the

entertainment software industry. As with my first book, Bold Visions, I have written this book with the intention of helping aspiring and professional artists alike make the most of their own talents and get more out of the software used to create

computer-generated, or CG, art. Where this book differs from Bold Visions is that I’ve broken down the instruction into beginner, intermediate and advanced skill

levels, with individual techniques and tips that will hopefully inspire some new ideas, offer solutions to your art challenges, and help speed up your workflow.

Primarily I use Adobe® Photoshop® to create my art, and it is the focus of this book. While I often scribble a sketch onto a pad, or model a quick shape in a 3-D package, I almost always return to Photoshop to finalize my images. Many of the techniques explored within these pages are quite personal to me, so you will also get some insight into how I go about painting my art and the tricks I use from time to time to speed things up, add polish and create great-looking final pieces.

Whether your goals are to update and improve your current skill set, make your digital-painting hobby more fulfilling, or just see how a professional digital

artist does things, it is my hope that this book will help you find inspiration and insight into CG art.

Chapter One

BRUSHES & BRUSHSTROKES

As you grow as an artist, you’ll start to form your own distinctive style. A portion of this no doubt comes from things that influence and inspire you—nature, the work of other artists, and your own imagination. However, one of the most defining elements to any artist’s work is the way in which brushstrokes are applied. In this chapter, we’ll explore some tips for creating Photoshop brushes and using them effectively in your art.

Beginner

Draw Straight Lines

Straight lines are as simple as it gets when working digitally, and there are a number of good ways to create them. (Please note: The red box and arrow you see below are not part of the original screen shots. I have overlaid them there to help with clarity of instructions.)

Draw Lines With the Line Tool

The most basic method for creating lines is to select the line tool in the toolbox, set the width and opacity of the line you want, then draw lines as you wish.

Draw Lines With the Brush Tool

A faster, more organic way of creating lines is to hold the SHIFT key and click with the brush tool from one point to the next. These lines were done using a simple round brush with a hard edge.

Important!

If you are serious about progressing as a digital artist, I strongly recommend investing in a tablet, if you have not done so already. Many CG art techniques, including several discussed in this book, are only possible with the use of a tablet.

Draw Curved Lines

Painting digitally helps make the process of creating accurate curved lines a little easier than it is in traditional painting.

Practice Makes Perfect Curved Lines

If the curves haven’t come out exactly as you want them to, keep your fingers on CTRLZ or CMD Z, and undo and redo any erroneous curves until you achieve the desired shape. With practice, drawing flowing curves will become less nerve-racking and the outcome will be much more fluid.

Pencil and Brush Effects With a Tablet

With a tablet, you can make the brush behave in an organic way. Set the brush shape and brush opacity to pen pressure. The harder you press down, the wider and more pronounced the line becomes—just like a pencil or paintbrush.

Brush Dialog Menu

I use these settings the most in Photoshop. (Pink boxes are overlays that I placed for clarity of instruction and are not part of the original screen shot.)

Brush Effects

The squiggly white lines here were created with the brush tool using the pen-pressure setting. This setting will work with any of the painting tools (clone stamp, history brush, smudge, eraser, etc.), but you do need a tablet for this technique.

Intermediate

Stay Loose and Confident

Now that we’ve looked at some basic brush settings, let’s start sketching. Take a look at this loose drawing of a car. I spent only a few minutes on it, using the same principles and settings discussed in the previous section.

Be Flexible

Stay loose and flexible with your ideas, including line work. Paint your rough line ideas on one layer, then work up tighter lines on a new layer above. Focus on establishing correct proportions. You can have fun tidying up the lines later.

Create a Sense of Cohesion

A sports car is a perfect demonstration of the importance of brushstroke cohesion. The lines you lay down must give a sense of movement, tension and aggression. Without these, the illusion will rapidly break down.

Brushstrokes Communicate Form

Thick and thin brushstrokes tell the viewer exactly what the shapes are doing. Very few lines are needed to project the shape of this car.

The End Result

The car was lined out, then painted on a separate layer. All the lines aim towards the ground from the back of the car to the front. There is a quick color gradient from light to dark on the background layer. The sweeping brushstrokes used on the background help add a sense of movement to the image.

Go in Reverse!

If you find the brushstrokes uncomfortable to create smoothly, try temporarily flipping the image. Working in the reverse direction can help.

Select and Paint Out

Loose, confident, iterative brushstrokes will always leave behind a legacy of lines you’ll want to remove, as well as errors in lines you do wish to keep. The following process is a simple way of cleaning up your lines.

1COMPLETE THE LINES YOU WANT

Look over your line drawing. In this instance there are several unwanted lines, as well as slightly disjointed lines that you’ll want to keep. (I highlighted these in pink for clarity’s sake.) Use the SHIFT/click technique discussed earlier to join these lines together. You do not need to be too clinical. The next step will help clean these lines along with the rest.

2SELECT AND PAINT OUT

Once all the lines are in place, use the polygonal lasso tool to select the areas you don’t want. Follow the contours of the lines you want to keep, taking care not to cut too far into them as you select. The selected area (highlighted in pink) is now ready to be painted over with a white brush, if you are working on