I've tried every tutorial and every mainstream digital painting product that exists (yep, it took a long time too). Below is a handout I've curated—advice distilled from all the top Disney, Pixar, Naughty Dog, Riot Games artists. This is for students who want to teach themselves digital painting or level-up their digital painting.____Photoshop is the best digital painting program, which means you'll need a Wacom or Huion.Software and Hardware:
You’ll need a Wacom tablet or a Huion tablet (cheaper than Wacom but same quality). You don’t need a cintiq. An intuos small or medium is perfect and portable. Large tablets aren’t portable, so avoid them. Procreate is okay too, but doesn't allow you to do nearly as many cool things as PS. BTW, pros don’t use Procreate, they use Photoshop, so if you have professional aspirations . . .To start, you should know:
1. Selections (lasso, magic wand, quick select, select color range)2. CMD+SHIFT+N for new layer; CMD+J for duplicate layer3. Hold Spacebar to move screen around4. Zoom shortcuts5. layer types (Normal, lighten, darken, multiply, screen, color)6. Transform (CMD+T), including warp and perspective transform.7. Eye-dropper (hold down OPTION)8. B for Brush; E for eraser9. Curves10. Layer masksDuring your first 25 digital paintings (follow these habits):
1. Take your time. If it took a pro 4 hours to do a painting, it should take you 12 or 16 to do the same. No, seriously. But after you’ve done 25 paintings, you’ll be much faster.2. Stay focused. 25 paintings? 25 PAINTINGS?? That’s a ton of commitment, as in it might take you 1-2 years to struggle through these (or 1-2 months if you’re a machine). You have to complete 25 15-hour paintings to get good. Sorry to say there’s no shortcut.3. Paint from photo refs or film stills for your first 25. No stylized illustrations yet, because they’ll slow down your growth as an artist. (I’m just giving you directions to level-up as quickly as possible.) Don’t worry, your personal style will be waiting for you when you complete your 25 realistic paintings. It’s like if you want to be a good basketball player, you can’t just play pickup games. You have to practice shooting free throws too! (Luckily, painting film stills is more fun than free throw practice.)
4. No tracing. Measure relative distances instead. Look at your ref and figure out what’s ¼, ½, and ¾ of the way across your image from right to left. In a landscape, find your horizon line and vanishing points.5. Start monochromatic: either B&W, Sepia-toned, or Blue&White. Your hand-eye coordination will be terrible for your first few paintings, so monochromatic simplifies things. When you feel comfortable making marks on the tablet (probably around painting #4), then bring in color if you want.6. Don’t share these on social media right away. Save that as a reward for finishing your first 8 or 10. It’s a good motivator (“I’ve got to finish these so I can show them off!) Ideally you wouldn’t push ANY to social media until you finish your 25, but we’re human, after all.7. Beware of YouTube tutorial time-wastey spirals (where you squander hours watching YouTube how-to-paint videos, pretending that just watching them will magically make you better). Focus on completing your 25 paintings ASAP.8. When is it productive to surf the web? When you’re stuck and don’t know how to paint something, like grass. To paint grass, look at how the masters did it. Google “Russian landscape painting” and for shrubs, google “garden painting” or “totoro background art.” Whatever artistic problem you’re trying to solve has already been solved by someone.During your first 25 digital paintings (Technical Tricks):
1. Start with a big brush and block in your big shapes. You don’t need to draw outlines or line art when you’re painting.
2. You only need 2-6 brushes. Quickly increase/decrease the brush size by pressing the keys ] and [.
3. Flip back and forth between two colors by pressing X. Handy for doing light side and shadow side of an object.
4. Handy trick: If you want to “color in” a big shape, select it with the lasso tool, then use a big brush. If you want to erase a big shape, select it with the lasso tool first, then use an eraser. Also try the quick select tool. (Robert Kondo teaches this in his Schoolism class: see below)
Brushes for Photoshop:
With so many brushes available on the web, where do you start? Remember, you only need 2-6 brushes. I probably use 4 on a typical painting.
Use either Shaddy’s brushes or John Park’s brushes.
Ignore Kyles Brushes, Tuomas Korpi’s brushes, and all the other clutter out there for now.
Shaddy: http://onepixelbrush.com/tutorials/ (Free brushes)
John Park: https://gumroad.com/jparked (brushes included with any tutorial)
Best tutorials for digital painting:
John Park’s gumroad — here’s a good one: https://gumroad.com/jparked#Yubcm
Robert Kondo’s class on Schoolism ($30/mo)
Shaddy’s tutorial series (001 – 008; skip 000) on YouTube — advanced digital painters should try his style — https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NygkJEc3yu4
Finally, watch these 2 videos:
Top 5 Shading Mistakes: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LrHfrncvODQ
Top 5 Drawing Mistakes: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tCZIqbRDphs&vl=en
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More digital artists to measure your progress against: Wenjun Lin, Takeshi Oga, Krenz Cushart, Tuomas Korpi, Jaime Jones, Joon Ahn, Loish, Helen Chen, Kevin Nelson, Pablo Carpio
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