I want to learn how you guys make the splash arts and other Photoshop-created drawings and illustrations.

When I try to make painting-styled photoshop illustrations, they look like a muddy mess.

As an example of my work, here is a page from my webcomic, where I tried to make a nice-looking forest and waterfall background.

http://www.selkiecomic.com/selkie248/

I'd like to get the hang of creating oil-painting textures and smoother transitions between lights and darks. I feel like when I try to smooth out my color transitions now, I over-do it or under-do it.

Tried watching the art spotlights but they move so fast I can't quite tell brush settings, etc, that yields those lovely textures and details. Tried fiddling with brush texture settings but they tend to give ragged edges.

Thanks for any tips!

Have you seen the KNKL show? Kienan Lafferty works at riot and he posts little tutorials on youtube every week. They really helped me with my art c:

http://www.youtube.com/user/KienanLa...eature=g-all-u

Good Luck!! C:

Oh, sweet link! Thanks!

Looking at your work I can say you have a very cartoon heavy style. If you want to start making full rendered paintings it's going to take a lot of work. I'm not sure if you know this or not but the art spotlights are sped up. Just want to make that clear.

Also don't worry about brushes. Chances are downloading a different brush isn't going to make your artwork any better. Many digital artist tend to use a hard round brush with shape dynamics, opacity jitter and flow jitter all set to pen pressure. I suggest under shape dynamics is to set the minimum diameter to 30%. This really helps with shading getting and stopping things from looking "muddy."

This website has tons of free videos that can teach you just about anything you need to know. http://www.ctrlpaint.com/digital-painting-101/

If you have any more specific questions I'd be happy to answer them. Also to make sure I'm not crazy here's some of my work. Sadly it isn't in chronological order. http://straightx.deviantart.com/gallery/?offset=0

As has been said before, don't worry about special brushes. In fact, I wouldn't even worry about 'shading' or 'rendering' -- For starters, focus on blocking out shapes. Try painting some simple still life set ups with high contrast lighting. Use fewer, bigger brush strokes to try and block out the form, rather than putting in lots of little lines and trying to get all the detail. Also if you want to get good at this, you have to practice EVERY DAY!

Check out my little doodle below and see if that helps get you started (this was done with just a normal default brush with pressure opacity)



Good luck!

that is a really great example!!

Dude, if tips in photoshop still arent working for you, it might be that you arent used to how photoshop requires you to draw things. I used to have the same problem.

Then I found Paint Tool Sai.

It's a program more suited for sketching and drawing from my experience and what I've seen (tons of people have videos on Youtube of amazing drawings using Paint tool sai).

(PS: the reason why there are so many people using paint tool sai for anime style drawings on youtube is mainly because paint tool sai originally came out in japan, lol. Its perfectly adequate for western style drawings too.)

Basically, the main difference between photoshop and Paint Tool Sai is that PTS's tools are set up to be more like actual art tools than image editing tools. Paint tool sai even has this mini map of the image you are drawing so you can see exactly where on the image you are zoomed in on. Alot more friendly towards people who are used to sketching in paper than in photoshop.

Did I mention that Paint tool sai is also compatable with photoshop files?

I concur with what Riot Penguin said. I would forget about color for now. Learn to get your grayscale values correct, then worry about color. Color is nothing without the right values.

Also, don't disregard traditional drawing and sketching. Photoshop can only mimic real drawing and painting....it is still worthwhile to go out and sketch and work those muscles.

Be aware that being an artist is a constant struggle. You will always be wanting more, but I can think of no greater pursuit or challenge.