The Way I work Part III My favourite part of the entire process for some reason. My skills are kinda sloppy and bad compared to others, but if it works for me (and keeps me happy), I'll keep my own way and continue to seek improvement in the skill. Ok, before I start picking colours, I got to set up my brushes again. The settings aren't so different from the brushes I use before, but the minor tweaks help a lot. All brushes are airbrush enabled and Flow Jitter control: Pen Pressure. Block Brush: Hard Brush (no soft edges), Flow: 70%, Minimum diameter: 15%. Used this for colouring large clumps. Tone (Environ) Brush: Soft Brush, Flow at 0-10%, Minimum diameter: 20% Used this for shading skin, environment and sometimes clothes. Tone (Fabric) Brush: Medium-Hard Brush, Flow at 5-20%, Minimum diameter: 15% Used this for shading clothes and hair. Tone (Minor) Brush: Soft Brush, Flow at 1-15%, Opacity Jitter Enabled; Pen Pressure Control, Opacity at 1-20% Used this for extreme minor shading. Very little visible effect, but I like it. And keep the inking brush somewhere in reach, I did a lot of adjustments to the ink layer as I coloured. XD  Create a new layer, and colour in only one component of the picture (eg. hair is to 1 layer, skin is to 1 layer, top is to 1 layer, etc etc) Tip: NAME YOUR LAYERS PROPERLY. Time is always wasted when you are trying to guess if Layer 13 or Layer 15 is the layer you want to work on.   So just colour in the lines, try your best to fill up everything, occasionally changing your background colour to see if you left any gaps, dun worry if you go out of the line, you can erase them later. Then comes (my favourite) part, shading. I am a pretty weak shader, never understood shading actually, I just shade what I think should be dark or light. Remember where the light comes from, and that's all I can say. Take the toning brushes, select a darker/lighter colour from the base, COPY the layer you will be shading on (in case you ruin it, you still got the base), and enable your friend, Transparency Lock. The Transparency Lock basically locks the transparent area around your block colouring, meaning that all the shading will be done only on the block colours, and not outside them. It will save you a lot of erasing.   Tip: A tablet is always good, but sometimes if you want to save strength when shading, use the mouse. The mouse neglects Pen Pressure, meaning what comes out is the effect when you press down the hardest on the tablet. I can't say much... cause I am still learning. But I have a few pointers: -Skin has redness, and is not always peach coloured. Use a large 'Tone (Minor) Brush' and a saturated colour (orange is what I think best) and run over the skin lightly a few times. Very minor difference. -Use desaturated colours for fabric. You can saturate them later for interesting effects. Desaturated colours (to me anyway) is easier to see shading. -Adopt a healthy habit in layer management. Look at the layer you are working on first before doing anything on it. Countless time I have shaded on the wrong layer which can lead to some odd scenario in the long run. -If you are lazy or know what you are doing, The Burn and Dodge tools are very good at creating shading, I use them to shade eyes and do relatively minor environment shading. In about 6-9 hours work, I got this: (Why would a potted plant be an interesting painting, I don't know)   And now, it is tweaking the combined image, erasing errors. Tip: Curves, Levels, Photo Filter, Brightness/Contrast, all these can help tweak your image to a deeper, more appealing colour. Discovery!: Image -> Adjustment -> 'Auto Contrast' helped me this time round. I give you, the Beta (I still got a bunch of detailing to do, this is just rushed to make today's post possible) (click for optimised original: 768 by 1024):

17.3.06 09:46 Permalink

The Way I Work Part II Disclaimer: I am just doing this to space fill, and I am not that good an artist, still amateurish and too full of myself.  Welcome to the second instalment of "The Way I Work", where I show behind-the-scenes on how do I do my drawings/colourings. Some optional equipments: Hair Clip (to keep my fringe from irritating my eyes), music, water, more patience. I don't know if many artists encounter this problem, but I usually get it as time passes. I would take a long 1 hour break sometimes, and when I return, I no longer 'love' the face, and I would go back to redraw it. Sometimes it is beyond repair, and I scrap it. Tip: Flip the canvas horizontally (like mirroring it) and check the face. If it is disfigured when mirrored, chances are the face won't be likable with prolonged viewing. Another ugly truth, I absolutely hate inking. In real life I don't have the skill, and digitally it is painfully tedious. I don't use any polygonal lassos, pen tools or such, its freehand for me all the way. First we take the 'construct', copy the layer, and <CTRL+U> Hue/Saturate it to a colour other than shades of black. Blue is commonly used for some reason. And comes the fun *sarcasm* part, tracing! Create a new layer ontop of the construct, drop the construct's opacity, still using the same brush settings from the last process, boost the flow to about 70% and trace away. The colour change for the construct layer is to add in inking. It is easier to differenciate your ink lines to the construct lines when they are of different colour. Tip: This is not the only way to ink, it is just a preferred technique (and fastest) to me. Google a bit and follow some inking tutorial to see what you like most.   (>< whoops, 3rd picture from left I accidentally hid the pencil layer) In about half an hour (or less) you generally would finish tracing. Tip: Work at Zoom level 200%-400%, zoom out to check out your work, then go back in and trace ever so carefully. Even though you are inking, this is digital, so your lines can appear jaggy. Keep your lines continous by moving the tablet or cursor fast over the line. If you miss or go out too much, undo and try again. Another problem I always encounter is that because of the construct usually having those swishy soft lines that builds up contours and shape, the ink usually don't have such things and would look flat, and I do not work with the construct when I am colouring. The only way for now I do is ignore and hope for the best during colouring. During inking I also add more details, correct more errors, and if I really can't figure out to draw the hair, I would just redraw the hair from scratch on a separate layer. Because of my fuzziness with hair and face, numerous discrepancies occur. Change the hair... XD Drop her eyes a bit, top of eye altered a tiny bit, redrew outer face structure. Drop her eyebrows, redrew face once more. (I am so lousy...) Finally, I just add a simple environment, though during the course of this work, I still can't figure out where to put her... Bleh, I am uninspired. Because this pose is imaginary, obviously there are flaws, which one can see and encounter in the next instalment, COLOURING! (0mg w00t).   (Below): Feet added at last minute, detailed to what I can understand about those patterns on pants. Hopefully it would be the final, but I highly doubt so. That's how I work...

16.3.06 06:27 Permalink

The Way I Work Part I (I am doing this piece at time of posting, very liable that many discrepancies will occur along the way.) Equipment: A PC, Photoshop 7 (old skool!), a WACOM tablet, time, patience and a wee bit of creativity and aim. Disclaimer: I had lessons, but I am still learning my ways around with figure drawing. So do not see me as a teacher, I am just space filling my blog with this. Welcome to the first installment of kkyz13's content creation process. I usually work like this (for the past few months), but as time goes along, the process can change quite drastically (for example, I now work digitally only, no papers cause I ran out of pages in my sketchbook). I work digitally now because of the convenience compared to drawing on paper and scanning it in. Sure, on paper you have some controls not easily simulated in a computer, and that you can at least see where the end of the pencil would land (compared to aiming on the screen), but working digitally means that you can have dozens of layers of constructions (without ruining the final work), no eraser shavings, and that you can colour quite nicely. It takes time though, to get used working infront of a screen than infront of a paper. First, you need a work space. I start by opening a new document (1024 by 768) and enlarging the canvas by 300%, so it is 3072 by 2304, and if I require, rotate it 90 degrees so it is a portrait.   Now, before you even start drawing, you need to configure the program (to your liking) so it can simulate pencil. Configuration differs from program, I use Photoshop, so I turn on "Other Dynamics", Turn on "Flow Jitter" with Control set to "Pen Pressure". Also, enabling airbrush and lowering the Flow to about 40%-60%. This would enable me (after enabling the airbrush) to have somewhat pencil-like properties, I can softly draw faded lines, or press down hard and draw dark lines. Enabling the Flow Jitter helps me a lot in controlling line visibility in combination of the 40%-60% Flow dynamic. With that (and a $400+ tablet), I can start drawing.   In truth, I am kinda weak at faces, but enjoy drawing them nonetheless. I start with a circle (duh), using all the fundamentals tried and tested, to construct the head. I don't start with the body until I 'love' the head, it may require a lot of Ctrl+Z (undo), 'E' (eraser) to get to a functional level. I would require another longer post if you want to know how I draw facial features, so I will not be going into that. I would mark out the eyes, nose and mouth, get a basic face structure. I draw the basic construct of the eye, and immediately detail it to see if it is nice. If not, erase and redo, that's my way. -__- Tip: Eyes are the most important landmark on the face, it pays to be good at them for they are very expressive and what we humans always look at first to identify the subject and emotion.   After getting something I marginally liked, I start piecing the hair in, choose an expression (I still have no idea at this time though), tweaking and redrawing the face over and over until I get something I like more than before. Tip: Scrap it if you spent about 30 mins and still cannot get a face you like. It is more likely damaged beyond repair. Tip: I find that if you have 'antennas' or fine hairs coming out of the head, generally would make the subject more attractive for some rye or reason... Discrepancy: The face is not of the final product far below, cause I redid and retweaked it.   Then comes the body. I keep my first lines very light and messy, they build up the basic body, arm and leg thickness, where all the bits fit, and with that I can 'feel' a structure. The red lines are just to show how the building blocks I build ontop of, they are not an actual part of the process (since they originally appear black). Since I do not have photo reference for the pose, I would take a lot of time to get it as realistic as possible. Once I got a likable pose, I start darkening lines for detail. Here also I went back to tweak the face, add clothes and fingers. This entire period (about 45 mins) is all about minimal detailing and checking for errors. If there is an error, correct it and detail on top. Tip: Clothes WRAP around bodies, not stuck like paper. This perhaps is much harder to visualise cause we don't regularly pay attention to how clothes wrap around bodies, but the errors can be seen.   And that is basically how I start my creations with. Next up: Inking and Environment! Arugh, so tired doing this... space filling is so tiresome! >< Today I... wished I could be better at drawing eyes still. Grumble.

15.3.06 08:29 Permalink