How to Paint - Digital Painting Tutorial for Beginners

so digital painting in this episode we're going to cover the basics for digital painting inside photoshop let's check it out okay so here we are in photoshop and what i want to do for this episode is sort of go through some of the processes um that i normally use in every single digital painting and some extra stuff that i usually do when i do studies or i just do uh very simple um practices right and the way i'm gonna show this is i have this uh small picture here of an apple and i sort of want to want to break out the process of painting this apple here in photoshop since this is going to be sort of like a study of this image there are some steps that uh that are extra for example you know we have we're actually studying this particular image so we have to take it into consideration to do our image our our painting here and also some other things that wouldn't happen if we were just doing a a personal image or something that we're just making up but this is going to be sort of like a study and i think this is a great way to start learning digital painting is doing studies like this so you can get comfortable with the software and the process and all that okay so the first step is going to be the actual uh processing or study of of this image that we have here right and what that means is that when i look at the image i start taking mental notes of things that i need to consider for the image so for example one other thing is going to be the shape of the apple right so the apple has sort of like a shape like this right and if we take a look at the at the stems here and the uh and the leaves here then i'll take that into consideration as well right so the major thing in terms of shape i'm going to concentrate on the on the apple i'm also looking at the lighting right so right now there's a clear definition of where the lighting is coming from and in this case we can see the shadow the cast shadow going this way from the apple so that means that our light is on the opposite direction right so in here the light is sort of coming this way in here right and our shadow is going this way right so now visualizing this apple in 3d is sort of giving me an idea of where the light is going to be in the apple and then where the shadow is going to be in the apple right so i'm thinking about the shape thinking about the lighting and there's no there's no more important aspect here it's just um it's just uh the way we're doing it but uh all these happen at the same time now the other thing uh that i'm gonna consider if i'm doing a color study is obviously the color right and we can you know we can just look at it and we sort of try to understand um what colors they are and and and what colors are present in the image now we are not um there's there's some spaces where you can if you're doing a study of of this image there's some places that you can actually but there's some ways that you can literally just copy that exact same image and just try to paint it exactly the same way but what we're gonna do is gonna do an interpretation of this image right so color could be a little bit unbiased so it doesn't have to be exactly the same to portray this image so we have a little bit of freedom of that and also the composition of the image we have a little bit of of uh freedom there uh when we do our our study because we don't we don't really to understand and get value out of this other we don't really need to um do exactly the same of what we see we can sort of interpret it and and do our own take of it okay so one thing that i want to mention is for the shape i'm also thinking in 3d three-dimensional right and what that means is that if i take this apple i'm gonna pick this white color when i see i'm trying to look at the form so let me write that down at the form right and what that means is that when i look at it i'm gonna see that the apple sort of goes like this and it comes up and into the camera and here away from the camera we have the shape right we already established that right and then this goes this way like that and the form goes sort of like that right and if i look at it from here it goes like this so if you work on 3d this will look like a wireframe right and this is extremely important because this will help us understand what the form is and it will also help us place the lighting correctly right you just have the stem here right so this is what i'm seeing when i'm trying to visualize it in 3d right the form and if we see behind it you know instead of goes like that and like so and so on and so forth right but we we understand that so this is behind like that so when i try to see it i'm trying to visualize it in this way right and the other thing is that uh the planes uh if i simplify this as a box it's gonna look something similar to this right so we have we have the top faces which are this ones that are sort of looking up if we simplify right this is the top and this is the front which is sort of these faces here right and these are the ones facing the light so i know my light is coming from here and then we have the side which is this side and then this is gonna be everything else is gonna be in shadow but since this is a round form not a cube we're gonna have some diffuse in between these two here but in a simple way we can simplify this as a box and we can know okay this is the front faces this is my top and this is my side all right so this is another way that you can sort of visualize it in a more simple way to help you understand the form right so now we're gonna try to portray all this first in a simple sketch here in the in the canvas and then we'll see how that looks [Music] okay so now that we have a general sketch and um i don't want to worry too much about the the uh the leaves and all that but we can we can always um sketch it out um but now that we have sort of like an idea um of what the shape is looking like and um you know the form and the lighting we sort of have an idea of the direction of it and what our our our sketch is looking like we can also sketch something like where the so what this table is is going but next we'll go into the next phase which is we can sort of block it out in terms of like the colors and you can either you have a few options here you can either you know go straight to color or you can do a black and white and then do it in color um i think you can do either it really doesn't matter um depending on what you're trying to get but we're gonna do what we're gonna do is sort of go straight to color and start blocking out the main shapes of of this right um anything you could do if you really want to [Music] sort of uh do more of a clean drawing you can bring this down and then on a new layer you know thinking this is like a character where you want to have like clean lines you can come in and sort of clean that up um but you know that's that's really up to you and what sort of what sort of end product you want to have with this um study all right so uh what i'm gonna do is gonna clean it up then i'm gonna start blocking the the colors of it and the way i'm going to do that is obviously in a new layer and i'm using very basic you know um very basic uh brushes here so you know i'll pick the color and let's say this is going to be the color i'm just going to literally just start blocking things out as i'm picking the uh the colors and one thing that i like to do is that if you go to the brush settings color dynamics let's just pick another brush here let's do this one if we go to color dynamics i can play with the huge heater here you can get some really cool um results by playing with the jitter here so let's just say this is my color here you can see that the brush stroke has it's sort of like a a jitter in the hue um of the color there right it's not complex complete flat color right and i want to exaggerate this a bit so you can actually see it but you can see how you get multiple colors in there and it could get pretty crazy but i think this is a good way to get that sort of um hue difference uh with each stroke as you're as you're painting your things right so i'm gonna clean this up uh block it out with color and we'll see how that looks [Music] [Music] [Music] okay so now that we have the major colors here uh blocked out i think we can start blocking the lighting here and you know i did all this in a layer very simple just with a simple round brush right and one thing i can do um just to sort of give it like a um not to like give it like a nice stylized um thing similar to what a lot of people do with the characters and their outlines is i'm gonna grab this layer that has the line work and i'm gonna do my clipping mask and you can do that by right clicking create clipping mask or if you press alt you can hover between the two layers and then we'll clip it and now you get a sort of effect that you can see the line work in some of the areas which i think uh um i think it's a pretty cool effect you can always you know sort of um go over it a little bit in some areas but i think it's a cool effect that you can have in your in your uh in your artwork but i'm gonna do that and i'm also gonna block the lighting here and the way i'm going to do that is let's clean up a little bit this this silhouette here real quick and what i'm going to do is i'm going to create a new layer so i'll put that in i'll put that underneath my linework and let's do a very simple multiply i'm gonna grab the same color that i use here red and of course we're gonna paint over a lot of this but i just want to block out my major areas of light and shadow right so i know that my lighting is coming from here right so i'm gonna i'm gonna keep that in mind and then use that um as my guide so i'm gonna have some shadow here because these faces are facing the opposite direction and maybe a little bit here and of course i'm gonna have everything here these are facing down so it's gonna have a little bit of um shadow here and i know that my form is going like it's going this direction let me do that it's going up towards the light and it starts going away from the light here like this these faces are facing this direction like that so these ones are facing lights a little bit brighter these ones are facing away so they got darker right so let's do that and we have some little bumps here that are like my medium shapes i just want to sort of simply block out the the light shape here all right so also the other thing that i could do is taking consideration my background because my background is going to help me also sort of pop the areas of interest in the apple um using light and dark so for example if this area here on my apple is bright as it is then maybe i could use a darker background here to make that pop even more right and this area is light or dark in here so i can use a lighter tone here just to make that area uh pop a little bit less but you can see how this makes it different than this right here how this area now pops even more right so i'm gonna paint or block out my lighting and we'll see how that looks [Music] okay so now that i have a general idea here and this is where part of your artistic interpretation comes into play um you know without sacrificing the message of the image this is where you can have some liberties and and play with the light and the composition of the values and all that but um once i have a general idea of where my light and shadow is gonna be then i can start blending things a little bit more and one thing that i like to do is for example if i take this layer where i have this shadow here i can grab let's do let's do this maybe this is a shadow it's a hundred percent so all this right side here this is gonna cast a shadow into the apple of course here and um let's do maybe well this is a shadow this is in shadow here so maybe um one thing that you can do is if you grab your smudge tool if you press r that's the uh trigger for it and very lightly i have it on on strength of 10 you can probably even do five percent and just very lightly sort of go over the line here you can see that you can start getting some really nice diffusion in here and this is great for forms that that are rounded like this right but also as you can see here that i'm only doing in center areas because i want to keep some of these hard edges that happen in cast shadows and some of these hard edges that happen in a very sharp turns of the form right so some of these areas i want it to be soft but you can see already that this is looking a lot more smoother and of course you can come back here and do a little bit more work like so i'm going back and forth in between my my brush my uh smudge tool going and refining things right so i can go around and keep working this i'm gonna define the forms a little bit more with uh this technique and we'll see how that looks okay so now that it's a little bit further along um you know i have a general idea with the lighting a little bit of rendering shadows form and all that uh now i can start just to really you know tying thing everything down instead of pretty much do all the final details any artistic thing that you want to do on top of that this is where it's gonna start refining that area this is probably the most fun out of it uh because you get to you know do whatever you want with the image really um you know you can even take the uh the reference off but um one thing that i want to play with is uh you know i will get rid of the lines here but one thing that i want to play with is the edges so um just to do a quick um reference here i want to have you know different types of of uh of edges right in this area in this case you know sharp edges oops so sharp edges will give me contrast of course and focus right so where i want to have more attention to the image i want to have sharp edges and where i don't um i want to have softer edges right so for example in this area i know my main my main focal point is going to be sort of like this area here so this is where i want to have the most contrast i'm going to have sharper edges here maybe here um you know some here uh and probably somewhere here but off soft edges you know i'm gonna having areas where it doesn't really matter much i'm actually just sort of lose that apple edge here towards the background here so it's not a sharp um a sharper edge but i'm gonna play with that to see to bring more character to the to the actual image um but i'll keep that in mind as i work out um and then besides i just put any flavor that you will like and do any final touches right so let's check that out [Music] [Music] so all right so here we are at the end of this painting um again this is one of those things where you can take this as far as you want um you know um these are supposed to be fun but i still but still you know learn as you as you work it and um but again you know you can take this as as far as you want and have the style that you want and all that but this that's sort of my process when i do uh paintings and studies like this um some of the stuff that i did here as you can see um i softened some of the edges here so they don't bring a lot of attention also brought in some um some bounce light into this area here because the light is coming here and bouncing off so we get a little bit of outside here here and a little bit of here as well that way it doesn't look too flat um i also brought some color variation in this area so it doesn't look like just one color uh same here as well you can you know you can push that as much as you know as much as when you can go really like you have some blues in here and here as well depending also on what the environment is but um again this is really up to you and how much you wanna you wanna push that um but yeah so that's my process i hope you guys liked it alright guys so that was it for today's episode i really really hope that you got some good a good grasp into how to start a digital painting and how to understand it and do it in photoshop so if you got some value out of this please feel free to subscribe hit the like button but if you have any questions let me know in the comment section below so i can actually address them if not i'll see you guys in the next one

Channel: Artof JoseVega

Views: 116,078

Keywords: Digital Artist, Concept Art, Concept Artist, Blender, Photoshop, Art, freelance artist, freelancer, illustrator, freelancing, drawing, art, photoshop digital art, digital art for beginners, art tutorial, 3D, illustration, tutorial, speedpaint, grow with video, adobe, adobe photoshop, wacom, wacom cintiq, digital art, digital painting, digital artist setup, how to paint, how to paint light and shadow, how to draw, how to paint an apple

Id: 6JrfSb4mBaE

Length: 26min 36sec (1596 seconds)

Published: Tue Oct 06 2020