Painting in Photoshop: 16/1/19: Learning new methods.

In using Photoshop I needed to learn new methods of painting or tricks with the variety of tools that it uses. Recently I had purchased a magazine called Illustrating in Photoshop and this seemed very opportune to learn new methods and maybe pick up a few tricks.

Original sketch.

Reference photo.

My piece would be inspired from a sketch from one of my old sketch dumps that I did back in college. The setting of the illustration would be an artist in her bedroom wondering what to sketch into her sketchbook wandering where her imagination will lead to. To begin I had done a pencil sketch of the piece using a photo of my room as a reference image.

However the end sketch did have some issues in the human figure such as the size of the head and the body size in relation to the surrounding environment. These I easily corrected when doing the digital line art using Clip Studio's G-Pen tool.

I looked to a tutorial in the magazine regarding manga/anime shading tricks. One element included the use of the magic wand tool when isolating the lighting areas from the shadows. Curious I followed it, the idea would be to use the cmd/ctrl and click to select all the base colour layers then using the alt/opt key while on the magic wand tool on a new layer it would allow me to select all the shaded areas of my illustration then fill them in leaving only the light areas. The source of light would be from the lamp in the bedroom and so I made sure the light showed on the areas around the body.

However there was a problem, my first attempt worked on showing the shadowing on the body didn't seem to help the shadowing under the hair as I thought it would let me colour in the areas under the hair. It didn't so I had to start again. However though I performed the operation as before it didn't seem to work with the magic wand tool. I was very worried and disappointed. So I reverted to basics with the brush tool and locking the pixel layers.

I looked to a book I purchased from last years MCM comic con called Beginners Guide to Creating Manga Art, for guidance on how to do shading. One thing I picked up on from this and the magazine was to capture some shapes within the highlights and shading. I applied this to the clothing and skin and it seemed to look more and more painted on the human figure. I was beginning to think I was on the verge of creating a master piece.

I did have my concerns on the background element of the piece particularly the folds and creases in the duvet covers and pillows. So when doing the sketch I made sure to use tonal elements so that I could work from this to capture the shadowing and fabric creases. This seemed to work well and using my understanding of shapes within the shading I created the creased fabric effects and added some wallpaper like textures from Clip Studio for extra decoration.

Lazy Reading by Snatti89 Deviantart.

When doing things like the walls, at first I did splashes of colour from a colour palette I did in clip studio. However to me it looked too childish painting style so I decided to apply the shapes within shadows idea to the walls using the different colour tones. I was feeling rather impressed with this new found knowledge and it seemed to remind me of an artist that I look at on Deviantart as his/her artwork uses shapes in the shading and environments.











When the painting was finished I scaled everything in the correct proportions and added the lighting from the lamp and the outside colours of the night.

Looking back on the finished painting I would think that it would have to be one of my best painting pieces that I've done in Photoshop so far. What I liked was the highlights and shading on the female character in terms of body and the hair as it used both anime and painted style shading and colour. However I feel perhaps I could've improved upon the painted shading in the background and the walls such as have the darker shades of colour follow each other, and line up better.

In conclusion I am very proud of this piece and hope it has helped broaden my horizons in painting in Photoshop. In future I shall look at art magazine articles and read closely at some of the tutorials/workshops they provide.