Woke up at 2am and couldn’t fall back asleep so I made a tutorial on the Photoshop techniques I use most frequently. Starting with the sketch:
adjustment layers: specifically the hue/saturation slider in this case, allows you to color correct quickly
lasso tool: for sharp edges!
alpha lock: useful for painting within a pre-defined area (especially useful when painting characters)
x (hotkey) : toggle between foreground + background colors- let’s you easily blend between 2 colors
ctrl/cmd click : quickly change current active layer. Especially useful if you’re burdened with too many layers (or just very disorganized)
clipping mask: similar to alpha lock, but can add details without changing/ painting directly on the previous layer. I often use them to test out + apply gradients.
layer styles: I didn’t use any in this image, but the possibilities for layer styles endless, from simply adding a quick outline (useful for die cut demarcations when making stickers!) to creating more seemingly complex appearances. Here’s a gif of Nick Carver using layer styles (a combo of drop shadows + inner shadows) to quickly make the illusion of snow but with simple strokes.
Steve Huston is one of the best artists and teachers of our time. His advice has been helping me figure out how I should approach making art and why I create art in the first place.
In this interview, Steve Huston talks about how to grow as an artist, how to develop a unique style, how to find what calls to you, and much more. It’s a mighty 106 minute conversation filled with golden nuggets. Don’t miss this one.
Stargazer. This was a composition exercise I started many months back, however I’ve been super busy and didn’t get around to putting the finishing touches on it until now!
I was reading the wonderful Creative Illustration by Andrew Loomis (out of print, but free pdfs available online) and he has a great section about informal subdivision as a compositional tool. Informal subdivision is a process Loomis created where you divide your image space unequally (and somewhat randomly!) by drawing a series of horizontal, vertical, and diagonal lines, following some certain rules. Then you use those lines to suggest a composition for whatever subject you’re drawing.
You can see the subdivision I created above & overlaid with the final. Instructions on how to do this & further process are on my blog! Try your own!
Everything is done on SAI (CS6 for a bit of editing)
Let me show ya something quick:
Basically the trick is blending/how to blend colors. ALSO, dont use the blurr tool, blend within shades(it’s a bit difficult at first but you’ll get it)
My most used brush settings if you wanna give it a go:
I will do a more thorough walk through later on, but for now just give it a try!
I made a walkthrough of my process for drawing faceted stones! Judging by the timestamps from the screenshots I took, drawing this one stone took an hour and three minutes, although I know I went and checked tumblr a couple times while I was working, so let’s just call it an hour.
Now MISCELLANEOUS NOTES
This walkthrough assumes you already know how to use layer masks, the clone stamp, and the lasso tool. There’s also one part where I didn’t label it, but I inverted the selection so I could keep my lines consistent. It’s in the third image.
Unfortunately I can’t really help with colour choice and the actual colouring of the pinwheel shape that makes up the back facets, but you can kind of see that I tended to colour with lines that cut across the facets and and kept the outer parts of the facets darker. It would probably be best to find a reference to work from!
This particular cut of stone is called the ‘brilliant’ cut.
There’s actually a lot of internal reflection business that goes on in a stone, but I elected to ingore all of it since at a distance you can’t really tell anyway.
now GO FORTH AND DAZZLE YOUR FRIENDS WITH YOUR SPARKLE
Inspiration Haven 