[Drorak]

First let me say that I visited this board a few days ago and was amazed at the quality of some of the pics people posted here. I also checked out quite a few of your web pages, I was amazed, I never imagined these kinds of drawings could be done from scratch on a computer. I always thought that images like these and the ones I see on magazine covers and such were all done with paint and brush and then maybe touched up a bit with Photoshop after being sent to a scanner.
I also checked out Dhabih's step by step tutorial. And he made it look easy, so this inspired me to begin drawing again, I haven't really drawn anything in 7 or 8 years. So as you can guess this is my first Digital Pic. I have fiddled around with Photoshop before, but only to have some fun doing photo manipulation.

So here is my pic... (I used a picture of an actress as reference, but this looks nothing like her)


The problem I'm having is that I can't get it to look lifelike, like some of the pics Fallen has posted. Instead it looks like a comic book drawing. How do I smooth out the skin tones so that they blend in nicely. I find that the smooth brush does practically nothing, I scrub and scrub but nothing really changes. I read in many posts that most of you use dodge/burn. This is mainly what I've used too, but I don't like the color change when using the burn brush, the skin starts to look orangy (like a suntan).
I won't tell you how many hours I've spent on this pic, but I can tell you that in the last few hours, I haven't improved the picture any. I'm Stuck
The only parts I really like are the teeth and lips, although I may need to retouch the shadows on those parts too... not sure where though. Someone posted a trick for drawing hair a few days ago, and that worked fine for me, although the hair still doesn't look very realistic.

Well I hope you can help me, thanks.

BTW. I'm only using a mouse, I don't know if this is the reason why I'm having so much trouble with the skin tones??

[chumps]

My apologies if i come out sounding preachy and stuff, if it doesn't apply to you then plz ignore it

Well, if you are serious about this sort of stuff, you really owe it to yourself to get a tablet. The smallest wacom pad is 50x better than using a mouse. Personally, the notion of mouse-drawing makes me wanna.. well, you don't want to know . Oh and if you can't get a wacom pad, why not just a piece of paper and pencil?

Again, if you really want to get into this digital art thing, then I think you should go at it a different way.

First, again, get yourself a wacom pad! You will love it.

Second, I know this would be hard but just leave this pic alone for now. (if you ever want to pick it up later go ahead)

Start with flat, black and white reference pictures. This will teach you the importance of line, shape, value, etc. And it won't be quite as hard, because not only is it 2 dimensional in the regular sense, it's also 2d in many other ways, which makes things much, much easier. Make sure the reference picture is something you WANT to draw. If it's a picture of a person, don't be discouraged and just trudge along. At a certain point you will only be able to do so much, especially if you are using pencil/paper, which you should IMO . Btw, DONT ERASE. Only erase to "draw" in light areas. You have to overcome the "oh this isn't right, I need to start _all_ over" feeling. Which is REALLY easy on a comp ;p, sorta harder on paper .

After that you might want to draw real life objects but still in black and white. This will help a lot with translating the 3d image you see and the 2d image you have to draw on.

THEN, I would suggest using color. But even in this case, try using limited palettes. Like just analogous, complementary colors, or just a couple handpicked colors.

try to include a background
composition is important
in the end it's only practice and effort that seperates you from say... dhabih ;p.

feel free to icq or email me if u have any questions/comments. feel free to ignore me if im just talking outta my arse .

[email protected]
uin: 175655

Oh and remember to have pride and confidence in your own work, and not too much by the opinions of others. There is nothing wrong with seeking praise, but all too often I see people on this board posting multiple versions of their work w/ minor changes or stuff done fast (i did this in .5 seconds, etc) or quickly. More likely than not you will learn more from analyzing your own work and methods than from a few nice words of others. always be confident, art can be so fragile, everything collapses without confidence.

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Stroke my ego.

[This message has been edited by chumps (edited April 23, 2000).]

[Fallen]

Hey dude.

The only tools i use in Photoshop are theairbrush,
and sparingly i use dodge, eraser, and blur.
( and i do mean sparingly )
The only way to really get smooth skintones is to work diligently at it and really study the colors. Skin isnt just pink,(depending on your lighting of course), it has a lot of colors involved...blues, greens, oranges...

And in my opinion, the only way to do hair is strand by strand.
Hope this helps.

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Transcend.
www.giveintosin.com

[This message has been edited by Fallen (edited April 23, 2000).]

[Binke]

You can be serious about art, and still use a mouse.. I have used a mouse for 4 years until now. I recently got a tablet.
I mean I could live with using my mouse though. Look at derPunkts work, he only uses a mouse. http://www.3dpalette.com/peaeye/
You can achieve the same results with a mouse as a tablet, if you're good with the mouse that is.

My suggestion on your picture, is to sharpen the siluette and sharpen the areas around the eyes & nose. Also try defining the lightsource better.. shade it a bit more. Try to add some more detail to the teeths.

[Drorak]

I think I'll take your advice Chumps, and put this one aside for now, no use in discouraging myself. Or else the next pic I'll draw will be in another 7 or 8 years. If I do another one though, I'll try using the airbrush as Fallen suggested, and use more colors this time. hehe I only used one color initially for this face, I then used the burn brush with its different settings to change the skin tones.

As for purchasing a graphics pad, I don't really understand what makes them so much better than a mouse. I'm not going to start a thread on this as I see that most of you appear reluctant to answer any Wacom posts. But I do have one question... I've read that the pens you use, are pressure sensitive. Does this mean that as I apply pressure to the pen, that the opacity bar in Photoshop will automatically increase or decrease accordingly? If so, then do all graphic pads (all companies) offer this or do only some of the Wacom pads have this feature? And more importantly, can this pen be used to improved my frag count in UT?

...Binke that link you gave for derPunkts has some incredible drawings. It's encouraging to know that they were done using only a mouse.

[sfr]

This is Molly, and she will whack you because you have asked a Wacom question. Sorry.
(All the Wacoms from the last decade or so have pressure sensitivity, though the number of pressure levels varies. As for other tablet manufacturers, no one really knows because no one cares...)

Saffron / Sunflower

[chumps]

Yea Drorak. You can have brush size, opacity, etc vary with how hard you press down. Just like a regular pencil.

You don't HAVE to get a graphics pad, but it's a small investment in my opinion for such a versatile, intuitive tool. If you are dead set against purchasing one, hey that's cool, to each his own.

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Stroke my ego.

[chumps]

Yea Drorak. You can have brush size, opacity, etc vary with how hard you press down. Just like a regular pencil.

You don't HAVE to get a graphics pad, but it's a small investment in my opinion for such a versatile, intuitive tool. If you are dead set against purchasing one, hey that's cool, to each his own.

Why are they better. First, the interface. Trying to draw with a pen is easier to draw with a mouse. Try writing u'r signature with a mouse, it's hard, doable, yea, but still a pain in the arse. Second is pressure and tilt (only a few programs support the tilt feature). Bust out painter's pencil tool and you will swear it's the real thing .

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Stroke my ego.

[Drorak]

Thanks for the info Chump. It sure sounds like a cool toy to add to my collection of things plugged into my PC. Anyone know what stores carry the Wacom brand in Canada(Montreal)?

[Mr Weasel]

Why does many ppl want to make everything look REALISTIC ? I don't think realism is the name of the game here.

[Drorak]

I'm still learning... how to draw and how to use the tools in Photoshop. Knowing how to use the tools at hand and being able to use these to achieve realism is an asset that can help me in any style of painting I later choose.

But there exist many different styles. And realism is one style I do enjoy looking at as an admirer of art. So why not paint what I enjoy.
There was this artist who I really admired when I was younger, I can't remember his name right now. I think he was Canadian and he painted only Wildlife, his oil paintings were so realistic, you would swear they were photographs. They were also very beautiful.

[Narzul]

I agree with Mr Weasel on that one..





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-Ori

[Drorak]

I did a search on the net and found the name of the artist I was talking about. His name is Robert Bateman, if you don't know him, I included a few links that display some of his paintings.
http://www.vaxxine.com/artline/nature/bateman/bateman.htm
http://www.galleryoneart.com/robert_bateman__page_1_.htm