[tanis]

I just wanted to ask Dhabih and everyone else reading this board how they do the shading of a face. I am actually concentrating on the use of the dodge/burn tool but I happen to make a real mess with it. it usually turns out that while using that tool I get uneven shadings with strokes darker than others even if I didn't move the pen away from the tablet. I think that maybe I'm giving too many strokes all at once and with a too small brush, but I'm unsure. How do you do that sort of things ?
(I hope I've been clear enough since English isn't my native language..)


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C'ya!

Valerio Santinelli a.k.a. TANiS
[email protected]

[Shrimpish]

That's a pretty tricky question, but here's a tip:
Make sure that the pressure on your dodge/burn is not higher than 20%, and always use feathered brushes for the beginning.
Uh... Try that.

[Affected]

If you get uneven shading, you might want to pick up the airbrush and smooth it out. Using dodge/burn alone can be pretty tricky.

[Dhabih]

I'm not really sure the problem you are having. If you're still having trouble maybe you can post the image here and then we can give our feedback.

-dhab

[tanis]

Ok.. I'll follow your suggestion and post a sketch ASAP so you can better help me. Thanks in advance everybody!


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C'ya!

Valerio Santinelli a.k.a. TANiS
[email protected]

[e s k i l]

I understand his problem. I got the same problem myself. What do you mean feathered brushes? And how do you smooth out with the airbrush??
Another problem: Colors are giving me a hard time! If I for example want to draw something brown, I color the thing brown. But when I start to use the burn/dodge tool, everything seems to turn red. Wouldn't it have been alot easier if we could choose which color it should become? Maybe we can, maybe I just haven't discovered it yet.. =)

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-eskil
http://cpx.nu
[email protected]

[Shrimpish]

Feathered brushes are the ones that don't have sharp edges.
I never use airbrush when I shade a face, unless I mess up and I have to clean up.

And as far as the colors, you have to try to dodge it first before you use, and make sure it goes straight to white.

I think that's one thing about PS. The dodge tool is not as powerful as it can be. If you dodge a dark-blue, it has to go through pink before it goes to white. That's why you have to try it ahead of time.

[Shrimpish]

See my page at http://bluebrush.com and check out the faces.

[SPike.CoM]

As far as I can tell, it's easier to paint with a feathered brush with a *LOW* opacity value (25% is sufficient): You'll then have the option to paint multiple times the shade or hilight you wan't. It's easier to make gradient on faces this way.

Dodge / Burn is an easy way, but you have very little control over the color.

By the way. Use a mirror, a lamp and your face... you'll then know how you should place all the shadows and hilights.

That was my 2 cents and piece of mind... Cheers!


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Mikael Piotrowski
aka. SPike.CoM
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Natural and
digital artist
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Homepage:
http://bounce.to/spike
E-mail:
[email protected]
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[Anthony J]

I find shading in Lhamas to test out techniques prove to be useful.
What you do...
LOL
ok, I want to continue, but this joke is
too damn stupid =D

*ABORT THE MISSION*

http://anthonys.8m.com


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"you must feel the force in order to use it Obi-Wan..."

[Funfetus]

In Painter, I shade faces (and everything else) by first painting solid colors. Like on a face, I'll have a base color, then I'll paint in a couple of shades of solid highlights and shadows. Then I use a few different tools to blend them together and smooth them out. This could probably be adapted to Photoshop with the smudge and blur tools.

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Funfetus
iCE VGA Division
http://fetus.ice.org

[tanis]

I finally managed to find 10 minutes to draw this sketch..
if you pay attention, you can notice that it seems that there's a kind of bump coming out of the image where there are highlights and that's what I don't really want to happen..

And another thing.. what about sharpening contour lines ? I usually smudge the outlines, but then I find it difficult to bring them back to a more "solid" look.
Please bear patience with me.. I'm just a newbie in here..

Here it is.. http://www.mediacom.it/~tanis/gfx/sketch1.jpg


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C'ya!

Valerio Santinelli a.k.a. TANiS
[email protected]

[Funfetus]

Those "bumps" are really just because your highlights are in the wrong places, and they're indicating forms that shouldn't be there. You need to visualize the head (and anything else you draw) as a collection of geometric shapes, and simply put the highlights and shadows on the correct sides of those shapes.

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Funfetus
iCE VGA Division
http://fetus.ice.org

[tanis]

I think I'll go with a good mirror

So it's just a matter of wrong highlights.. I thought it could also be because of too much light on a single spot, could it sum up too?

Thanks man!



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C'ya!

Valerio Santinelli a.k.a. TANiS
[email protected]

[Affected]

That, too.
You should only apply the highlights when you've got most of the shading done, especially when working with dodge/burn. If you overdo the highlights, they'll start 'bleeding'. You may also get uneven shading, if you use only the dodge/burn to shade an area, and you need to fiddle with it quite a bit before gettin git right. Try smoothing the section you're working on with the airbrush, if that happens.
Overall, I'd recommend doing the basic shading with the airbrush, and the highlights and the dark shadows with dodge/burn. The airbrush is more forgiving, since it doesn't accumulate.
And don't try to get it all just right from the beginning, it's much faster to draw a rough sketch with the airbrush, as funfetus suggested, with solid colours, and start improving on that, once you've got the basic parts down.

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Affected http://affected.cjb.net



[This message has been edited by Affected (edited October 28, 1999).]

[Galaxy]

I know you got an answer you are looking for, but if you still can't get it, you may want to select the outline of the face using the magic wand (I assume you are using Photoshop), and then mess with the lighting effects.

Also, selecting the face and then darkening it sometimes works for me, then lightening the face (sort of a back-wards working) manualy, depending on the angle you are trying to lighten.

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~Galaxy~
[email protected]
~The Chosen~

[arioch]

I use the airbrush for skin tones and never use the dodge/burn tool. Except maybe as an after thought when the image is complete and I want to mess around with it a bit to see if it can enhance the over all mood. But basically I dont use it because I cant control it with the accuracy that I desire (maybe I just need to play with it some more). Anyhow I use the airbrush to do my skin work. I lay down a base color and then go over it with a highlight color and a shadow color. Then to fine tune it and get a smooth transistion between the basic extremes I just keep laying down colors that are in between the two that Im trying to merge. I do this all in individual layers so if I dont like something I've done in one layer I just delete it. After I get like 10 or so Ill merge them into one and keep moving forward in the same manner. In addition I use the Gaussian Blur on each layer that I lay to get it to blend together with the previous layer. If you want to see an example you can go to http://members.home.net/arioch/pm.htm

[Funfetus]

Does anyone else find that using dodge/burn, especially on skin tones, tends to REALLY oversaturate the colors?

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Funfetus
iCE VGA Division
http://www.funhousedigital.com

[immi]

yeah, i think its easy to saturate your pic using the dodge tool especially. I think the main problem is having the setting too high. when i use it, i usually have it set to around 10-15%, and this tends to solve the problem.

[Dhabih]

When i find that the transition between shades isnt as smooth as i want, i take a big soft brush and set my smudge to around 7% and kinda smudge a couple pixels back and forth until it starts to smooth out.

-dhab