Topic awaiting preservation: Those first few strokes..

Heya.. I like to putter around the PS sections from time to time to see what cool stuff you guys do, and have been playing with PS as an expensive hobby for a bit, but I haven't done much serious with it..

Anyways, the time came.. I finally figured it'd be fun to get good at some painting, ..

Problem being.. I am not, and never have been good at either painting or drawing in any sort of way in real life. So I can't exactly carry over skills from one to the other very well...

I understand much of what you painters do and say in theory.. about line values and tips for shading, lighting, detailing, etc.. I don't think it's ingrained mentally yet though.

So.. for the past couple of days, I open up PS and dig up the trusty brush tool, and start painting. Low and behold, I manage a few lines or a blob of color. But then I get so disgusted with the initial result -- that isn't even really a result yet, it's a blob..-- But I just can't keep going and paint anything more. /quit, /shutdown, /TV....

So I ask of you painters and PSers; What do you do to get you past those ever so important first strokes? As they say, nothing is more daunting than a blank sheet of paper.

-Xel

My biggest mistake was thinking that I could get something looking perfect with a few strokes. Eventually I got fed up with with nasty blobs and took a "screw-it" attitude. That is, I kept the blobs and started refining. Low-n-behold, I started getting better results.

Refining in passes.
Good stuff.

One thing I highly recommend is not painting on a pure black or pure white background. Even a simple gradient is better than black or white.

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Problem being.. I am not, and never have been good at either painting or drawing in any sort of way in real life. So I can't exactly carry over skills from one to the other very well...

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Well, first off, you're going to need to get fairly (okay) at drawing or sketching. So start. Draw from life (that's some good advice, really), and try to perfect those drawings. Try to really push values and shape, if you want to get good at painting.

From there, start painting. Try this:

Draw something simple, like...ummm...shapey. Like headphones. Big shapes. Nothing organic, though - do that after you've 'mastered' non-organic objects. Be sure to really look at the way light plays on them, and shade them really well. Don't be afraid to make really dark areas.

Then, paint it. When painting (I'd assume your using oils, since they're a fairly easy medium to learn. With a medium liky acrylics, though, you won't have the time to mix them up (Oils take forever to dry, Acrylics dry relativaly fast)), you can start off with larger, blockier shapes, and refine from there.

Umm...I hope this helps.

The sketching, and rendering, will really help your paintings.

__________________
War is Peace,
Freedom is Slavery,
Ignorance is Strength.

[This message has been edited by counterfeitbacon (edited 12-18-2003).]

For the painting:

(First off, I'd suggest using painter, or first learning to paint traditionally, but whatever). I did this in PS:

1. Choose a color pallette. You'll want a broad range of colors. A triadic or analogous color scheme is pretty easy to work with. Or complimentary colors. Never shade with black, and never highlight with white (unless it's specular highlights, but even then, pure white is a no-no.) Nothing is pure white in real life, and nothing is pure black. Dark colors, light colors and mid-ranges are what you're going to want. Check out some info on color theory.


2. (TopL) Lay down some big globs of paint. Large areas. Don't worry too much about shape right now, you can refine that later. (Unless you're doing traditional painting. I've made that mistake before ). Just get the color down.

3. (TopR) Refine the colors, and refine the shape. Use a 60-80% opacity brush and keep your finger on that "alt" button. Use one of the colors and paint over the adjacent area, sample the color that it produces, and then paint with that. Keep doing that. And then do it some more.

3. (Bottom) Further refine the picture. Use a 30-50% opacity brush. Try not to drop below that, or you'll end up with a blurred image. If you're going for an airbrushed look (try to avoid that, you want to paint, remember) then you'll want to further refine the image with a 5-20% opacity brush.

As you can see, the image that I made for this progressed fine untill the third step. When I hit that, the colors got a little bit muddy. You can counter this by going over it again with a higher opacity brush with the original color (in a small area), and repeating steps 1-3 on that area.



Hope this helps.

__________________
War is Peace,
Freedom is Slavery,
Ignorance is Strength.

I'm sure we can all dish out a slew of similar, but different responses to this.
Trying to leap into painting too far is easily one of the most discouraging things.

Simple shapes are the way to go when you're first out of the starting block. Spheres... cones... cubes.... different sizes. Paint them separately... then together... then with different light sources. Oh, and I wouldn't bother yourself with colour. Fuck colour right now. Just go grey scale for a bit. Click me.

Oh, forgot to mention-- the one "artistic" thing I *can* do is technical drawing.. y'know, like crazy isometric and orthographic views of objects.. fun, but irrelevant..

Hm, okay.. some good tips here.. Thanks cfb and Mike.. I'll try and work on that.. greyscale, hmhmhm.. I do actually have access to Painter at times, so maybe that'll work too.. Keep your eye out for some terrible looking practice paintings, coming soon to an asylum thread near you..!

-Xel

Dont forget FILTERS!! http://bygeorge.50free.net/sigs/addicted2.jpg
Although they may thwart the necessity to learn some techniques, they can give a beginner a little boost.

_____________
Is this thing on?

A Work In Progress




[This message has been edited by UnknownComic (edited 12-19-2003).]

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Dont forget FILTERS!! http://bygeorge.50free.net/sigs/addicted2.jpg
Although they may thwart the necessity to learn some techniques, they can give a beginner a little boost.

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No.

__________________
War is Peace,
Freedom is Slavery,
Ignorance is Strength.

[This message has been edited by counterfeitbacon (edited 12-19-2003).]

No?

Cell 1250 :: alanmacdougall.com :: Illustrator tips

hah... that's funny.
No.. don't bother with the filters right now if you want to learn how to paint.

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Yes!

If the goal is strictly learning how to paint, then yeah, filters may be a bad thing. But, I didnt get the impression that the original poster was wanting to learn all there is to learn before getting something onto the digital canvas. Sure, learning how to use oils and acrylics will be a nice way to start, but sometimes the world aint so nice and dirty little tricks are needed to get results.

Hence;

FILTERS!

Yeah! FILTERS! FILTERS! FILTERS! FILTERS! FILTERS! FILTERS! FILTERS! FILTERS! FILTERS! FILTERS! FILTERS! FILTERS! FILTERS! FILTERS! FILTERS! FILTERS! FILTERS! FILTERS! FILTERS! FILTERS! FILTERS! FILTERS! FILTERS! FILTERS! FILTERS! FILTERS! FILTERS! FILTERS! FILTERS! FILTERS! FILTERS! FILTERS! FILTERS! FILTERS! FILTERS! FILTERS! FILTERS! FILTERS! FILTERS! FILTERS! FILTERS! FILTERS! FILTERS! FILTERS! FILTERS! FILTERS! FILTERS! FILTERS! FILTERS! FILTERS! FILTERS! FILTERS! FILTERS! FILTERS! FILTERS! FILTERS! FILTERS! FILTERS! FILTERS! FILTERS! FILTERS! FILTERS!





_____________
Is this thing on?

A Work In Progress

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sometimes the world aint so nice and dirty little tricks are needed to get results.

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I'm all about little tricks.... however, in this instance I'm not.
You'll get results... canned results that'll put your work in back of the line with the rest of the pack.
If you want to learn to paint, then paint.

It's easy enough to learn the basics about filters, I did that awhile ago. I wish I hadn't, I'd be better off without those damn things. They're fun to play with, but... heh.

-Xel