Digital Painting
 
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On Site Tutorials
  • "Making of Alien Priest" by Emrah Elmasli
    Firstly, I open a new .psd file in Photoshop. It will be vertical, and the resolution will be 150-200 ppi. I generally start
    with a lower resolution and ramp it up later when I’m detailing the illustration, enabling me to work faster and
    smoother. I create a textured background before starting to draw, so I get rid of the white background. I open a new
    layer and start to sketch with some thin brushes, as though drawing with a sharpened pencil.


  • "Making of Fountain of Hell" by Andreas Rocha
    One day I was taking photos around Lisbon, and I came across some beautiful stone statues in the middle of lakes
    set in some of the city’s most beautiful parks. Later, I came across another fountain in a square, which had three of
    those classic angel-like figures standing below.


  • "Making of Set Out For Lover" by T.G Jay
    In the deep forest, there are some tree guys. They live happily, but some of them are interested in the world outside.
    So is Melody who is Jay’s Lover. She left for the mysterious world and told Jay that she would come back when sun shone in the dark forest. Several years later, sunshine lightened the whole forest


  • "Making of The Babysitter" by Roy Stein
    Hi, My name is Roy Stein, and I’m a 3DArtist/ Compositor and illustrator working in an American\Israeli animation
    studio in Israel. In this tutorial, I’m going to show you how I use Texture manipulation in my painting process, in
    order to help achieve that realistic, messy look, which is quite difficult to get just by mixing colors in a painting
    program, not to mention it gives you the ability for shorter deadlines..


  • "Making of Jealour Bodyguard" by Andrew Berends
    Jealous Bodyguard is one of ten pieces for a self promotion project that I am currently compiling called
    “Companions.” Each image within the book refers to people and animals from an imaginary place focusing on the relationships between the human inhabitants and the local wildlife. “Jealous bodyguard” was created with the idea
    of an animal used for protection as well as companionship for a young, regal, woman...


  • "Making of Angel Attack" by Daniele Bigi
    In this making of I will not describe all the passages that brought me from the sketch to the final image. There are
    many artists better than me that have already described that several times. What I will try to describe is primarily the process that brought me at the composition and colour palette choice. Not all my choices could be easily rationalized
    but some of these were and I will try to explain them...


  • "Making of The Hidden City" by Adrain Baluta
    This image was made for ‘The Lost World’ challenge. I think a hidden city is a lost world, and so I created one on
    an island – a city hidden by big rocks. I also wanted to feature a ship discovering the place...


  • "Making of The Leg" by Denis Zilber
    First of all I’ve made a quick sketch in Adobe Flash. Why Flash? Well it’s a matter of choice. Maybe the main reason
    that vector-based sketch is very scalable and easy to edit. I drew 5 characters, each in its own layer, placed them so
    they remained groupped but still their faces wouldn’t be....
  • "Making of Blue Dragon" by Andrew Hou
    The final image, probably my first attempt in a long, long time to colour something in Photoshop, been too
    comfortable with Painter. I got too scared with Photoshop’s brush setting and the way the colour mix in PS that I
    always stick with my Painter. Lately I see a lot of inspiration of awesome work done in Photoshop that still gave...


  • "Making of Seheiah" Melanie Delon
    In my artwork, I generally try to express a feeling, to tell a story… Seheiah is a bit different. I had been asked to
    illustrate August for a publishing firm. So I based my artwork on the idea of a kind of goddess in an antic style. I
    wanted it to depict a quite “fresh and radiant” feeling, a reminder of a summer morning. Thus I decided to include
    a wood with a lake above which my goddess would fly....


  • "Sirens" by Jimi Benedict
    My approach is not as scholarly as most. Sometimes while practising/doodling, I will like the doodle enough that I
    will want to see it realized into a full painting. The Sirens image was originally three individual sketches from my figure drawing practice sessions....
  • "The Park" by Daarken
    The goal of this tutorial is to give you some insight into my process and to show how you can achieve a believable illustration using color and value as opposed to concentrating on rendering....


  • "Making of Faydrums" by Benita Winckler
    I did this some time ago, looking at it now, there are some parts I would do different. But I’m still happy about the
    overall mood of the image. The whole piece is based on one of my ever returning dreams; shining green water
    and a forest full with trees, older then the first big cities.

  • "Making of Pat the Pirate" by Partrick Jensen
    Half of what makes form, compositions, and lighting work is values. So if a painting with multiple light sources,
    or a complex mood and palette throws you a curveball and prevents you from just painting, try concentrating on
    just three values, because you can always add the tricky colors later...


  • "Making of Lord Fredrickson" by Dominus
    Lord George Henry Fredrickson. Mid to late 1800’s. Lord Fredrickson is a Lich hunter & Master of the Occult of
    some quiet acclaim in certain discerning circles. By nature he is a reserved man, brutally intelligent, quick in
    thought and often in action, but never reckless....

  • "Jade Fox" by Benita Winckler
    Deep under the surface of a long forgotten place.. the steps, the stoneplates of the floor are broken and the
    inscriptions on the signs are long gone and unreadable..


  • "Pier Duty" by Graven Tung
    Hi everyone, my name is Graven Tung. This particular piece is a simple study that will hopefully explain some of
    the thoughts and techniques during my painting process. I’m usually not in the habit of questioning myself why I
    do things a certain way. In fact this is the first time I’m asked to paint for a tutorial, so bear with me here.


  • "Fresh Meat" by Andreas Rocha
    One day, on my way to work I decided to make a small detour on my way to the subway and took a walk through
    one of Lisbon’s most charismatic parks. It was a cold February morning, no one was in sight and the sound of
    morning traffic was subdued by the trees. I was immersed into a natural environment and it almost seemed
    magical. Suddenly, I passed by some trees that really....


  • "Making of Boudicca 3060 A.D" by John Kearney
    Hello and welcome! This article will provide you with a walkthrough of my experiences during the creation of this
    project. I have narrowed down my creative journey into 6 stages. I hope that you pick up some useful tips and find
    it entertaining and informative. Without further ado, here is an insight into the 'Making Of' Boudicca 3060 A.D.


  • "Equilibrium" by Henning Ludvigsen
    I’ve always been fascinated by realism, and because of this it is really important to me that the base line-art
    sketch has got proper proportions. I usually use the old trick by putting a grid on top of a reference photo I’ve
    shot, and thenI copy the same grid onto a blank canvas and start drawing grid by grid from what I see on the
    reference photo.I make sure to keep the grid on....


  • "So you think I'm fat do you?" by Daniela Uhlig
    First of all I open a new document (approximately 3000 wide and 2600 high, around 300-500 dpi) and make a preliminary sketch.


  • "Do you want to play with me?" by Melanie Delon
    The first thing here, is to choose the right colour scheme. This will depend on a lot of things, like for instance the
    mood or the story that you wish to tell... I wanted to do something really colourful and warm, so for the character I
    choose some very saturated orange, mixed with yellow and pink, the background will be colder.....


  • "Wake up baby" by Jose Manuel Oli
    This is the part that I consider as most important in the process of creating an image.These are the first sketches
    and different variations of the same idea. I indepentantly developed each character design, and take the same
    dedication for each individual characters personality....


  • "Fantast view of Budapest" by Kornel Ravadits
    The following article is a short making of "Fantasy View of Budapest” and is most useful for those who already have an intermediate or advanced knowledge of Photoshop. Note that this is not a PS tutorial but a walkthrough of the creative process containing the main steps of my workflow which hopefully inspires other artists.


  • "My World" by Kuang Hong
    Outstanding illustrations are filled with creativity, plan well before you start on your draft. Know what you want to
    convey to your audience through the picture, your ideas, concept, color, worldview. Don’t let your illustration
    become an anatomy drawing from the biology classes, use your unique.....


  • "The Bird Catcher" by Matt dixon
    Here I'm going to try to explain my Photoshop painting process, from first doodle through to a finished painting. As
    I go along, I'll detail both what's happening on the canvas and what's going around my head. I'll be working on a
    2480 x 3508 pixel canvas ( A4 at 300dpi ). This is a high enough resolution should I ever want to print or publish the image in the future, but also fits nicely on my monitor at 25% magnification.....


  • "The Corridor" by Richard Tilbury
    This particular scene was designed with the intention of making a 3D version which would hopefully have a little
    more clarity after having been explored as a 2D digital image first. My aim was to create a scene that relied more
    on light and textures as opposed to geometry. I therefore opted for a simple....


  • "Return to The Fire Escape" by Daarken
    I decided that for this tutorial I will be adding a lot more detail shots throughout the process so that you can get
    a better idea of how loose my brushwork really is. A lot of times when people see my work they say “that is a
    photo” or “he painted on top of a photo,” which I think is funny because my work is actually quite loose. I wanted
    to show that you can achieve....


  • "The Fire Escape" by Daarken
    The first step in all of my paintings, whether it is a character or an environment, is to lay down the basic shapes.
    These shapes become the building blocks of the illustration, and without them it is easier for your illustration to
    fail


  • "Making of Cigar" by Willaim Chen
    This is more a step-by-step of showing the way I work than a "how to" technical tutorial, not sure if it makes any
    sense to you all, so please let me know if you want to see more contents with technical skills ect. That maybe I
    can balance it better by next try.


  • "Matte Painting using Hybrid Art" by Antonis Papantoniou
    Digital creative tools are dynamic and constantly evolving. Recent software and hardware advancements have
    given rise to the term of hybrid art. This term is also known as 5D art (2D + 3D), and it refers to the disappearing borderline between 2D and 3D art.

  • "making of The Turning Point" by Justin Kellis
    Sometimes when I sit down to do a painting I'll have been thinking about it for some time in my head about what I
    want the subject of the painting to be, what type of setting and lighting etc. However for this particular painting
    all I knew was I wanted to do a picture of a Mermaid.


  • "Paining Rock" by Gregor Gorsic
    In this tutorial, we will exercise on drawing rocks, stones, cliffs or anything made of stone. There are many ways
    to achieve this... I will just show you my favorite one. depending on their structure, rocks look very different. For
    this tutorial I decided to make sharp reefs in the water ... but you can use the same technique for anything stoney


  • "Colouring Hair" By M. Beatriz Garcia
    I'm going to show you how I coloured my character Alicia's hair on my New Year picture....


  • "Brush the difficulties away" by Rolando Cyril
    That's a tutorial for photoshop 7. What I call "Set of Brush" (brushes with different values of opacity and flow) is an easy way to caricature the best use of each brush (my use) this doesn't mean this is the unique use. Of course, you have to mix the sets ( b, c, d...) when you draw. You won't use one set by drawing!


  • "The making of Macaw" by Waheed Nasir
    Hi there, I have chosen one of my own digital paintings, “Macaw”, for this step-by-step demonstration. Here im
    working in Artrage, to have a painterly look. Working in Artrage is like doing a real painting, one has to do things
    manually and that’s what I love about it.


  • "making of Dawn" by Robert Maschke
    Hello and welcome to my first little walkthrough! Recently, a lot of people asked me to write a tutorial - and why not
    as i have some spare time now and it`s a good opportunity to give something back to the community. I`ll try my
    best to give you some insight into my creation process of an environment/cityscape painting. Maybe a futuristic
    one? I don`t know yet, i just started the image

  • "Thoughts and tips on digital painting and painting in general" by Gracjana Zielinska aka vinegar
    This tutorial is actually more a collection of useful tips about digital painting which, I believe, all people starting
    out in this area should know.. It’s based on my old tutorial but highly expanded and with many more tips and pictures.
    I used the same picture to show the progress although not


  • "Matte Painting - The Castle" by Dragos Jieanu
    Welcome to a new matte painting tutorial. This tutorial is photoshop based. I'll try to describe the main steps in
    creating a matte painting. Before you start it's recommended that     you know some basic painting techniques, at
    least basic sketching, because most of the time you'll have to fit in the right pieces.


  • "Painting Hair" by Natascha Roeoesli
    Some basic facts about painting hair which I have been gathering from my own observations or from studying
    theory.


  • "3DTotal Training DVD - Texturing a creatures head" by Richard Tilbury
    This overview of 3DTotal's Training DVD Modelling a Creatures Head is a broken down version of the DVD. It wont
    give away the key elements of the modelling and texturing process but it will give you a insite to how indepth the
    DVD is. Part 1 of this overview will be going over a few steps of the modelling, mapping and unwrapping stages


  • "Making of Happiness is a Blue Bird" by Jose Manuel Oli
    "Happiness is a Blue Bird that one afternoon settled on our warm palm and left us something like a trace of a lost paradise that never was reached by anyone and that everyone dream with at some moment, sleeping or in wakefulness".


  • "Jealousy Step by Step" by Steven Stahlberg
    The idea to this painting came when I sat down with my notebook in my sofa one evening, and tried to come
    up with something that was both upclose and personal, yet touched on larger issues, such as affairs of state. Preferably involving only two people, because I find that can often be more intense


  • "Painting the face of Lilith" by Linda Tso
         I did all of the work in Photoshop 7, as far as the face is concerned, Painter 8 was used in the last step for textures
    only.


  • "Creating a feather" by Katherine Dinger
    A step by step walk-through of how I made the feather shown below. I had some problems with photoshop
    crashing so I had to redo several steps. That resulted in it not looking quite as good as the original. Oh well,
    you get the point. : This is actually my first attempt at drawing a simple feather so bear with me


  • "Digital Painting" by Waheed Nasir
    I will paint in an impressionistic manner, with no definite shape, I will suggest things, make impressions of
    shapes and light. For me, a painting must look like a painting, not like a photograph.


  • "Gritty Wall Lights" by Katherine Dinger
    This tutorial is sort of a continuation of the Gritty Pipelines Tutorial. You certainly don't have to work on top of the
    base wall texture from there, but if you're unfamiliar with some basic photoshop methods you may want to read it first.

  • "Gritty Pipelines" by Katherine Dinger
    I'm working in Photoshop 7, although there shouldn't be any problems following these steps in other versions
    of PS. I also recommended you read up on "Offsetting". I do not cover this in the tutorial, but it is crucial for making
    a tiling texture....


  • "Dirty Texture" by Katherine Dinger
    Here is a very simple, generic tutorial I wrote up for a dirty metal texture. I tried to keep it pretty easy. This is just a
    starting point... I'm building off this basic texture and adding things like scratches, errosion, paint and maybe some
    create support bars. So if you follow along with this tutorial, be sure to keep it so you can pick up where you left off


  • "Digital Painting from an Illustration" by Mike York
    For starters this is a tutorial on how to complete a digital painting from a illustration very quickly. My example is a
    background design layout. I chose to use Adobe Photoshop 6 but you can do this in version 6 or 7


  • "Low Polygon Hair Texturing"by Ben Mathis
    Low poly hair is the bane of most game artists existence. Rarely is it done well, and the majority of the time, a bald
    head, or a slicked back look is taken as the easy way out. For three months I was in charge of creating the various
    hairstyles for Dark Age of Camelots


  • "Marsh Dweller"by Gregor Gorsic
    I read a book about marsh dwellers recently. It described their lives so well, that new ideas for illustrations appeared
    by themselves. With this picture I wanted to represent their life, the beauty of a women’s body and her feelings that
    she had, being unfortunately in love.


  • "Matte Painting: Maison hantée" by Sebastien Gaucher
    This tutorial is actually a "making of" where I explain how I proceeded to achieve this matte painting.
    I use a Wacom Intuos² A4 board, if you don't have any graphic board this is going to be hard but not
    impossible. . .


  • "Heaven and Hell" by Don Seegmiller
    This series of images will show the general method that I used to create my painting "Heaven and Hell".
    Each image has a brief description of what was going on and how I was working. Should you want to see
    a more detailed Image, click on the picture and you will be taken to a larger version. . .


  • "Strange High House" by Don Seegmiller
    Here is a scan of the original sketch out of my sketchbook. I scan images between 200 and 300 dpi. I take the
    image into Painter and "equalize" to get rid of the grays. . .


  • "Step by Step Tutorial: The Waiter" by Khang Le
    I had the privilege to attend a class by Ryan Church a while back. The tutorial below is his painting process and
    what I'd learn from the class. . .


  • "Painting Hair Tutorial" by Don Seegmiller
    While this is not the best hair that I have ever painted, it will give you a general feel on how I occasionally will
    approach the subject. On the last page is a link to a movie with all of the steps combined along with some
    general ideas about painting hair.


  • "Capturing Heaven " by Greg Martin
    We have all seen the spectacular images that the Hubble Space Telescope and other such observatories have revealed to the world. Their haunting splendor inspires and compels us as artists. The question is, how can we capture the elusive essence space in our own representations of the heavens?


  • "Texturing 101" by Dave Wilson
    Okay this is a really simplistic makign of, it's really more of a texturing tutorial cause I get quite a few questions on
    texturing so, I've just take a simple Coke Can and decided to show you how I textured it since most of my texturing
    follows these principles.


  • "Custom Brushes - Part 3" by Rickard Johansson
    Have you ever tried building your own brushes in Photoshop? If you have, this tutorial is designed to let you
    explore the two concepts of designing your own texture brush and your own shape brush. . .


  • "Custom Brushes - Part 2" by Johan S.
    Welcome to the second tutorial about creating custom brushes in Photoshop!
    Rickard (who did the awesome first tutorial) and I decided to create a little tutorial series about brushes in
    PSP 7 and CS.. . .


  • "Custom Brushes - Part 1" by Rickard Johansson
    If you use Photoshop (version 7 and CS), wether it is to paint textures for your 3D-models or for classical
    digital art, a really good tool is to build your own custom brushes. A custom brush can add that special
    texture or help speed up your workflow. . .


  • "Digital Realism: Fur" by Cristina Penescu
    While alot of people like my Digital Realism technique, it is strongly advised that if you do not have a graphics
    tablet, you should refrain from doing Digital Realism fur. The repetativeness of this technique can lead to wrist
    strain and eventually, carpal tunnel, if done with a mouse, and done too frequently. . .


  • "Digital Realism: Eyes" by Cristina Penescu
    This tutorial will cover how to illustrate wonderful, lifelike eyes using Photoshop 6.0. Unlike my older digital
    realism technique, this one is more detailed, and likewise, more time consuming. For this particular tutorial,
    we will be using mainly one tool, the airbrush. Ready? Lets begin!. . .


  • "Walkthrough: Gizmo Craze-O" by Katherine Dinger
    Here is a walkthrough of how I went about painting the portrait of my cat. Now this isn't a tutorial mind you -
    meaning it is not ok by me to copy this picture. Pick apart the steps, take what you will from it... my goal
    here is that somebody might be able to find something helpful in all this, not to have everyone copy my
    painting. .
    .

  • "Painting Hair aka 'Updo-Tutorial'" by Katherine Dinger
    first considered titling this walkthrough "Fun With Buns" but something just wasn't right about that. O_o
    This is a 5-step tutorial showing how to paint hair, this time twisted up on the head. I'm using my own hair
    as a reference. Only basic round photoshop brushes are used here. . .