Hal's First Photoshop... advice?

Well, it wasn't really done in Photoshop, it was done in Gimp. I'm too poor to afford PS. Anyway, I just started drawing six months ago, but most of that was wasted learning to draw manga. This is my first attempt at actually inking and coloring a sketch.

Photoshop masters, how do you guys manage to get smooth gradients on those clothing folds? I see some amazing pics in this forum and I feel inspired to get better. Are there any resources for beginner digital artists learning to use PS (or Gimp)? Thanks.

Oh yeah, here's my character in our new Arthurian campaign:

Halivar said:

Well, it wasn't really done in Photoshop, it was done in Gimp. I'm too poor to afford PS. Anyway, I just started drawing six months ago, but most of that was wasted learning to draw manga. This is my first attempt at actually inking and coloring a sketch.

Photoshop masters, how do you guys manage to get smooth gradients on those clothing folds? I see some amazing pics in this forum and I feel inspired to get better. Are there any resources for beginner digital artists learning to use PS (or Gimp)? Thanks.

Oh yeah, here's my character in our new Arthurian campaign:

Click to expand...

Sorry, no tips. However, this is pretty good !

Wow, for a first attempt that's really good. Very clean.

As far as gradients go there's several solutions in Photoshop and Paint Shop Pro, I'm afraid I don't know how well they apply to GIMP.

First and easiest (in some ways) is to create a selection area using whatever free hand selection tools the software has and drop a gradient fill into it. If you can set a light feather on the selection first it'll cut down on the hard edges.

Another way is to use multiple layers, start with a single base coat in the body color of the fabric. Create an empty layer above it and paint in your highlights, use soft edge tools like an airbrush tool (again not sure what GIMP may call it) set at a low pressure, build up several layers to smooth out the gradation. Don't forget transparency and blending modes are your friends. Do the same for darker tones. The nice thing about this method is that you can adjust things back and forth using brush and eraser tools. It does require patience though.

Basically when all is said and done it just requires practice, a willingness to experiment (keep multiple copies of works in progress!) and a basic knowledge of the capabilities of your toolset.

Thats pretty awesome for your first attempt!

As far as advise, just keep practicing and experimenting and have fun, thats all that I ever do. I believe I get better each time I sit down to draw/paint in PSP. Because each time I play around, I learn something new. I think that will work with any program you may have.

Here's a different one. This character is a half-dryad MysThg NPC from a campaign I'm running. IMC, half-dryads reflect the season they're born in. This one's theme is Winter.

I'm trying (pretty vainly) to get metal armor to look right. Maybe next time. I think I'm learning a bit more about getting clothing folds right.

I also switched up my inking style. Normally I use mostly a .03mm pen for curves and lines, and a .005mm pen for detail work. I was flipping through some of my comics and realized that my favs all use the same thin pen for all inking. So, I tried this pic using only .005mm. I think it works, and I'll just be using that from now on.

Hmm, when I'm inking I usually use a watercolor brush and my finest technical pen for hatching. Using a brush takes some playing with, but it gives a cleaner and quicker line if you can get the hang of it (which I admit I'm fairly hit or miss on, why I paint in oils ;-) ) I don't know how well GIMP does color pickups because I've only played with it enough to know I don't like it, but in PS one of my most common 'tricks' is to us a few color cheat sheets I've found over the years. I use the one for skin tones the most often, because it's so easy to get those wrong but I think SOMEWHERE I've got my hair sheet and I think I even recall seeing someone's 'metal' sheet once or twice. If I had any advice for you though, it might be in using a softer brush. All of your gradients will come out smoother, and you'd have an easier time adding in those soft faded blues to metals that seem to somehow come out in anything besides bronze. If you're afraid of all that nasty fuzziness creeping over your crisp lines I'd use masks and layers probably to give you some edges to bump into. Don't be afraid to use an airbrush for the gradients in a digital image and then go back with a hard edged eraser to clean it up either. If you're not afraid that you're going to pick up some bad habit for your pen and paint works, there's all sorts of interesting things you could never do IRL.

Oh yeah, and the number one advice for any prospective computer artist out there: Even if it's the smallest one you can afford, buying a tablet and stylus is gold. Personally I'd recommend that people wait until you can do it with a mouse first, but after that bit of exercise in precision a stylus makes everything mo' bettah. And a lot of time it has a PS version or Painter bundled into it, which makes it even nicer.

Good advice, James. I do actually use an airbrush, but the radius is so limited. I seem to recall PS letting you use huge sizes on the brush, but GIMP is limited to 19px. I think the problem may be that I'm working with too large an image (I shrink it at the end). What pixel dimensions do you guys use for works in progress?

EDIT: Hey James, where can I get my hands on some of these color palettes?

EDIT EDIT: Haha! I found out how to may new brushes in GIMP very easily. I made a 50px-wide airbursh pattern that I can use now.

Halivar said:

Good advice, James. I do actually use an airbrush, but the radius is so limited. I seem to recall PS letting you use huge sizes on the brush, but GIMP is limited to 19px. I think the problem may be that I'm working with too large an image (I shrink it at the end). What pixel dimensions do you guys use for works in progress?

EDIT: Hey James, where can I get my hands on some of these color palettes?

Click to expand...

Ouch. That would not endear me with GIMP at all...I think my largest airbrush for when I'm doing average sized images in PS is around 45, made about as soft as I can stand so that its more atmospheric than anything else. I generally try to bump everything I'm spending any amount of time on to at least 200ppi, if I'm pushing it in increments from a screen resolution up that high, or 300ppi if I've got the luxury of scanning something myself. Always bump in increments, because sometimes when you give the computer the lump task of figuring out turning too few pixels into too many the whole thing gets...ugly. In PS there's probably an action that does it somewhere to download, but I've never looked for it.

I'm going to see if I can't find out where I downloaded those tone palettes from and if I can't I'll just recreate them and send them a little later on today. edit: Here they are at http://www.retouchpro.com/pages/colors.html

Note: Even when I'm going to eventually turn something into a more non-realistic PS coloring I sometimes go through the trouble of doing it first in realistic color. It's easy to 'washes' and 'glazes' pretty experimentally in PS because you can just adjust the color layer as you like afterwards anyways. Then you can tweak things, but unless you're going grayscale I think a lot of times it's just easier in digital work to start real and work backwards because that's the closest to working with photos. YMMV.