Painting Basics Tips and Tricks

Section One - Tips from Painting Participants

Setting Your Angle - Submitted by Steven Sorenson	Setting your brush Angle If you click anywhere in the slider or on numeric field (to highlight), instead of then entering some (often obscure) number to guess at the angle we want, you can instead move the pointer back over your image and TURN THE MOUSE WHEEL (being careful not to click it) and your brush shape will rotate live, so that you can match it to whatever edge you were trying to approximate. In certain situations, this can really be a timesaver, especially if you like to clean up edges by nibbling away at the edge with a tangential brush shape.
Tip for the Straight Line Option - Submitted by Hillie	I find the "straight lines" option great when painting long thin bits. It's easier than doing it freehand and after a while you can estimate just how close to put the line to the edge by the size of your brush. And I use the right angled brush when going along the sloping sides of things - I have the brush panel open and change the angle of the brush as I move around a slopey corner. I use the "straight lines" option for this too and can cover large areas quickly, especially near the edges. Also, staying in the brush panel I can simply swivel the brush using the sliders to have it going the other way on opposing slopes.
A neat little aid for quickly identifying the Brush Angle - submitted by Lynn
Using Textures submitted by Angela	When using textures for painting, transparencies can be used with them for an entirely different look.
Using Textures submitted by Sparrow	When using textures for painting, try adding more than one or layering them for a new look.
Skin Tones Submitted by Angela	For skin tones... This is pretty easy. If you open the Color Picker > select orange at the top > choose a shade of orange in the middle of the top row of oranges > click on the color spectrum tab (this should be the first one on the left at the very top that looks like a horizontal rainbow). This opens the color spectrum where you can click on the color field to define a custom color. Most of my skin tones are in that top left corner. I guess I'm a little different here because I usually paint the skin with a very light "peachy" color all over first. Then I shadow with darker shades from the color field and highlight with an almost white shade. Blending is something that is not very prominent in my paintings because I lay in the colors by increasing or decreasing their hue around the first color that I used. I rarely use burn or dodge...in my opinion, they are much too harsh and are hard to use. If I need a very dark shadow or line, I will use a very dark hue in the orange field (almost to black). For the skin tones in "Respite", I'm sure I used over 50 hues in this one color field. As long as you choose the same initial orange color and stay within it's color field, the blending usually takes care of itself. There are times that I will use the smudge tool or the blur tool, but only at their very lightest T he charcoal brush... This is something new I've started doing for shading and highlighting. I choose the gritty charcoal brush and then adjust the weight slider until the brush is almost invisible, usually around 24 or below. The change is so subtle that you can barely notice it, but it does make a difference. If I have a portion that has a harsh edge on the shadowing, I can choose a color lighter than the shadow but darker than the base color and it blends very well without using a blur or smudge tool. I agree that the blur tool can sometimes ruin a line that you need to keep, so this is a good alternative.
Skin Tones Submitted by Acadie	As for the color palette for the skin this is exactly what I use, I have made myself a square grid will all the color tone of orange in it and saved it as a jpg. and have it in my easy palette. So when I'm painting I just color pick on it, I find it is a lot faster to just color pick on screen. As for blending and mixing the color I use the smudge tool and the waterdrop. depending on what I'm working on, I try to achieve a more oil painting look, so I want to see my brush stroke on the painting. After my sketch is done, I start to paint the shadow on my subject, then the midtone and then the light one. After my paint is on the canvas I start to blend and mix the color together, the same way I would do on a real life canvas. Many time I use the Dodge tool for the highlight, or simply paint with a lighter color to where I need it. As for a portrait I always paint my hair last on the subject. I very rarely use a texture when I paint, most of the time I try to paint it without using it. The tool Brush I use the most is the paint brush, the gritty charcoal brush, oil brush, bristle brush, drop water brush and the retouch tool is the smudge tool. One thing I find is on some part of the skin, if you really want it as smooth as a photo is to use the blur tool at the smallest level and a high softedge. But you have to be carefull not to pass on the edge line because it will blur with your background, and not all part of the skin has to be blurred.
Over-painting Submitted by Wouter	Use an object you have saved or created and change it to monochrome. Then use the painting tools to bring back some of the colors, taking from the background.
Creating a Figure with Path Shapes and Painting It. Submitted by Paula	All paths except the hair......The hair: was done with wacom pen, using the soft charcol in brush sizes 13, 10, 9, 7, 4. All separate layers (done in mode, that way you can achieve the layers) All layers different colors, starting from the darkest color respectively. Then started merging the layers from the darkerr ones to the lighter ones, each time slightly smudging the hairs (still keeping the colors differenced not making a mess) The most important part for me re to the hair was the movement of the pen, it had to have an "order" so the hair would have a flowing look. At the end I added some dodge to the top of the hair and the tips for some light. The face: all with dodge, burn and blur, some airbrush paint for the cheek bones and nose and neck. The eyes: 200 pix zoom, paint brushes different colors of blue and some white for the shine, eye lashes with the paint brush (lot of thin strokes duplicated and merged) Mouth: dodge, burn, blur. You can see the image here The second one I had more body painting, I used airbrush (with a very soft edge), dodge (around 23) and blur (level 1). No burn because it gave me a toasted color and I needed all the gray scale.
Another way to paint skies Submitted by Acadie	Sometime, if I want to use a sky again I select my sky and save the sky itself and save it as an image and the with my blank canvas I select the paint brush I want to use and use my sky image as a texture and use a light grey color to paint it, so this is a fast way to get a sketch of my sky onto the canvas, Once that my image have appear on the canvas, I then start to use the new color I want to have, at some point I don't use the image texture anymore and paint some more clouds or any other thing I want to add. But one thing to remember, when saving your sky image you have to leave a white space below for where you want to paint your scene and the image you save for texture has to be the same size as your blank canvas.

Section Two - General Tips from Sparrow, Acadie and Kaki

Airbrush Flash and Meteor strokes are wonderful for tree branches and things that need to end up very thin at one end without having to go and change the fade setting

Connected lines feature is very useful for going back and forth without having to raise your brush and can give some wonderful angles and if you are working in mode you can erase any portion you need to and still keep your angle

Dont forget the brush lock /unlock on most of the brushes.You can make the brush any shape to fit a certain spot by using these features

When using the oil paint (drop and thick in particular) in addition to the standard settings don't forget about the wet control for a totally different look

The eraser mode on the brush panel.It is much quicker than going to the regular eraser and works
with the already adjusted settings for any particular brush you were using...(ie: transparency soft edge size will all be the same as the brush you were using at the time in addition and you do not have to click out of mode to use it as you do with the regular eraser.

Every time you click in and out of mode you are creating a new layer, so if you are painting an animal (for example) right on your canvas click out of mode before you start then click in mode to paint and be sure to click out of mode when you finish the object before you proceed. Then you will have an animal(or object) that you can save and reuse

Making a sketch or Clipart an object
With the sketch in your workspace.....
Click on your magic wand,
choose area and uncheck connected pixels ,
choose format /threshhold and increase the threshhold to about 190,
click on the white area/then choose Selection/invert,
right click and convert to object
and you now have a floating sketch that you can drag off to another canvas and continue to paint in mode but you can hide your sketch as you go or remove it at the end.
If you happen to have some stray white pixels on your sketch you can choose the black paintbrush and paint over the sketch while it is active.

When making your sketch, you draw it in mode, and save it in your Easy Palette for later use if needed, at one point if you decide to change the color of your sketch while it is still selected and not in mode, use the fill tool to change it to the color you want.
With the drop water brush, you will lose some of it and you wouldn't want that color to blend with the other one around.One other thing you may never want to merge in your sketch on your canvas, if so it doesn't matter the color you choose to make your sketch. Digital painting gives us that oportunity to do it different ways, depends on what you prefer and the way you like to work and more confortable with.
Also when the sketch is highlighted you can use the quick color tuning to alter the sketch color

Nothing worse than putting an hour into something and losing it.If you get in the habit of saving your canvas as soon as you open it(I save to desktop as current) then make it a habit to save each time you click in or out of mode,or each time you change brushes.

Something that may help you for painting hair.Look at different hair styles, there are a lot of free photos on the net, look at the way the hair hangs and at the light reflection in them,
You could even use that photo to pick the color for your color palette for the hair. I just discover also that sometime, if you can use the smudge tool right depending on the color you've used that you don't have to use the blur tool or if you do, not much of it.

Since some of you would like to know how to color a B/W photo is how you could do it:

Under the retouch tool you have the colorize pen, this is the one you use for coloring your photo, to have a better view of your photo zoom in 200% or more if need to, now that you see some square pixel it is easier to color them.
Tips:
One thing about the retouch tool,when coloring you have to keep the click of the mouse down or stylus pen on the pad because when you lift it or let the click go, when you go on top of what you colorer it will apply more color on it, but as long as you don't lift the pen or let go the click of the mouse even if you go over what you have paint in that same color it won't add more.
PRACTICE EXERCISE:
Take any photo, if it is a colored one then go under artistic and click on monochrome to make black and white.

Choose your colorize-pen under the retouch tool and start coloring with the color of your choice without lifting your pen or letting go the click of the mouse. Once that is done choose another color, Now go on some of the color you painted. See it changed the color to the new one, so you have to be careful when you color, this is why it is useful to zoom in, so you could see better the pixels.

The other thing to try with the colorize pen is the transparency, it works the same way as the tool brush and the same goes for softedge. As for the preset if you want to see what they look like go into your easy palette and look for Brush gallery and retouch tool, you will see some of the presets for the retouch tool in there.

Color a B/W photo as you would, when you were coloring in your color book, it is as easy as that.

Just wanted to share with you on how I do save my painting, I discover not long ago that it make a big difference.

When I work on my painting it is always as .ufo but once it is done and I'm please with it. There is different way to do it.
First my resolution, I set it up to 600 dpi for a better quality.

If I want to save it and with the best quality possible for printing on paper photo or paper canvas I save it as a .tiff file.

For my Gallery on the web, I save it as a .jpg but it you want to retain the most quality of it and that it doesn't go out of focus. when you click on save as .jpg there is an option, click on it an a new window open, you see where it is mark soft, I put it to 0 (zero). So I don't get that blur. Also I choose the quality compression to 100 not 90. Make sure your resolution is still at 600 dpi.

OK some people don't want to put best quality on the web, they prefer to have less of a good one so some other people won't be to tempted to grab it, even if it is copyright. For those of you who feel that way, Just leave the soft where it it and just a lower quality compression with a lower resolution. You won't get as much as a quality view but better than nothing as they say.
But you always have the one that you didn't put on the web saved as a .tiff for the best quality if you ever decide to print it and make yourself a nice folio.
Hope these few hints, is helping you about making the decision on how to save your ArtWork.

Section Three - For Pen and Tablet Users from Sparrow, Acadie, Kaki and Maureen

Pressure options
if you change your choice to size or size/transparency you can adjust the sensitivity of the brush stroke so
that the heavier or harder you press the wider the line gets.
You can increase the step which will actually change
the stroke width in graduated steps rather than a fade into.

A small diagram of various strokes using a pen/tablet. Click here to view a 'snapshot' Submitted by Maureen

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