Photoshop 7 Fundamental Ways to Improve Your Digital Art Tutorial
Are you looking to level up your digital art, but you feel like you’ve reached a plateau?
Luckily for you, today we’ve put together 7 solid-as-a-rock techniques for quickly improving your work.
Interestingly enough, they’re all based around a single premise: referencing.
Let’s get started by diving into exactly what referencing is, and how it can help you.
Resources Used In This Tutorial
- Red Fox
- Horse eye
- Horse
- Horse anatomy
- my personal photos
Step 1 – What is a Reference?
A reference is something you look at to inspire your own art, and
possibly draw direct elements from. It may be a photo, a sculpture or
anything from the real world. Everything you draw is based on a
reference, even if that reference is based on a memory, as drawing
itself is a way of copying the reality. Using a reference in the moment
of drawing highly increases your learning speed.
In Photoshop you’ll usually use a reference from the Internet. It
means you need two documents open – the reference and your new document.
There are two ways to place your reference for comfortable work. If
you’ve got a big screen, you can work in Standard Screen Mode (it’s
default), with the reference window on the top. Just grab it and move it
out of its place to get this effect.
When you work on a laptop, you’ll probably want to use Fullscreen
(click F for it). In this mode you’re not able to use multiple screens,
so you need to place the reference in the workspace. Go to Image >
Canvas Size to make the canvas bigger and paste your reference. Lock its
layer to avoid mistakes.
Step 2 – I Can’t Find The Perfect Pose!
References can be great for estabilishing a pose, and you don’t even
need the same object/creature you want to draw (they just should have
similar anatomy). If you take a good look at your reference, you’ll
realize every object consists of simple shapes, like circles and lines.
Now you just need to draw these simple shapes. Forget about rulers –
you need to see and understand the measures. See proportions, not
distances! As a result of this process, a lot of concepts will be
planted in your mind. It will be a vector type structure, easy to reuse
and modify!
Here’s the simple sketch. It may not be perfect, measuring with your
eyes instead of other tools takes time to master. It’s worth the effort
though – everytime you do this you’ll improve.
Now you need to get the skeleton dressed. You can imagine you’re
using a tight stocking for every part – it will bulge on the circles and
straighten on the lines.
If you were using the reference in the step before, now it’s time to
get rid of it. Forget about that stock picture, you don’t need it
anymore. Create something that’s really yours (like this fire
goathorsepard).
Step 3 – The Colors Don’t Match
Sometimes a picture draws your attention even if it’s not very
realistic or skillfully painted, and vice versa – the technique is
perfect, but it still doesn’t look ok. There may be a problem with
colors – they’re more important than you think. Look at these two
dragons: the first is artificial, like a toy, while the other gives more
realistic feel.
How can a reference help? Just find a photo with colors that you’d
like to use in your work – you can create your own palette of colours
with it. First, clear your current Swatches palette (hold Alt and click
them very fast or just download an empty set and load it.
Now use the Eyedropper Tool (I), pick a color you like and click New
Swatch icon. You can name it and then it’s being added to your list.
Don’t pick more than 5-10 colors – they should be a base for you,
something to create more shades of. The colors you pick should be as
varied as possible.
Once your list is ready, save it for future use (a meaningful name of the file will help you find it later).
You can also use this trick to prepare a list of colors of particular
object, like an animal’s skin. This way you’ll be able to use its
realistic colors without any reference in the future.
And here’s a sample of how you can use it:
Step 4 – I Want the Picture to Look Interesting
Composition is a way of how particular elements of a whole are
placed. If it’s correct, the viewer sees exactly what the artist wanted
them to see. Otherwise, their eyes may wander and pass over the most
important elements. It’s because the composition tells what’s most
important and what to look at.
You may have heard about golden ration, but if you still doesn’t
understand how to use it in practice, you can find a reference with a
good composition and analyze it.
Once you understand where to place the most important elements, you can draw your own picture using the same composition:
Step 5 – I Don’t Know How to Make This Part…
Even if you’re an experienced artist, sometimes you struggle with a
detail. You can try to guess how the details should look, but what’s
highly recommended is finding a reference image to complete your
knowledge.
A detail reference is the easiest to find, because it doesn’t need to
be perfectly accurate. You don’t care about the perspective or other
elements of the picture – you just take this one object and analyze it,
step by step.
Step 6 – Biceps, Triceps, Quatrceps?
References are a perfect way to learn anatomy. No matter what your
style is, if you want to break the rules, you need to learn them first.
The Internet is full of references for both humans and all kinds of
animals.
When you want to learn anatomy from the reference, first you need to
establish the pose (Step 2). Then you can look for other basic shapes
(mostly loose ellipses) and redraw them on your own. It’s good to treat
it as an exercise and do it regularly until you’re familar with body
structure.
Step 7 – Endless Possibilities
References aren’t just learning tool – they bring inspiration and let
you create complex pieces. You can prepare “raw” (unblended)
photomanipulations of references and then create something totally new
of them! See where your imagination can take you.
Step 8 – Where to Find Reference Images?
It would be the best if you had your own base of photos (visit the zoo!), but if you don’t, you can still use these sites:
- deviantArt stock gallery
- posemaniacs.com – a base of human anatomy references
- anatronica.com – interactive human anatomy
- practice all kinds of animals
- practice human poses
- a huge base of chargeable materials
Wrapping Things Up
As you can see, references are very powerful tool to become better
artist. But, be careful – references are just a part of your learning
process and you should treat them as a way to get better. Use them for
exercises mainly, because the more you rely on a reference, the more
originality and your own creativity you lose. Use them as long as you
need to get skills you want, and then enjoy your knowledge!
================================
Photoshop 7 Fundamental Ways to Improve Your Digital Art Tutorial
Reviewed by software
on
5:02 AM
Rating:
No comments: