Digital painting and coloring Techniques?

[flyawayraven]

Hi all!

So after years and years waiting, I finally have a Wacom tablet!

I'm still adjusting to drawing with it in Photoshop CS2 (hoo boy talk about a learning curve!) and I'm having a blast with it! Having the ability to erase and change colors at the blink of eye is wonderful!

I am curious what everyone's preferred methods for coloring and painting are? I've been experimenting with the technique here http://www.melissaevans.com/tutorials/colouring-line-art and so far I like it. I haven't gotten to shading yet which is the part I'm really dreading because I suck at that no matter what medium I use.

[ponygirl74]

Thanks for the link, I have a tablet too and would like to get more use out of it.

[Bunnymunch]

Hi all!

So after years and years waiting, I finally have a Wacom tablet!

I'm still adjusting to drawing with it in Photoshop CS2 (hoo boy talk about a learning curve!) and I'm having a blast with it! Having the ability to erase and change colors at the blink of eye is wonderful!

I am curious what everyone's preferred methods for coloring and painting are? I've been experimenting with the technique here http://www.melissaevans.com/tutorials/colouring-line-art and so far I like it. I haven't gotten to shading yet which is the part I'm really dreading because I suck at that no matter what medium I use.

shading can be very tricky, so don't feel bad if it takes a long time to get used to it! The important thing is to practice, think really hard about where your light source is coming from, and to NOT use white/black to shade. Shade with different hues/tones of the base color, as well as other colors, especially if the shadows/lights are more intense. Be patient, and take your time! Be sure to look up lots of tutorials as well. 

[kestral_kitsune]

http://myartrefs.tumblr.com/tagged/coloring this has a great collection of tutorials  http://myartrefs.tumblr.com/post/41643823457/holy-free-art-programs-batman also has a great list of free art programs and such, and if you go to the main tumblr it has plenty of reference material along with tutorials how to and other information

[flyawayraven]

Oooh thank you for the tumblr link, kestral! I will definitely check that out!

[FullMoonFever]

I'm on my third Wacom tablet and second Intuos.  I LOVE the tablets to death, but I prefer to do traditional art. I think I'll go check out the tutorials!

[flyawayraven]

I'm on my third Wacom tablet and second Intuos.  I LOVE the tablets to death, but I prefer to do traditional art. I think I'll go check out the tutorials!

Same here. Right now the tablet is far more convenient for me because my apartment has crappy lighting so traditional art isn't happening for the moment. I'm still more comfortable sketching on paper, but it's so convenient to use the tablet. It's made coloring far less stressful for me because I can actually erase mistakes (instead of throwing the sketchbook across the room ;>_>).

[Griffin]

Those links seem helpful, good luck! I'm not much of a digital artist myself so I don't think I have anything useful to add, really... I generally use traditional lineart that I scan and clean up digitally, then turn the white into transparent before colouring. I create separate layers for the larger areas (like body colour on one layer, hair colour on another etc.), then add shading and highlights on top of the base colour (or on a separate layer if creating adoptables, so that the colours can be changed more easily). This goes for simple pony art though, it works for adoptables and such but I can't really paint digitally, nor do I know any fancy tricks...

[ponycake]

Here's what I think is a great tip. Go watch other artists do their thing on picarto.tv. You will learn so much!

[archidraca]

These are all nice recommendations! So much knowledge to peruse.

[kestral_kitsune]

brave-attempt.tumblr.com  here's another tumblr with some really good resources and tutorials