Introduction

Hello, my name is Omar Díaz and I´m a Spanish Graphic Designer and Digital Painter. I´m currently studying the concept of art for the movies and videogames, working at the same time with freelance.

In this tutorial I will explain how I have done one of my latest work, ”Be my Valentine” , I really hope you find it easy to follow even though this is not a strict step by step walkthrough, because I usually work on all elements of the image at a time, and then increasing the quality and detail gradually.

I rather prefer to work this way, and I never lose sight of the work as a unit, in this way, I ensure that there is no major difference in quality or detail between elements, and allows me much more freedom to improvise in the early stages, experiment or fixing problems without redoing a lot of work.

I will focus on the technical side, sharing some tricks and resources, as well as in theory, because most of the success of an image depends on finding the right solution in every situation.

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I was inspired to make a portrait of Anton Chigurh after watching No Country for Old Men. I don’t know why but he just caught my interest and attention.

I’m new to digital painting and I still have a lot to learn. I thought this would be good study to exercise my attention to details since I’m still learning the techniques. This is not the step by step tutorial, but will explain you my techniques.

I usually start with rough white outlines on a tinted background. I then apply rough colors and rough details until I come up with a rough study look with colors.

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Creative Introduction

This time I tried to create the role of a dark line (black mage), he has aloof and cold personality, setting on the clothes I do not want him there too much armor. Hope closer to modern fashion, and loaded on the various elements and symbols of China.

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I secretly made this drawing to gift it to my girlfriend. So, for me, it has a special value. Her name is Vanessa and hence the title of the painting. ‘Cadenus and Vanessa’ is the title of a poem by Jonathan Swift gave rise to the name of Vanessa.

Its original resolution was 5000px x 3000px and it was made using my Wacom Intuos 3, Corel Painter XI for painting and Adobe Photoshop CS4 for post-production.

The brushes I used in Corel painter were divided in two groups: painting and blending.

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When I saw the James Cameron ‘Avatar’ movie for the first time I was very surprised. I’ve seen it 2 more times. The visual effects are amazing. So I decide to pay a small tribute and began to make a fan art of its protagonist, Jake Sully.

Step 1 – This time I started doing two pencil drawings on paper. The first contains the Jake and the second one contains the background. I am looking for a dynamic composition and a lot of movement. Once scanned the drawings I made the composition into two different layers inside Photoshop until I found the one I liked it.

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Software Used :

ZBrush, Photoshop & Google SketchUp

Usually I start working by experimenting with the idea in different forms, lines and colors until I decide how the image should be. Obviously while working on the painting, the image is transforming and the final one might be very different from the original. In this case everything started from a photo of Sorrento which was sent to me by a friend

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When you look at some beautiful human portrait, you may wonder how the artist to start and process it. There are various ways to do, and this tutorial will present you how to use the photoshop brushes professionally to process it.

Artist’s Comments (Foxbane)

I figured that a lot of my tutorials were getting a bit out of date for my method of working. =/ I know you guys still use them. I guess they need updating, but people have been asking me for a skin tutorial for AGES, so I did one and I hope it lives up to expectations.
Enjoy

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Introduction:

Most of the time, when I begin on a sketch, I have a clear idea of what I want to illustrate. For “Lord Something”, I wanted to create a cartoon character using pure lines and lighting that went from warm to cold.

Sketch and Shape:

First, I opened a new PSD: size 2500 x 3000 at a 150 to 200 dpi. (Later, I framed the image for the compositions.) Using such a large PSD gave me more space for experimentation during the project, but size remains a question of choice. With time I’ve developed a technique which is efficient and rapid.

I always start in black and white with the basic shape. This way, it is easier to find the right proportions and it’s also easier to modify the subject if any changes need to be made.

Within five minutes I had a very good idea of what the final result would look like. On a grey background, I started working with brushes of crushed lozenge shape (100% opacity) to block the contour shape. To pinpoint the shape of the character, I used a softer brush with pale colours (25-40% opacity). As with any artistic work, I used the trail and error technique until I was satisfied

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Digital painting process, made for self evaluation purposes…

Story - It was supposed to be quite fairy-tale scene. Colby young, beautiful girl is looking for the magic stone at the heart of the Reptar’s sacred tree. She needs the stone to save her brother from vampirism. Her mission is not easy because danger lurks around every corner.

When she approached a swamp she meet Xavier, a gentle soul trapped in the body of a monster – his current look is the result of the mad experiments of a man named Scholar who once held him captive. Xavier and his sentient shadow accompany her on her mission. He is so unhappy because all the time Scholar does not let him get away… Colby and Xavier need to work together and overcome evil. With this outline of the story I can begin working on first attempts…

Concepts and Sketches – I need to determine which palettes choose for this picture. At least I decide to use a bit amber colors, broken with some light browns and dark green.

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Software Used: Painter

Introduction

Some of you may remember that I wrote a tutorial about painting basic landscapes with Painter in Issue 24 of 2d Artist. Well I was also recently asked to write a “Making Of” for one of my more matte painting style image creations, “Stranded” (Fig01), which was also handled in Painter. Hopefully you’ve already found some joy in playing around with the first collection of tools which I introduced in the previous tutorial, and I hope that you will in turn find this “Making Of” inspirational.

Figuring out which were my favourite tools in Painter took me around three months, and I like to stick to the ones that I have found to be my favourites. But please don’t hesitate to try out new tools in your own work; after all, each to their own!

In this little “Making Of” I’m going to discuss the importance of colour schemes and composition, as well as what happens to parts of environments that are in the distance. These are all elements that I dealt with in this piece and I would like to share my discoveries with you in the hope that it will help you to take a new look at your own work, as well as the world around you.

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In this tutorial, I will teach you how to easily create a successful piece of cityscape concept art. We’ll be using a very basic 3D scene as a foundation for the piece, then taking it into Photoshop for some creative photo manipulation of reference photos, basic painting and adjustments. Let’s create this urban scene!

Tutorial Details and Requirements

• 3D Program: Any application capable of rendering a daylight system will do. I used Maya in this tutorial.
• Lots of reference photos: This will be covered in the steps below.
• Photoshop, and an Intermediate understanding of its tools and terms.
• Graphics Tablet: Not essential, but very useful.
• Difficulty: Intermediate – Advanced
• Estimated Completion Time: 8-10 hours

The Brief

The brief, in my case, was to create a historical street scene from anywhere in the world before 1914. It wasn’t to be a particular street, but the concept had to serve the purpose of seeming as though it could be a real street in the time and place I chose, to have a sense of architecture and light, and overall atmosphere.

Obviously you can do anything you want for your projects, but for the sake of the tutorial let’s roll with my choice, which was Glasgow (Scotland) in 1900.

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There are many ways to express stories; one of the most interesting ways of telling a story for me is visually through comics. Before I start to read the first page of the comic, I usually take time to study the cover and try to get a feel for the story. I think that a good cover helps to bring out the atmosphere of the story at first sight – this applies not only for comics, but animation, video games and movies as well. By using things such as environment, custom, expression, composition and contrast, we give the audience insight into the story being told.

In this workshop, I would like to introduce to you some important factors I have learned about making a cover or a poster. Every story has a topic, and it’s important to choose the right style to fit the topic. For this piece, I chose a style mixing Western and Eastern elements.

Click here to download the full workshop for free (PDF)

Click here to download the support files (9.17Mb)

Concept and Sketch – For this Halloween-themed painting, I wanted to do a sexy pinup girl, and of course, Halloween plus girl equals witch!  With my main subject decided, I considered her pose and the composition for the sketch, and meanwhile I also started thinking about other things that are associated with the holiday: jack-o’-lanterns, black cats, bats.  My goal was to combine these elements without making the image seem overly crowded or busy.  For the sketch, I created a new layer in Photoshop and scribbled out (my sketches are really messy) the basic idea.  This is the sketch I ended up with, although it underwent some tweaking before I settled on it.  For instance, I originally tried putting the bat wings on her hat, but I decided that they were too bulky and didn’t flow; I thought they would look cute on the cat instead.  Also, her hands are kind of fudged in right now.  Often I leave the exact details till later, as the sketch for me is just to get the concept sorted out.  In this case, I will refine the hands in the next step.

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Painting skin is one of the hardest tasks faced by every photorealistic painter, due 
to the number of factors that make up a final effect – colour choices, blending techniques, special brush usage and custom texturing are all equally important to achieve a truly realistic effect. It’s also crucial to remember that different types of skin require a different approach and therefore a different combination of  these elements. A delicate porcelain skin tone will require a similar technique to the transparent skin typical for babies, but will drastically differ to darker skin rendition methods.

Click here to download the full workshop for free (PDF)

Click here to download the support files (30.54Mb)

In this tutorial I will show you how to create realistic cat fur.
It takes some patience to get to the desired result, but eventually you’ll end up with a super cute, furry kitten!
This tutorial is written for beginners.
The following reference is used for this tutorial: http://www.sxc.hu/photo/1178601

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