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Excellent Digital Painting Video Tutorial for Beginners

If you’re a noob in digital painting and struggling to create your first digital masterpiece, you need a very good video tutorial to get you up to speed fast. Otherwise, you will quickly run into problems and get frustrated fast. I have tried many tutorials on the web but a lot of them assume you already know what settings to use for paint brushes in Photoshop, such as what size, shape, opacity and flow, and how to apply colors, textures and blending to your painting. Other video tutorials were recorded several times faster than normal or recorded without sounds so you wouldn’t really learn from them. More »

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An Eye For You

Congratulations to all the winners of the Wacom contest. Although I didn’t get a new Wacom tablet, I feel like a winner myself as I have learned a lot just from joining my first graphic competition.

Today I spent my afternoon painting a human eye. This is my first step towards learning how to draw and paint the human form in general and the human face in particular. This time no more masked figures. The Wacom excersice was a great step to learning basic digital painting using Adobe Photoshop. I learned a lot about blending using a standard brush and the different blend modes, using color schemes, the importance of using multiple layers, saving my work a lot and most of all having the patience to finish my work even though everything looks bad at the beginning.

I thought painting an eye will be “duck soup” compared to my Fiesta Fever piece. Again, patience is a virtue in painting whether traditional or digital. But as long as you love what you’re doing and being passionate about it, then in the end it is indeed duck soup (learned that expression from my boss)!

Thanks to Enalya, one of my favorite CG artists for the great tutorial.

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Airbrushing

Despite finally completing my Fiesta Fever artwork after working on it for a month, I feel that I still have plenty to learn. Now, without any competition to push myself beyond my comfort zone, I began to start taking it easy once again. I was contented on reading and looking at the artworks of other artists online hoping their skills will just rub on me. Of course that’s not the way how things work. Well, the good thing that happened after the storm was that I only got back my internet connection two days after I got back my electricity. No web means no browsing on CG and design sites. It was an opportunity to open Photoshop once again and listen to my Gnomon training videos.

This time I followed the tutorial of Scott Robertson on doing industrial designs particularly on rendering concept bikes. After using a standard hard round brush in Fiesta Fever, now I began using solely the airbrush. Using Scott’s example bike sketch, I began tracing it with the pen tool and rendered it using an airbrush. Although not as detailed as Scott’s example, I completed my work in 2 days, the same time I got my internet connection back.

Hope you like it!

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Almost did not make it!

Finally submitted my Wacom contest entry last Wednesday night. Lucky me! The next day we were hit by the strongest typhoon in 11 years aptly named “Milenyo” or “Millenium”. Power was cut-off in the whole of Luzon area. We were the lucky ones who got our electricity back the next day. Others still do not have power up to today, 4 days after the storm. However I just got back my internet connection an hour ago.

Before that however, I was anxious as I have not received notification from Wacom whether they have received and accepted my entry. The submission deadline was supposed to have ended yesterday. Now after checking Wacom’s website, I finally found my artwork displayed in the gallery with several new ones relegating my piece to the next page. Turns out my fear was unfounded, as displayed prominently next to the last entry is an announcement extending the submission deadline to October 4, 2006!

You can check the contest gallery here: http://www.wacom-asia.com/community/contests/entry.php?action=list&id=7

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Almost There!

It’s been ten days since my last update on my digital painting. Too busy with work especially since my boss came back from the US. Anyway, I think I made some progress during the nights that I worked with my Wacom and Photoshop. Almost there and the time is almost up. Just two weeks to go before the submission deadline!

There are still a few touch ups to do and I haven’t experimented with color filters and blend modes. I hope I can finish this work a week before the deadline.

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Carpe Diem

I did manage to work on my Wacom contest entry during the weekend but not as much as I would like to. I just had to go with my family to celebrate the 75th birthday of my father-in-law. He just came out of the hospital a few weeks ago from an illness we all thought he isn’t going to recover from. We’re just glad he is on track to full recovery and that all important second chance to enjoy life and do whatever he needs to do. From now on, he must stop worrying about the future and seize the day everyday!

Anyway, back to my art piece… I managed to render a few details here and there. Six happy faces are now visible including their decorative headgears. I’m not quite sure yet about the colors though. I want it to be more colorful and vibrant. Maybe I can just finish painting some more details and see what it comes up with. With Photoshop, I can try changing the colors using its many varied tools or simply manually paint over it again using a different layer. Well, it all depends on how much time I have left before the submission deadline.

In the meantime, I just want to enjoy my life as well.

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The Process Behind an Amazing Digital Artwork

This computer graphic artist shows us how proper research and attention to details can create an amazing digital masterpiece!

read more | digg story

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Happy People

Finally, I found the time to continue with my artwork last night. “Happy People” I think will be the title of this piece for the Wacom Lifestyle Contest.

I added more paint to the background and let the other people around the composition come into view. I painted some details on the guy on the upper-right using light green colors to contrast with the dark background. I don’t know, but maybe I’ll change some of the colors and play with the values later on when much of the pieces are in place.

I still have a long way to go and this is becoming a challenge for a newbie who wants to learn and do great artwork fast but with very limited time to practice. It took me alomost five hours just to add what I did continuing from my previous work. I had to stop because my hand started to hurt from drawing with the stylus pen. I tried changing the pen pressure by softening the tip feel on my tablet and it worked at the beginning. It began to hurt again when I started painting the details using a smaller brush at a low opacity. Hmm, maybe I’m doing something wrong or I just need to get used to it. Perhaps my fingers will soon grow some muscles!

The good news is that it is now Friday so I can spend more time working until the wee hours in the morning and on weekends. I just have to convince my 10 year old son that I will not be able to play basketball with him so he just have to ride his bike or play with his PS2.

Until the next installment!

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Wacom Lifestyle Contest

When I became interested in digital painting a few months ago, I felt I needed to buy a graphics tablet in order for me to learn painting on a computer. Learn fast and do great. Afterall, great digital artists use tablets—I presumed. In order for me to be like them, I need to have one too!

So after searching the Internet for the best graphics tablet, I had to go through the agony of asking my wife to buy me one. I finally conviced her after explaining that owning this piece of gadget (and no, its not a toy) can change our lives forever. It was a huge expense for us especially so that the best is more expensive. But hey, I needed the best to be among the best, right? So I ended with the smallest (4×5) top of the line Wacom graphics tablet—the Intuos 3.

I received an email from Wacom a few days after registering my new toy (well, its a great toy!) and after fumbling with the pen trying my first digital doodles. You can see my first paintings from my previous posts. Going back to Wacom’s email… they have just started a new online community and came up with a contest that is open to everyone—beginners and professionals! Shucks. I can’t compete with the best. I just got my Wacom!

Days passed before I finally decided to try and enter my first contest. I do have two digital paintings already done and approved by my wife and kids don’t I? So I looked for a nice reference that will convey the contest’s theme, “The Asia Pacific Lifestyle”.

Hey, I think I’m getting the hang of this blogging stuff.

Anyway, what I’ll do is to document my work until I submit it to Wacom on or before the contest deadline on September 30 (a month away). Kinda like a WIP or Work in Progress. I learned that from CG Society’s forums. I started painting last night until 3 a.m. when sheer exhaustion forced me to bed. So here is my unfinished work. Hopefully I can finish it on time. I’m a regular office guy you know, working 9 to 5 sometimes 10 to 4 and well, what I’m saying is I have few windows to play with my toy and have some fun.

Not much huh? Just wait for my next installment!

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My Second Digital Painting

Since I’m still thinking on what to wite about on my blog, I just did my second digital painting using Adobe Photoshop.

Btw, I’m still using Windows Live Writer (Beta) to post my blogs. The border and shadows on the painting are all set in Live Writer. And yes, including the watermark. Aint that cool!?

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