BACK TO CREATING AGAIN!

Happy Holidays and Happy New Year to everyone! It has been a while since I posted. Sometimes life just gets in the way, but it feels good to get back to doing Photoshop and painting again! I have been watching a lot of creative videos. Sophie’s pix above was one created by following a video called How to Paint a Pet Portrait with Nathan Brown (Part1) using Procreate. Since I am not an Apple person I can’t use Procreate, but the video gave such clear instructions that it was easily followed using Photoshop. Part 2 demonstrates a color effect which I will put on-line soon. The charcoal look actually fits Sophie’s actual gray fur color so I kind of like this representation of her. The drawing was sketched and a lot of Photoshop painting was done with Kyle T Webster’s Real Watercolor Alcohol brush in black (note-this brush is set to Hard Light mode). That gave the texture feel to her fur.

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The image above was mainly painted in Corel Painter 2022, but at the end a couple PS brushes were used to fill in some areas. Not sure if I could have created the same image in Rebelle, but maybe. If you have Painter and want to learn more about how to create different types of images, check out Corel’s Painter Webinars See More Tutorials Tab at top of this link. By following the Winter Fantasy Fine Art Webinar (above link opens to this) from 2020 by Elite Painter Master Karen Bonaker, this image was painted. There are several different people creating the various tutorials so lots to learn here!

Regarding Karen, she has an excellent site called Digital Arts Academy (DAA) – this is where the brushes and papers can be downloaded for this video (just click on Products tab -> Sale, click on 2 for second page to download the Mountain Majesty paper, and on 3 to download her Pastel Gold Brush Bundle category). Also all kinds of tips and other great digital artist paintings are displayed on her site. This was a really fun project to do and I learned a lot about mountain landscape painting. Thank you Karen!

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Another painting software called Rebelle 5 by Escape Motions gave a very deep discount before they released version 6 this week. Thought I would share my opinion of it since it is a fairly simple program and plays nicely with PS. Rebelle 5 was used to paint this Pixabay guitar image above (I played the guitar in the past and am very partial to guitar images). To begin, the model was hand sketched on a layer over the Pixabay image in Photoshop. Then it was taken into Rebelle where their Acrylic Flat Oily brush was selected to paint over the model’s skin and guitar. Since Rebelle has a psd file format capability, the image was brought into PS where my basic workflow was used. The background is my SJ Pastel Watercolor and can be downloaded from Deviant Art, and the fence is from PixelSquid (great site for compositing). Back in PS, the tones on the skin used a Dodge and Burn technique I wrote about in 2016, but is still really relevant. The technique is described nicely in Sam Peterson’s You Tube video called Controlling Light & Shadow (he gives you starter files to use for practicing). His Dodge and Burn brushes (that can be easily created) worked nicely with this image. It is very easy to make a small action to create a 50% gray layer for this technique. A trick to getting smooth edges on the objects and skin is to use a PS Mixer Blender brush – the one I mainly use is David Bellevieu brush that is a free download at this link – to add color just switch it from a blender to adding color by going to the Options Bar and turning on the Current Brush Load – then sample a color(s) (ALT+click in image) for painting. (If you see a multi-color swatch in Current Brush Load field, can open drop-down to select Load Solid Colors Only.) And yes, Viveza was used to get the final image results – still my top PS plug-in!

Overall this is a pretty good program, easy to use, and I plan on painting with it more. I was really surprised that PS has not tried to improve their brush engine since CS6 – Rebelle is a small program but it definitely fills in painting brushes where PS lacks.

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So when I am just playing around, usually with a new brush set in either PS or Painter, I end up doing something like this. I called her “My New Plumped Lips” – I have to chuckle when I see them on some of the famous people images. I do not consider myself an expert in cartooning, but it sure is fun for me to do. If you are taking up digital painting, try to find some type of doodling that is just fun – it is amazing how your skill set in other areas of your painting will increase! The above was done mostly in Corel Painter with some clean up in PS which is what I usually do. The background is one I created in Painter and I use all the time, just changing the colors for the image. The hair was painted using the same brush that the mountains used above. I might also add that a long-time friend of mine, Kerry Mitchell, makes some really terrific digitally painted lady portraits, all in Rebelle – check her out!

I have several other items I have been working on and will try to get a blog out more often. Hope everyone is having a Happy Holiday!…..Digital Lady Syd

Digital Lady Syd Related Blogs:

Living in the Abstract

Working on Digital Painting in Photoshop

Painting Acrylics Digitally – Can It Be Done?

Got Some Free Time! Try Drawing

Digital Painting a Photo in Photoshop