Digital Painting: All the Useful Tips You Need to Know

digital painting by @cling_gh (Instagram)

If you want to really be successful as a digital painter, you must have a graphics tablet. It is very tedious and frustrating painting with a mouse. The most widely used tablets are Wacom series. Although most of the tablets are expensive, you can get cheaper alternatives. There are different software used for digital painting like Photoshop, Gimp, Paint Tool SAI, Krita. We will focus on Photoshop in this tutorial.

Document Setting

Getting the right document setting is a step in the right direction for a successful digital painting. You should have a minimum resolution of 300 dpi which is necessary if you want to print your painting. You can use a lower resolution if you are painting for web display. If your canvas size is very large, you can lower your resolution to 150 or 200 to avoid lagging your computer. 

Note: It is not advisable to start painting with a white background. A white background will make the dark shades in the painting to appear darker. Use a neutral color. Photoshop CC 2018 has some preset document sizes for digital painting. You can also input your custom canvas size

Sketching

A hard round brush is good for sketching. Create a new layer and name it "Sketch". The brush size is between 3-6 pixels, hardness is maintained at 100%. Go to your brush settings and apply these settings.

• Shape Dynamics: Check it and also change the control to Pen Pressure. It helps to add a traditional feel to a drawing.
• Transfer: Check the box. Change the Controls of both Opacity Jitter and Flow Jitter to Pen Pressure
• Smoothing: Check the box too
• Spacing: I use a value of about 25 (below 30)

Coloring

Base Color

Create a new layer between your sketch and background layer. Name it "Base Color". You have to choose a base color to use for your painting. It is not advisable to sample a color from the reference object. Use your artist sense and knowledge about colors to choose a unique color for your painting. The brush settings for the coloring are listed below

• Transfer: Turn off the Transfer when building the base color

Highlights and Shadows

Note: Do not shade with black and white color. Also, avoid the use of just one color for adding tones to the skin.

Highlights and shadows will bring your digital painting to life. Create a new layer above the base color and you can name it "Highlight". Make a clipping mask of this layer to the base color. You can create another layer of highlight above the initial "HIghlight" layer. This layer will handle areas where the light intensity is harder on your reference object. Choose a lighter tone of color when working with highlights. 

For shadows

When you want to add depth to the painting, we make use of shadows. The darker shades and hues of colors are used. Create a layer above the "highlight" layer and make a clipping mask to the base color.  Name it "shadow". Use the color picker to select a darker shade of color and lower the opacity of the brush to about 50. Brush lightly around the object and harder in the areas where your shadows are more intense. Create another layer of shadow above this. Use a deep shade of color to create a deeper shadow effect.

The brush settings for highlights and shadows are

• Uncheck the box for Shape Dynamics 
• Check the box of Transfer. Change the Controls of Opacity Jitter and Flow Jitter to Pen Pressure

Blending

You will notice that after adding the highlights and shadows, it will appear rough and poorly blended. We will brush different shades of colors in the face so that they can blend seamlessly. There are four main ways of blending in digital painting

• Soft Brush: You can blend an area between highlights and shadows using a soft brush. It creates a smooth blend. It is not good for adding details.
• Hard Brush: This brush is good for adding details or structure to an image. You need to lower the opacity and flow when blending with a hard brush
• Eraser Tool: You can blend using a soft brush at a lower the opacity.
• Smudge Tool: With a reduced Strength, you can use a smudge tool to blend all the rough edges left by adding highlights and shadows

You can also use the Dodge tool with a soft round brush. For the Range, use highlights, Exposure: between 5-10 and airbrush on when working on the facial component like the lips to add highlights.

Do not forget to use the various blending mode to create various shadows and light effects. The commonly used ones are Overlay (lights and shadows), Color Dodge (lights) and Color