Color Blending, FX Brushing and Photos for Texture

Hi Everyone,

For this week's blog I thought I would do a demo covering how to create light and shadow with color instead of just value and various texture techniques using Adobe Photoshop CS 5 and lower. In this demo you will see how to use the color blend mode for layers, how to use the FX options with your brush strokes and color blend mode, and how to use photos for texture using the color blend mode. These were techniques that I learned and adapted from my illustration professors Cliff Cramp and Christian Hill at Cal State Fullerton. I have broken up the tutorial into three sections because of duration limitations on You Tube. I would suggest viewing these demos at a high resolution so that you can properly see the settings. These demos only go over the very basics but they do give insight of how to approach digital painting.

Speed Painting Techniques Act 1

Part 2 continued from SpeedPaintingForProgression

A while back I had let my speed painting skills rust a little bit, so when I jumped back into speed painting I found my self struggling. However, I am getting back into the swing of things and so I thought I would talk about techniques I have been relearning and relearned.

 One of the techniques I have learned to improve speed painting is to use a variety of different brushes, brush size and opacity. If you have Photoshop C5 or higher than the pressure sensitive opacity toggle in your brush control bar is very useful for this. By doing this you keep your strokes from looking the same overall. This also helps you create detail with out getting nitty gritty which wastes time and our goal is to paint quickly
Another technique is one I learned from Cliff Cramp. By laying down local color first and then applying an overlay of color you can create shadow and light rapidly. This also will keep your work unified. In Corel Painter you would want to use digital water, but in photshop you do it with layers. One layer will be set to Soft Light or hard light (at 60% opacity) for my light sides and the other layer is set to Multiply (at 75% opacity). However, while this technique I was taught was generally taught for longer paintings I found it greatly speeds up a painting because it
takes out some of the thought process.

In combination with the overlaying techinque when you paint your local colors you will want to just block in the general shape of what you are painting. Think of the shapes as silhouettes. If you feel that you must sketch out the form from the inside then keep it as simple as possible and then block in a little bit with in that form. When you do the overlay technique over this you will get near instant volume to your painting.

Lastly keep in mind that this is a speed painting so set a timer of some sort: one that you can keep track of. When you are nearing the end of your time this is the time you use to clean up or to throw in those last needed details for your painting to be done.

Check out more of my work at Tobias White Illustrations

You should also follow me on Facebook, linkedin, Deviant Art,  or catch me on Tweeter at @TobiasWhite1

Back to Blogging

After a long hiatus from blogging . . . I am back. I have just recently graduated from Cal State Fullerton with a BFA in Illustration and with honors to boot. The man next to me in the photo is my illustration instructor Cliff Cramp who gave me the instruction and motivation I needed to become a stronger artist. I am now pursuing my career as an illustrator and as a visual development artist. In order to help me gain more notice on the web I have returned to this old blog and I will be updating as I go. I also have a website which is now up to date and you can find more of my artwork there. http://www.wix.com/itosaithwebb/tobiaswhiteillustrations This is a temporary website and hopefully soon I will have a new website.

Check out more of my work at Tobias White Illustrations

You should also follow me on Facebook, linkedin, Deviant Art,  or catch me on Tweeter at @TobiasWhite1