I mentioned in the last post that one of the things I’d like to explore is improving my digital painting and drawing. As part of this I have been watching a course on digital painting. The first 25 to 30 percent of the course has been just going over the tools or most of the tools that are available in most of the digital painting software. Things like the select tool, and how to select items, the layer tool, and layer modes, and the types of brushes, you get the idea.
During this whole process of demonstration, and even demonstration of certain techniques, like painting glowing objects, water, things like that, the instructor has been using the select tool to select parts and then paint in that area on either the same layer or a new layer. He does this to keep from painting outside the shape, or painting over the shape. In this case it has mostly been to keep inside the lines so to speak.
I’ve seen this used in many other demonstrations that I have watched. I’ve always thought that it was so cool and useful. I’ve never been able to figure out how to do it. Finally, after watching four or five hours of the course I decided it was time to figure out how to make this work. It took a while to get it. I’m by no means as adept at it as he is. However, I can do it. Wow. That was harder than I expected.
I couldn’t figure out, if I used the automatic option, how to tell it what I wanted to select. That took probably 10 minutes just to get to work. Then I had to figure out how to tell if it was masking the inside of the shape so it couldn’t be painted on or the outside of the shape so that couldn’t be painted over. My head wanted to explode at least once. And my dinner got cold while I was determined to figure it out.
I have noticed that no matter how close I think I am paying attention to what the instructor is doing, I still miss exactly what he is clicking on to get to where he wants to be. I had that trouble with the select tool which is part of why I think it took so much for me to figure it out. And I discovered that same issue with the layer modes. I watched that whole section and didn’t see exactly what he was clicking on to get to the different modes for the layers so when I tried to play with it, I had to do a lot of poking to find it. Of course, now it makes sense where it is at. I guess I didn’t pay close enough attention to that. I’m trying to do better.
I have started to do a sketch or two digitally. I worked up a frog, mostly from memory. That is actually what started me thinking I should practice more digitally. It came out good shape wise and even with a little shading. So, I was encouraged. After watching just, a bit of the digital painting course I decided to do a sketch on the iPad just to try to get more comfortable with the digital tools. I chose Adobe Fresco since it saves as a photoshop file and to my cloud account which means I can easily access it from my PC. I also have Procreate, which is the software being used in the course I’m watching. I’ve done other work in Fresco and like it fine. However, I may spend more time with Procreate while I’m getting more comfortable with the digital realm. I’ve noticed a few things in Procreate that seem to be a little more streamlined than Fresco. Then again, the visibility of the tools in Fresco is a little better. Ultimately, I expect I will bounce between the two for a while. At some point I will probably settle on one that I like the best. The nice thing is Procreate can save in .psd (photoshop) format as well.
Another part of using the select tool that I have known was a benefit I just hadn’t grasped to what extent, is the ability to select a section you’ve drawn and move it over a little or rotate it or scale it up or down to get it closer to right without having to erase and redraw, and then hope you don’t make the same mistake. You may still need to redraw everything on a new layer, with the previous layer underneath as a guide. Doing things that way it’s more like tracing than redrawing. Mind you, I’ve only watched this happening so far. I haven’t used it yet. I do know exactly where I could have used it though. Remember the sketchbook project I did of the body in motion. I had so much trouble with proportions on a few of those sketches.
Because of the revolution of the select tool, ok that might be a bit of an exaggeration. Anyway, the power of the select tool has me considering revisiting the body in motion references and perhaps doing a few in digital. They would be good reference and it would be a great exercise.
I think it might be time to get to work on some digital painting practice. I’m not going to master any of what I’ve learned until I start using it.