Archive for January, 2012

One of the challenges with digital art is that you will often encounter color and contrast variations from monitor to monitor. While it is not possible to control other people’s monitor settings, there are a few things you can do to help mitigate the damage, especially when going to print. Daarken talks about different color…

There are many tools in Photoshop that can help you change your painting without having to completely repaint entire areas. The warp, distort, and liquify tools are great for making changes or even experimenting to come up with different ideas.

Over the years most people have lost respect for Photoshop filters and groan at the mention of lens flare. The trick to using filters correctly is to be subtle with them and know how to use them correctly. The liquify tool is a great filter that allows the artist to make changes quickly without having…

In this video Daarken shows you how to create your own perspective grid using the pen tool. Update – I realize there are many ways to create a perspective grid. This is just ONE way of doing it. It may not be the fastest or easiest, but hopefully some people found it useful. With anything…

In this video Daarken will go over some very basic perspective principles.

This tutorial continues with more still life painting but focuses on rendering an object with a matte surface as opposed to the shiny surface of an apple. This tutorial also shows how to render a high key object. Not all paintings need a lot of contrast. Egg photo ref Homework Create a still life painting…

Still life painting is an important step for any artist as it teaches the importance of form, light, and composition. Basic rendering fundamentals can be learned from still life painting. Even though most people may find the subject matter boring, you will be able to use this knowledge to paint creatures, characters, and virtually everything…