Welcome to Paintable Tips and Tricks, guys!
This video is going to show you how to blend color with a hard edged brush.
And to demonstrate that, I am going to use this painting of mine.
It's a portrait which has every value, every shadow, every highlight in a geometric shape and nothing is blended.
Personally, I don't start my painting like that.
But that way, it's going to be easier for me to demonstrate the tricks and the tips in this video.
So how do we blend color with a hard edge brush?
I've seen other people actually blend color with a hard edge brush,
and they seem sometimes to have difficulty doing really smooth transition between a color and another one.
And I hope this tutorial is going to help you understand why.
If I were to try to make a gradient between this color and this blue here,
As you can see, because my brush has some sensitivity,
so if I'm pressing a little, it's going to be more pale, and if I press harder, it's going to be more opaque.
I'm able to get that color in the middle.
But to make a smooth transition between those two, I'm going to have to actually sample this color a few times
--on both sides--
in order to get something closer to a gradient like this.
Just going to paint a little bit more, and i'm gonna put a line here, and a line here,
--and as you can see, what I just created is a gradient.
But if I get really close to it, you can see that there's a lot of little lines.
It could be something that that I want to do, but if I don't, how do i get rid of them?
And I want to show you how to get rid of them on an example on this portrait here.
So I'm going to create a new layer, and I'm just going to do the same thing that I did, but I'm going to pick up the colors that are on this painting.
So if I were to repeat the same process I'm going to take this color here and
I'm going to pick up the new color, and just pick the color, paint, and sample--
that way, slowly it's going to start making a gradient.
As you can see, I'm creating a lot of lines along the way.
Now a hard edge is good to blend,
especially when you have edges on your painting that you want to keep.
Let's say the eye socket here. I would like to keep that hard edge.
I don't want to make something here that it would be smooth.
I want to keep a hard edge here. So using a hard edge brush will help me in doing so.
I'm just going to pick it up, and I'll be able to not pass on the eyebrow and keep this line really sharp.
Same thing if I were to add the eyelid--
to make sure that I stay in the boundary of the eyelid in creating a smooth gradient.
But if I want to make sure that those lines disappear, I need to play with the opacity and the flow.
By putting down the opacity to about 50% and putting a flow as little as 9%,
I'm gonna have a really more smooth line--let me show you here.
So if I were taking this dark color here and make a line,
and I'm going to put everything back to a hundred, and do the same line,
as you can see, the edge here is more like a gradient.
It's blending easier than this one, but it's still keeping my edge really sharp on the side.
So I'll be able to keep my sharp hard edge here, but it's gonna be easier for me to blend with this mode
So I'm going to put my opacity to 50% and my flow up to 9% and I'm going to continue blending here.
And as you can see, it's gonna be harder for me to blend in the sense that it's taking me more stroke to actually
blend the colors, but at the same time I have a little bit more little bit more
--a little bit more control on the edges that I'm painting.
So I'm going to continue painting here for a little bit, and I'm going to try to round up all those places.
But as you can see it's getting really hard and a little bit muddy.
Probably the forehead for me would have been better with a soft edge.
If I were to point out the pros and cons of this technique,
I would say that having the control for a hard edge when it comes to the eyebrow here is definitely a good pro.
That way I'm having more control over those hard edges like the nose, or even under the eye here.
If I'm going to get to blend here, I want to make sure that I keep that edge of the eye.
But the cons is simple.
It's all those lines--it creates so many small lines that I will have to smooth out later.
I'm keeping them now because I just want to show I'm using a hard edge brush,
but it would take me a lot less time to use a soft round brush to do this big part here.
I could then again, go with a hard edge brush to do those small parts here where I need to keep a hard edge.
So, pros: hard edge makes sure that you're going to keep all those structure bones that you need
on your on your illustration; cons: well it's going to create a lot of lines if you're not careful.
And that's it for this step, I hope you enjoyed the video!
If you're interested in trying this technique and using the same brushes that I'm using,
just click on the link below the video.