- Today, let's talk about some mistakes
that you might be making with your digital art.
How do I define a mistake?
A digital art mistake is something
that makes your work less professional.
Something that causes you frustration
or something that is inefficient
and don't feel bad
because these are all mistakes that I have made myself.
Let's start with the first mistake,
which is not learning how to use layers.
Layers allow you to see separate overlapping elements into
individual objects, which can be stacked and rearranged.
You can easily edit and experiment
with your artwork using layers.
For example, you can resize elements or change their color.
Layers can be a huge time saver
and a valuable composition tool.
Let's pretend that I created this painting 10 years ago,
and back then I didn't bother using layers,
but now I want to modify the composition a bit
to make a custom print for a patron.
I want to move my signature to account
for a wrapped canvas print,
remove the character from the scene
and flip the canvas 180 degrees.
I also want to remove the canvas texture
that I thought looked cool in 2011, but I can't.
Everything is on one single layer.
And now 10 years later,
I have to work hard to make a bunch of edits that may not
even be successful
or settle for a painting I'm not happy with.
If only I had kept everything separate as layers,
I'd be able to make these edits in just a few clicks.
Of course, there are technical and aesthetic advantages
to never using more than one layer,
likewise it's not all or nothing.
You can use layers and then periodically flatten them down.
The point is it's a mistake to never learn
about what layers can do or how to properly use them.
Layers are your friend.
Mistake number two involves a tool
we're all familiar with, the zoom tool.
The trusty zoom tool allows you to magnify your digital art
to get in really close,
but is it a mistake to spend too much time zoomed in,
in my experience, yes,
first spending too much time zoomed in
will make it difficult to see
the overall picture of what you're working on.
This could lead to incorrect proportions,
poor composition, and other mistakes.
It's a good practice to keep an eye on the whole painting
while you're working by either zooming out often
to evaluate your progress
or by using a smaller preview window,
such as the Navigator in Corel painter.
Here's the second reason to avoid spending
too much time zoomed in.
You might end up adding a lot of fine details
that aren't visible
when people view your artwork in print
or on their small phone screens.
Working while zoomed out can help you
avoid the temptation of over rendering the image.
To give the illusion of depth, you want backgrounds
and objects that are in the distance
to appear less detailed compared to the foreground.
You can accomplish this by using big brushes
with soft edges to fill large areas with broad gestures.
This technique is much easier to use
when you are zoomed out enough
to see the edges of the canvas.
Avoiding mistake number three
can have a huge impact on the quality of your work.
Making art on a computer is convenient.
You don't have to buy canvases or paints.
You don't have to clean up any messes
and it doesn't take up much space.
Because it's so easy to start a digital painting,
you might feel like rushing through it
to move on to the next one.
Accidental marks, messy edges,
uneven opacity, gradient banding,
and incorrect proportions are all easily avoidable mistakes
that make your work look unprofessional.
Clean professional looking artwork is especially important
if you're doing work for hire.
It's crucial to take some time at the end of your painting
process to closely evaluate your work and look for mistakes.
I take breaks every so often just to sit back
and observe my progress.
I make a layer for notes
and then highlight the areas that could be improved upon.
Also try to get feedback from others.
Sometimes people aren't always constructive
with their feedback,
but try to use it as an opportunity to see mistakes
that you might not have noticed before.
I use this painting as an example,
because I rushed through the hair in this drawing.
Because it wasn't the main focus
of the video I was creating,
I got caught up in painting the flow of the hair
and I didn't pay attention
to the direction the hair should go.
Needless to say,
that was a mistake that other people noticed before I did.
So it would have been smart to get feedback
before posting that one.
But now I will never forget.
If you're a painting from reference,
place the reference next to your composition,
to see how it matches up.
You can even overlay it on top
if you really want to go for accuracy.
If your painting doesn't look right,
spend some time observing the reference.
A digital painting is not set in stone
and you can always improve upon it.
If you're not happy with your work,
you're probably not spending enough time on each piece.
Mistake number four happens when you paint
without cleaning your pen.
See how my white snow has turned yellow?
And you know what they say about yellow snow.
All you need to do is take your pen
and shoot... beat the devil out of it.
No, that's not mistake number four,
mistake number four occurs when you choose the wrong color.
While this mistake isn't unique to just digital art,
there are some obstacles and solutions
that are specific to digital artists.
First, let's talk about value
and why it's important.
Value is the brightness of a color value creates contrast,
which helps us visually separate elements in a composition.
Value also allows us to see
the three-dimensional form of objects.
While painting in color,
it can be difficult to tell how light or dark a color is.
You might think digital art makes it easy
because you can shift the hue of the color
while leaving the value unchanged.
But the problem is that hues
have their own varied brightness.
Yellow is brighter than indigo, for example.
So shifting the hue will often change
the value of your paint.
Wouldn't it be great
if you could just view your color artwork
in gray scale to see if the value structure looks correct?
Well you can. There are several ways to do it,
which I will link to in the description of this video.
I'll use my favorite method,
which is to apply a Windows Color Filter
with a shortcut on my Stream Deck.
Some applications may have this feature built in.
Now I can easily try a color on the canvas,
and if it looks too light or too dark,
I can tweak it until it compliments
the value structure of the painting.
While in grayscale mode, you may also discover
that you have oversaturated some of your colors,
which makes them appear brighter than they should be.
Digital art displays can project a brighter colors
than what you can reproduce in print
or with physical paints.
So just keep that in mind when choosing colors.
You may very well be choosing colors
that will never look good in print.
Green and blue are the most effected hue ranges.
If you want some assistance with choosing the right color,
color gamut masking can be incredibly useful
for both digital and traditional artists.
Rebel and Krita both have built in
color gamut masking features.
And I also have a universal color gamut masking tool
you can download from my website.
I'll link to that in the description.
Let's quickly take a look at a few examples of how value
and saturation can be used to improve your work.
In backgrounds and landscapes, it's important
to utilize value and saturation
to make distant objects look far away.
You can accomplish this by making objects in the background
lighter in value
and less saturated compared to the foreground.
Here's another example of an apple that could be improved
simply by adding some more lighter and darker values to it.
This really helps the apple look less flat.
Mistake number five ties into the previous mistake.
Shading is not as easy as just building up form
with lighter and darker colors.
In many cases, you must also shift with a hue of your color
for a more natural result.
Shadows are often shifted toward cooler colors
like blue purple or green
and highlights are often shifted toward
warmer colors like red, orange, and yellow.
You can even emphasize the contrast between warm
and cool colors to make your work stand out.
Mistake number six is right in front of you,
or at least it should be.
While you can use a drawing tablet at any angle
and in any position, it's best to try to be comfortable
and avoid making the hand-eye coordination
any more difficult than it needs to be.
If you are using a larger tablet,
keep the top edge of your tablet,
parallel to the bottom edge of your screen
and place your tablet in front of you, if possible.
For optimal hand-eye coordination,
do not turn your tablet at an angle.
If you're using a smaller tablet,
it's okay to have it off center
and closer to your drawing hand
to make it more comfortable to use.
You'll have to balance coordination
and ergonomics to find what works for you.
If you are using a display tablet,
then this of course does not apply.
The next mistake is destructive editing.
The most common example destructive editing
is using the eraser.
The eraser permanently removes pixels,
which is a destructive edit.
A nondestructive alternative would be to use a layer mask
to conceal pixels rather than remove them.
The advantage to masking is that
you can make the concealed pixels visible again.
Another example of a destructive edit is an image filter.
If I apply several filters to my artwork,
I may end up stuck with these changes if I'm not careful.
Let's say I desaturate my artwork and then save it.
If I decide later that I don't like that effect,
I'm stuck with it.
Unless I applied the effect non-destructively
by using a layer blend mode, a live filter,
or by saving a copy of my work with, and without the effect.
Speaking of saving,
our next mistake is not saving often enough
hitting the save shortcut is probably the easiest thing
you can do to prevent digital art mistakes.
As I'm sure anyone who has used a computer knows
forgetting to save can result in lost time down the drain.
Your application can crash.
Your computer could freeze or a file could get corrupted.
Save often, but it's especially important to use
Save As to save iterations of your work,
so you aren't relying on the integrity of just one file.
Instead of hitting your head against the wall,
hit the save button.
You'll save yourself a big headache.
Using the wrong image resolution is mistake number nine.
An image resolution that is too low
limits how much you can enlarge your artwork
before the image quality begins to degrade.
I recommend using a resolution of 300 pixels per inch
for small to medium canvases
and 150 to 240 pixels per inch for large canvases.
Of course you can choose a higher resolution like 600 pixels
per inch or greater
if your computer can handle it.
However, keep in mind that higher resolutions
also create larger file sizes.
If you were only going to be posting your work
on social media at 1080 by 1080 pixels,
then there's not much of an advantage
to making your original 8,000 by 8,000 pixels.
You'd just be wasting space on your computer.
Image resolution may also become a lot less relevant
in years to come.
Right now, you can use Adobe's Super Resolution
to upscale your images four times larger
using AI machine learning.
It actually gives some pretty impressive results
if you start with a good quality image format.
That reminds me of mistake number 10,
the JPEG file format.
JPEG (or jagged pixels expressed as garbage)
is one of the most well-known image formats.
No, that's not what JPEG stands for,
but it is one of the worst formats for digital painting.
Why you ask JPEG modifies your image with lossy compression,
which can degrade the detail and color in your artwork.
Saving as JPEG multiple times compounds of this problem.
JPEG isn't all bad.
It does do a pretty good job of making files smaller,
which is what it's supposed to be used for.
There are times when you just have to use JPEG
and that's okay.
Just don't save the original copy of your artwork as JPEG.
When saving copies of my work to post online,
if given the option, I prefer PNG instead of JPEG,
because PNG uses lossless compression.
Aside from JPEG compressing your image,
it will also discard any layers
and transparency you may have wanted to keep.
Unless absolutely necessary, use TIFF, PSD
or your software's native format rather than JPEG.
There isn't a digital artist in the world
that hasn't been tripped up by mistake number 11,
I'm talking about disorganization.
You have the best computer, a top of the line tablet,
and Microsoft Paint,
but you can't even find the file
you were working on yesterday.
Don't be this guy, be sure to name your artwork
and save it in a dedicated art folder.
Use subfolders to sort your work by year, by month
or by project to make your creations easier to find.
Mistake number 12 is perhaps the worst of them all.
One of the disadvantages of digital art is the ease
at which it can be accidentally lost or destroyed.
Over the years I've had a few instances
where a corrupted save
or crashed computer caused me to completely lose paintings.
In this example, I had been lucky enough to recover
an intermediate save of the artwork.
So I didn't have to start over from scratch.
There have even been times
when my entire hard drive has failed
and I've had to work really hard to recover
entire collections of my work.
It's a horrible feeling to lose hours, days, months,
or in my case, even years of your life,
all because you didn't bother
to backup your files adequately.
The final mistake I have for you
is really the most important.
There are no mistakes in art.
If you want to save as JPEG, go for it.
If you're more comfortable using your tablet at an angle,
right on.
It's your style to not shift the hue
when you're shading,
I completely understand.
Seriously. Do your thing
and don't let anybody tell you how to make art.
No matter how many mistakes they say there are.
13 digital arts mistakes! Ah, ah, ah!
If you want to learn more about any of the digital art
topics I covered in this video,
be sure to subscribe to my channel
and binge watch the heck out of my videos.
Thanks for watching and I'll see you next time.