Hey everybody, my name is Aaron Blaze.
I have been a professional artist for over 30 years.
I was an animator and a director for 21 years at Walt Disney featuring animation.
Now, I'm also a painter and a concept artist.
I'd like to take you through my process in crating an image using your wacom Intuos tablet and Corel Painter.
Why don't we go ahead and get started.
I love to paint animals. I love making fantasy animals.
Let's try mixing two animals together.
Let's try a lion and a zebra.
One is a predator and one is a prey. It might be fun.
The first thing we want to do is to go under file and open a new document.
I like to keep everything around 300 dpi in my dimensions.
Let's do 12 by 8 inches.
I like to go by inches and we'll call it zebra/lion for nothing better.
Now we've got our document.
The next thing I 'd like to do is to open up that workspace.
I pull this corner down.
That way my document can float around inside and I can go ahead and paint.
I love to work in layers.
I click on that little icon and you can see that I have opened up a new layer on top.
Now I need to pick a brush and there is a whole bunch of brushes there.
Right now it is on blenders.
I grab chalking pastel and I'm going to grab a charcoal pencil.
When you are getting started with your tablet, I recommend to align it with your screen.
If it's tilted like this and you are trying to draw, your cursor will go on weird directions on the screen.
I learned that the hard way when I first started.
When you can get your tablet lined up like your screen, then your hand will follow your eyes.
Okay?
The second thing is, as we start drawing be loose. Do not get noodly with the rough drawing.
You want to be loose and you want to be free.
It's the stage where we find our composition.
Stay nice and loose and try to sweep trough the image.
Keep your brush strokes long.
This is your chance to get in there and find your composition
I'm paying attention to this reference photograph that I am using of that lion.
I want to get depth and form. I look for muscle masses.
I try to roughen that image and get it to feel right.
I am able to resize it. I can get it to sit inside the composition the way I want it.
We are getting a little bit further down the road.
I got a little bit of the details. The muscle mass is laid in there.
I want to draw this snout here and work out that nose.
You notice how the animal is at a rear three-quarter to us.
And one of the reasons that I wanted to do that was to show the form and roundness.
If it was shown in profile it would feel flat.
By turning it in three-quarter I can emphasize the form.
When we start adding stripes we are going to be able to emphasize that roundness more.
You can see as I draw I try to push that.
I want to work some of the details into the snout and face.
I got the face done.
One of the things that bothers me about the head is that it feels big.
I grab my lasso tool and circle the face.
Then I click on my lasso tool again and if I hold the shift key in, it shrinks it but keeps the same proportions.
Then I click on my unselect, go down and click on none. It gets rid of the selection.
So now I get into drawing the stripes on the head.
I look up my reference. I am a big advocate of using reference.
Use as much reference as you can.
I can get in here and start with a real zebra.
I can start painting these stripes in on how they might look on a lion.
Keep in mind that I stay loose at this stage.
I am just just exploring.
We got a whole other stage, that we are going to do next, where we refine everything.
This is your chance to have fun.
Everything after this is going to be tying down the imagery and getting ready for the painting.
For me, this is almost the funnest part of the painting. Because anything is possible and I can explore.
I got a little bit more of the stripes done.
Now I start working on this body.
See how those stripes define the roundness of that zebra ?
I draw around the form.
Keep everything loose and follow the form of that neck.
I got the neck done.
I get into the body.
This is where we get into some really fun stuff.
We define the form and get into those muscles.
I got a little break there as the stripe wraps around into that latissimus muscle and the ribs.
You can see how those stripes define the form. It almost gives it a 3D effect.
We have the libra roughed in.
I keep it loose. I wanted to see where he is going to sit in composition.
I finish a few details on the main.
Right now I got a nice sense of what the character is going to look like.
We still want to put a background in there.
I'm going to finish a couple of details on him.
I wanted to find some stripes over the brow and get that right.
One of the beauties of working digitally like this is the ability to start trashing around on your composition.
You can't do that with traditional media. You got to be a little bit planned out.
One of the things I love is not even plan it.
I like to start drawing and see what evolves. That is what do today.
We knew we wanted to do this character but I find it as we go.
That is what these tools enable us to do, it is fantastic.
Working in layers I am able to pour back on the opacity. Later on we are going to deem the opacity.
We are going to draw over the top of that.
We can build it layer after layer.
I try to add some clouds in the background. I want a nice,big open sky.
Something clear for a detailee zebra/lion to sit against.
That feels good.
We got the rough drawing in and got our composition. Let's move on to the next video.