Digital painting apps and graphics tablets can do
amazing things.
But they’re not magic.
And they’re not going to do the work for you.
And there’s a real danger of developing bad habits that can end up hurting your artwork.
This episode is sponsored by Wacom, which is the brand of tablets that
I use and recommend to students all the time.
They sent us a new 32” Cintiq Pro, so I’m gonna test it out while I show you 7 bad practices
you should avoid when painting digitally.
Sin #7 - Carelessness
There are lots of ways that carelessness, or slopiness, can hurt your painting.
But in this case, I’m talking specifically about when artists don’t paint all the way
up to the edge of a shape or outline and leave white gaps from the underlying canvas
showing through.
I don’t know what else to call that besides being careless.
When the artist is attempting to make a realistic rendering, those little spots of white make
a painting look unfinished and immediately draw my eye to them.
The two ways to fix this are to, one:
Be more precise and scrupulous.
Paint up to and even over the edge of your shapes to make sure you get total coverage.
Or two:
You can leave gaps in your painting if you work on top of a toned canvas.
Preferably something neutral or even a color that is complementary to the overall color
harmonies in your painting.
Tiny specks of color showing through your paint can create a nice vibration of color
and even suggest a texture.
So even if you do end up having gaps in your paint strokes, it won’t make your painting
look unfinished or like you only gave it the minimum effort.
The next common mistake I see people make is settling for the default brushes that come
with your painting program.
And this mostly applies to those who paint with Photoshop, like me.
Photoshop is a GREAT and powerful program for painting digitally.
It’s what I use almost exclusively in the studio.
But, for years, the default brushes didn’t exactly lend themselves to painting naturally.
Out of the box, they were kind of sterile or weren’t set up to respond to pressure
controlled styluses.
You generally needed to fiddle with brush settings and save them as a new brush preset
to make the default brushes more responsive to your artistic will.
But I got the best results when I figured out how to make my own custom brushes,
or downloaded cool brush sets created by others.
In other words, I didn’t settle for the standard brush sets because I needed more
variety to help better express what I wanted to do.
When painting digitally, spend some time learning how the brush mechanics work so you can get
them to do your bidding.
Lots of artists these days go straight to digital painting before learning to paint with traditional
media because they want to do the tricks and the slick renderings.
And I think it’s a mistake.
Learning to paint with oils, acrylics or watercolors is a time consuming process.
Gaining mastery or even just proficiency at them can take years.
But if you never pick up a real paint brush, you may never learn the disciplines and practices
that go into painting and illustrating.
When you learn to paint on canvas or paper, you not only gain skills in those particular
mediums, but also form your personal tastes and style as an artist.
Those then become habits and inclinations that you’ll bring into the digital world
when painting on a computer screen.
And as a result, your digital paintings will be more likely to reflect your personal and
unique style and sensibility.
As an illustrator or fine artist, what people respond to most is the individual style that
you bring to the table.
I think you can learn and practice both digital and real world paints at the same time.
You don’t have to wait years to become an oil painting master.
But if you’re impatient and rush into digital painting without at least experimenting with
real world paints, you may never develop a strong personal digital painting style.
The sin of laziness here is exemplified by a really specific and narrow critique.
But I see it a lot in artists’ portrait and caricature paintings.
And that’s using the fill tool to color the background.
It’s actually good to use the fill tool at the beginning of a painting to cover the
whole canvas.
But leaving the background that single flat fill color at the end of your painting is
the height of laziness.
And it’s just a weird place to be lazy.
Compared to a human head, a background is really simple and quick.
If you’re putting in all this effort on the subject of your digital painting, don’t
just treat the background as throw-away.
For one, it’s jarring to see a realistic rendering up against a flat graphic color.
But if you just take some extra time and use a big brush and paint simple gradient, it
can add so much to the composition by moving the viewer’s eye to where you want it to go.
Vary the hue, color temperature or value a little bit, to contrast the subject so it
stands out from the background more.
Let your audience know that you cared enough about your work to add a little context around it.
But if you really really don’t want to paint a background manually, my advice would be
just to make the background white.
It’s usually the safest bet.
Even some non digital artists used this technique to a great effect.
Sin #3 - Self-Delusion
Let me just say this as simply as possible.
If you think the soft-edged airbrush tool is your friend and makes your paintings
look better, more professional or realistic, you are delusional!
There are certain places or effects where minimal use of the airbrush might be okay.
But going straight for the airbrush and using it for the majority of your painting is one
of the best ways to kill it.
You may be tempted to believe it’s a good way to blend lights and darks.
But a basic airbrush creates a very sterile and artificial look.
It prevents you from being able to create hard edges or interesting brush strokes.
And aside from issues relating to style, you actually can’t render forms convincingly
without hard edges.
Plus, remember, it’s the flaws, and the brush strokes and variety of edges that help make an artist’s
style look unique.
The digital airbrush virtually eliminates any flaws or variety.
Don’t attempt “perfection” in your paintings.
Strive for uniqueness and character.
Sin #2 - Monotony
The digital airbrush is probably one of the worst brushes you can use.
However, if you use ANY brush too much, you run the risk of getting a monotonous painting,
no matter how cool that brush is.
When working on any assignment or personal piece, I’m constantly switching between
several different digital brushes.
Some of which I’ve custom-made, some of which I’ve downloaded from other artists.
It’s important to always try new brushes and painting tools when working digitally.
It helps to keep you thinking about what you’re doing without going into autopilot mode.
I recommend using a particular brush for just a little while and then switch to a different
brush with different qualities.
And keep switching it up as a matter of habit without relying on one single brush too much.
You’ll end up with paintings that have a lot more visual interest because of the variety
of strokes and textures.
As you practice with new brushes you’ll learn their strengths and their weaknesses and start
developing preferences for when you like using each one.
In other words, you’ll develop a style.
So what do you think is the greatest sin in digital painting?
What's the number one thing that all of us have done at some point but is the one habit that
is guaranteed to always ruin your painting?
Stealing!
...with THIS!
Using the eyedropper tool to sample, or steal, colors from the reference photo.
Photoshop and other apps make it really easy to turn off your brain and have all your color
choices made for you.
If you only do it once in awhile, that’s probably okay.
But if you sample every major color from your reference photo as your modus operandi, you
are bypassing one of the most important factors in developing your own unique style.
And your digital paintings will look like everyone else’s who steal colors from photos.
You see, artists who are competent with color tend to have a consistent look with the palettes
they use, whether consciously or unconsciously.
If every painting you do has its colors sampled from different reference photos, your portfolio
of works will not have that kind of consistency of style . And more importantly when you rely
on the reference photo for the majority of your color decisions, you are not learning
how to judge and use color and value, which is a critical skill for an artist.
You’re just cheating yourself out of a vital and fundamental part of your artistic training.
You won’t ever come to understand the principles behind what you’re doing.
You’ll be just a mindless copying machine.
You may think matching your colors to the photo makes your paintings stronger.
The general public, with their untrained eyes may look at your work and be impressed at
how “real” it looks.
But other artists who know their stuff, will immediately be able to see the evidence of
your color theft.
Paintings done this way have a really distinctive and odd look.
They usually lack atmosphere and mood.
And often, with inexperienced artists, their shapes usually don’t transition well from
one color to the next because part of working honestly with color is learning how to paint
good transitions and edges.
Also, think about this: When the need arises to paint two or more people together and you’re
using two different reference photos that have different color temperatures, contrast
and saturation levels, your sin and lack of color knowledge becomes obvious to all.
The faces won’t look like they’re in the same environment.
You need to be able to observe the reference photos and translate that information into
colors and values that harmonize with the rest of your painting.
In other words, you need to have the skills to improvise and paint your own colors to
make the two subjects look like they’re in the same lighting.
The more you paint honestly with color, the more intuitive it becomes to achieve color
harmony in your work.
When painting digitally, it’s easy to fall into the traps of convenience, shortcuts and
carelessness.
And those can lead to bad habits that are really hard to break.
The digital tablets available now are extremely refined tools that can help you make anything
you imagine real.
But you have to put in the hours and do the work honestly before you can create digital
art at a professional level.
Today I was using Wacom’s new 32” Cintiq Pro.
But if that’s too big for your budget or your desk there’s also the 24”, 16”
and 13” models.
Links down in the description.
I’d like to thank Wacom for sponsoring this episode and for making quality tools for artists.
Really…
I personally have bought and have used several Wacom tablets over the years, so this was
a natural sponsorship that we were happy to accept.
Ok, guys those are my top 7 digital painting mistakes.
Keep in mind, some artists may be able to get away with doing something that other artists
can’t.
So I’m not saying that you can NEVER do these things.
These are the practices and habits I’ve noticed in my students that create the biggest
problems in their digital work, especially when they’re just learning the medium.
Let me know in the comments if I missed anything.