Hello and welcome to Digital Painting Fundamentals!
I’m Jon Neimeister and I’ll be your instructor throughout this course.
I’ve been working as an illustrator and concept artist in the games industry for over
a decade, working on IPs like SMITE, League of Legends, Hearthstone, and many others.
My specialty is high level marketing and splash style illustration, and in this course I’ll
be teaching you fundamental skills, digital techniques, and a concrete process for creating
compelling illustrations from initial concept to final execution.
By the end of this course you should have a solid grasp of all the tools and fundamentals
required for digital painting, which you can practice and improve on throughout your entire
artistic journey.
While we will discuss some drawing fundamentals as they’re relevant to our process, it’s
important to note that we will spend most of this course learning painting theories,
techniques, and processes.
I recommend having a solid grasp on basic drawing fundamentals before beginning this
course; you can check out “Figure Drawing Fundamentals” on Proko for a great overview
of all the skills you’ll need here.
The most important skill for painting is the ability to break down complex forms into simpler
ones, and draw them in perspective from both observation and imagination.
While going through this course, I’d like to offer you a challenge:
Maintain a daily sketchbook routine where you draw objects from reference and imagination,
simplify them down to basic forms in perspective, and re-draw them at different angles from
imagination.
This kind of exercise will dramatically improve the quality of your paintings!
It’s also worth noting that this course will cover a lot of general painting theory,
and a lot of what we learn can be translated to traditional media as well.
All of the lessons will be demonstrated in Photoshop, as it is the industry standard
for entertainment art, but nearly all of the tools and techniques will translate perfectly
well to programs like Clip Studio Paint and Procreate.
I’d like to begin with a brief commentary on digital painting as a medium, if you’re
new to painting in general or you’re a traditional artist thinking of branching out into digital.
The first thing to note is that digital painting is not a shortcut and requires just as much
skill as traditional painting.
Some things are easier in digital painting, like making large changes to a piece halfway
through the process, but some things are harder like creating organic textures and interesting
brushwork.
At the end of the day, the quality of your paintings depends entirely on your creativity
and fundamental skills, not what medium you choose to work with.
You should also consider your career goals when deciding whether to focus more on traditional
painting or digital painting.
For entertainment art like film and video games, digital painting is the standard and
most clients will require you to work digitally.
Entertainment pipelines require lots of flexibility, and most assets are repurposed in different
ways which requires the character to be separated from the background and using it somewhere
else.
And even if you’re primarily a traditional artist, it’s immensely helpful to have a
digital workflow for putting finishing touches on your pieces and applying challenging feedback
in a timely manner.
The great thing about digital art is that it has a very low barrier to entry: you don’t
need a top-of-the-line computer or a huge studio space, and you don’t have to re-purchase
materials when you run out.
Oil paints can be expensive!
All you need is a decent computer, some digital painting software like Photoshop or Clip Studio
Paint, and a pressure-sensitive drawing tablet.
This video has been sponsored by Wacom, and I personally recommend their tablets myself
as I’ve been using them exclusively since I started painting digitally in 2004.
They’re also the industry standard in practically all studios and workplaces.
My personal favorite is the Cintiq tablet, as it allows you to draw directly on the screen
which I find to be much more natural and intuitive, especially if you’re used to drawing traditionally.
In this course I’ll be using the Cintiq Pro 32”, but there’s a whole variety of
Cintiq sizes including the Wacom One which is more affordable if you’re just starting
out with digital painting.
Some artists prefer screenless tablets like the Wacom Intuos, and they work just as well.
It all comes down to your personal preference and your budget.
Bear in mind that this is a tool you’ll use for many years, so it’s worth investing
in a long-term solution.
One final note about digital painting is that it’s very important to have an ergonomic
workspace, especially if you’re working on a Cintiq.
Be sure to have your chair and desk set up in such a way that you can sit comfortably
upright with your feet on the floor or a footrest, and be sure you can draw on your tablet with
your arms at a comfortable 90 degree angle without hunching forwards.
Additionally, be sure to stand up and stretch at least once every hour or so.
Throughout your day, try to do overhead stretches to flex your back.
You can also stretch out your hands with this super easy exercise.
Start by extending one of your arms, grab your fingertips with your opposite hand, and
pull your fingers back toward you.
Just until you feel a nice stretch.
Hold this for about 10 or 15 seconds, and then flip your hand the other direction, grab
the back of your hand and again pull towards you just enough to feel a stretch.
Repeat this with your other hand.
Keeping your muscles relaxed and your joints in motion is immensely important to your health
and wellbeing as an artist.
Many artists have had their careers interrupted or hindered significantly due to back and
wrist pain.
So for a long and healthy career it’s just as important to take care of your body as
it is to develop your painting skills.
Also try to keep your painting workday to an 8 hour maximum, as working for 10 or 12
hours a day can cause serious strain on your body and result in repetitive stress injuries.
Now that we’ve discussed digital painting as a medium, it’s time to dive in and get
a feel for the tools we’ll be using throughout the course.
I’ll be using Photoshop, but virtually all digital painting software has these tools,
though some are named slightly differently.
First off is the Brush Tool.
This is our primary workhorse and it will constitute 90% of our digital painting workflow.
While there are other techniques that can be used to create digital art, this course
will be approaching digital painting from a very traditional, hand-painted perspective,
so the Brush Tool is our best friend.
The Eraser Tool, as you might guess, allows you to erase anything on your current layer.
You can use any of your Brush Tool brushes with the Eraser Tool, allowing you to erase
out a variety of textures and edges.
Next up is the Eyedropper Tool.
This allows us to select colors directly from our canvas and references which can then be
painted with the Brush Tool.
This is a great time-saver and is very useful for blending.
Also, you can toggle the Eyedropper by pressing [Alt/Option] while using the Brush Tool, which
allows you to switch seamlessly between the two while painting.
I recommend binding this shortcut to your tablet pen.
The Smudge Tool allows you to “smear” the pixels on your canvas as though they were
soft charcoal or oil paint, which is immensely useful for blending and edge control.
You can also use any of your Brush Tool brushes with the Smudge Tool, but I prefer to have
a set of brushes specifically designed to work with the Smudge Tool to get the results
I want.
Working digitally generally requires high resolution images, so you’ll often find
yourself zooming in to work on certain parts of your painting.
For this you can use the Zoom Tool [Z] to zoom, the Hand Tool [H] to pan, and the Rotate
Tool [R] to rotate your canvas.
Additionally, you can hold [Spacebar] at any time to use the Hand Tool to pan, and you
can use [Ctrl/Cmnd + =] to zoom in and [Ctrl/Cmn + -] to zoom out.
I recommend binding all of these shortcuts to your tablet buttons.
In addition to moving your view of the canvas, you’ll also often want to move and adjust
the contents of your painting.
For this we have the Move Tool [V] which moves the contents of a layer and the Free Transform
tool [Ctrl/Cmnd + T] which allows you to scale, distort, and warp your layer.
You can hold Shift to switch between free transform and locked ratio transform, and
hold Ctrl/Cmnd to skew any point freely.
You can also right click the transform box for a variety of other options, including
Perspective and warp transform.
Digital painting also offers us a variety of selection tools which are useful for masking
out certain areas for painting.
The Marquee Tool [M] allows us to create square and circle selections; hold [Shift] to create
a perfect circle or square.
You can also set a specific aspect ratio for your selection in the options bar.
The Lasso Tool [L] allows us to create organic shaped selections; either freehand using the
Lasso Tool, point-by-point using the Polygonal Lasso Tool, or intelligently using the Magnetic
Lasso Tool.
To switch between the different modes of these tools, click and hold on the tool in the toolbar
until other options appear, or hold [Shift] while pressing the tool’s hotkey repeatedly.
You can also use the Move Tool and Free Transform Tool on your selections, to only affect that
specific part of the layer.
There’s a lot more tools available to us for digital painting, and we will explore
those in future lessons.
For now these tools are more than enough to get us started and create fantastic digital
artwork!
A big part of being a professional artist is being able to work quickly and efficiently,
and one of the advantages digital painting offers us is keyboard shortcuts.
These allow you to switch between tools and perform various functions without having to
dig through application menus.
Becoming familiar with your software’s hotkeys, and re-assigning the ones you use the most
to convenient places, like your tablet buttons, can save you a ton of time over the course
of a painting
Most shortcuts in Photoshop are listed next to their relevant tool or function, and you
can set up your own shortcuts by going to Edit -> Keyboard Shortcuts.
If you ever find yourself performing a function frequently and it takes you more than a second
to do it, consider making it a shortcut!
You can also assign any of your Wacom tablet buttons to perform a keyboard shortcut in
your Wacom tablet properties
Wacom tablets have a fantastic feature called Radial Menus.
In your Wacom tablet properties, you can create a radial menu with shortcuts assigned to your
most frequently used functions, and even nest multiple radial menus within each other.
You can see my radial menu here, which I use to switch between the tools and functions
I use the most with just a single button on my tablet.
Some artists prefer using their keyboard to using tablet buttons, so try both and do whatever
feels natural to you.
Learning keyboard shortcuts and creating a custom setup that works for you can take a
while, but it’s well worth it for the increase in speed and efficiency it provides.
I’ve fine-tuned my shortcuts to the point that I can paint entirely without a keyboard,
which speeds up my workflow significantly.
One other key feature of Wacom tablets is that you can set a custom pressure curve:
that is, how hard you have to press your pen onto the tablet to reach a full opacity brush
stroke.
For digital painting, I highly recommend using a softer pressure curve, as it’s more like
the pressure you use when painting traditionally.
It will also put less strain on your wrist and prevent your tablet surface from getting
scratched.
Now that we’ve familiarized ourselves with our tools, we need a canvas to actually paint
on!
Understanding the basics of digital images is important to working as a digital artist,
and many clients will have requirements and restrictions in regards to canvas dimensions.
Press [Ctrl + N] to create a new image document, in here you will see a few parameters with
the most important being width, height, and resolution.
Using the dropdown boxes to the right, you can change the measurement type Photoshop
uses to create your canvas.
It’s wise to use the type that best fits the final application of the painting.
Most clients will give you pixel dimension requirements for your canvas, so using Pixels
makes sense, but for print they may ask for Inches or centimeters, in which case switching
to one of those is more appropriate.
When making a new image, changing the resolution does not change the actual dimensions of your
canvas, it only affects how those dimensions are translated.
When changing the resolution of an existing image, the pixel data will scale with the
resolution change.
As far as the resolution setting of the canvas, it's not super important.
Most clients will want you to work at 300 dpi, but what really matters is the pixel
dimensions.
So just be sure you create a canvas large enough to paint your details comfortably without
overly taxing your computer, as larger canvases require more CPU power.
I personally recommend doing final paintings no smaller than 4000px on the longest side,
and my preferred resolution for a 16x9 image is 8000x4500.
To improve your computer’s performance with high resolution images, Photoshop allows you
to use your video card in addition to your CPU.
Go to Edit -> Preferences -> Performance to enable this feature.
It also comes with some nice side benefits such as a smoother display at uneven zoom
levels.
Lastly, your color space should be RGB 8bit.
You can go higher than 8bit, but there’s currently no practical reason to do so.
It is worth noting that if you're working for print, your final image will probably
have to be CMYK.
But it’s better to create your painting in RGB first then convert your final piece
to CMYK before sending it to be printed.
That completes our overview of the basics we’ll need to begin painting; although these
technical details aren’t the most exciting part, becoming comfortable and familiar with
your tools is essential to an efficient workflow.
The more mental energy you spend struggling to use your software, the less mental energy
you have available for making good creative decisions.
It may seem overwhelming at first, but with time and practice everything we talked about
here will become second nature.
I’d like to thank Wacom again for sponsoring this video.
As I mentioned before, I’m using the 32” Wacom Cintiq Pro, and I’ve been using their
Cintiq line throughout my entire professional career.
If you’re looking to get into digital painting, I highly recommend any of Wacom's tablets,
whether you want to dive right into a Cintiq or start off small with an Intuos, you’ll
have everything you need to make great digital art.
In the next lesson, we'll be diving deeper into brushes learning about Photoshop's brush
engine and creating our own custom brush for painting.
If you want to learn how to create your own custom brushes for digital painting, sign
up for the premium version of this course on Proko.com!
The premium course has more lessons, demos, and you can even submit your assignments for
a chance to receive personalized feedback.
You can also post your work on the Proko forums and share your journey with other artists.
Thank you for watching, and I’ll see you in the next lesson!