[GLITCH]

hi, i have been doing stuff in photoshop for a while now but i have never really improuved...im trying hard, everyone here is really good ... so much better than me, so please some comments would be great, especaily any advice anyone can give me on improuving, thanks



this is a drawing of a elf type girl i drew in flash and coloured in photoshop:



-GLITCH

[IDrawGirls]

Pretty good. You avoid a lot of beginner's mistakes.
For example the colors are not too saturated
... and the stars stand out nicely ...
and the clouds have a soft feel to them.

However you should probably study with the help of reference images.
The more you know about an object the better you should be at painting it.
Can you copy from a photo accurately?

Avoid using dodge and burn as well as black and white for highlights and shadows.
When you draw something think about the 3d shapes that make it up and think about how they are lit.
The landscape looks too flat.
You could put some blueish parts there to show the structure of the ground and to relate the color of the ground and the sky.

The structure of the head doesn't really show because of the way you colored it.
You rely on lines too much.
I'd either make a pure linedrawing or make the colored piece work without lines.
If you don't do it that way already ... consider keeping lineart and colors in separate layers.

Also think about sizing the images down a little and compressing them more.

[mdwsr]

Looks good to me, I am working on a similar project and would like to follow this thread. The only critique I can make is maybe have a smoother transition on the gradient.

[Greensun]

if you want to make your stars look a bit more realistic, try adding a copy of the star layer, gaussian blur it with 1 px or so, increase it's contrast a bit, and alter the color to slightly blue.. then figure some good layer effect out for it, to make the black background disappear.

about the portrait... try to use bigger contrasts when adding lighting/shades.. it really adds up to the depth

p.s. in case you wanted to try something out, here is a very nice nebula tutorial, quite easy to use.
http://images.deviantart.com/i/2004/05/d/f/Nebula_Tutorial.jpg
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Rabies up your bunghole

[GLITCH]

thanks for all your help, that tutorial doesn't work, but i had one similar but i when i used the gausien blur the stars dominated the picture a little to much. im prety bad at drawing people and very bad at shading them lol, next time ill try and keep line art seperate...but im not sure how to paint a good outline of the person then.

i did not use any dodging and burning tho...i used a painbrush that is pressue senestive then i used a gaussien blur to make it fit in a little better
thanks this should help me next time i draw a person which i hope is soon

-GLITCH

[Greensun]

yeah, I noticed the tutorial went down... worked fine a week ago though, but anyway.
try to DO use the burn/dodge tool.. if you just select a darker color, you have the risk of colors not completely matching eachother.. burning and dodging avoids that problem.

after you used gaussian on a second star layer, be sure to burn some of it, so that the perspective of both the image, and the stars is not lost in the process.
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Rabies up your bunghole

[GLITCH]

oh do use dodging and burning? when i burn it always seem to look really odd, thats why i never use it

[AndyT]

It sounds as if Greensun suggested that you should use dodge and burn instead of learning color theory!?
Yeah good idea. Go down that route. It would be a bad idea to waste any time.

There are times for dodge and burn. But there will automatically be a certain look to your images.
And even then you have to lay down some colors first.
You need to know where they are supposed to be saturated most.

I'd read the tutorials by FredFlickStone
http://www.conceptart.org/forums/showthread.php?t=17837
http://www.conceptart.org/forums/showthread.php?t=9504
http://www.conceptart.org/forums/showthread.php?t=9505

There's also something by Prometheus|ANJ
http://www.conceptart.org/forums/showthread.php?t=15745
The warm/cool example shows what you want and what dodge/burn generally gives you.
With things like that in mind I'd try to find a working palette.

That said: I would use dodge and burn if it fits in.
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http://www.conceptworld.org

[Greensun]