Portrait practice with sketch pencils

It's pretty rare that I actually ever finish a drawing I start in my spare time, but I forced myself to finish this one. A sketch of a portrait ( I think the reference is actually Angelina Jolie, but it's not quite recognisable as her ). I don't think my follows on Deviantart would be that bothered about seeing sketches ( which is a shame because I love to sketch! ) so I thought I would at least give it a blog post, especially seen as I took a few photos along the way. I will also post up the tools I used for this one at the bottom of this post :)

At first I started with the basic consutrction and then began blocking in the features, however straight away I could tell I had made some mistakes and made the eyes too big and the face a little wide ( especially compared to the reference ) but I plowed through anyway, even though I really should have spent more time to correct them (I know, shame on me).

So this is what she was looking like at this point, looks really strange without ears, but the hair will completely cover them anyway. It's also worth noting that I adjusted the levels in Photoshop a bit on this photo just to make it a little more visible seen as the construction lines were barely visible in person. I thought she looked a little odd at this point but I decided to take the piece further anyway.

At this point I was actually pretty pleased with myself. It's by no means 'great art' but I struggle with drawing faces a lot, and considering I thought it looked so wrong in the early stages, I wasn't expecting it to improve with more detail, but in my opinion it did! The main thing I have left to do at this point is the hair, some people love drawing hair, not me.. I still haven't got the technique nailed down yet. I don't mind painting hair in Photoshop depending on the hair style, but I certainly need a lot more practice. But sketching hair is another ball game altogether. I like to think I am much better at sketching things compared to painting them, but when I use sketch pencils to draw hair, it usually looks scruffy and wiry, kind of like a 6 year old has done that part of the illustration. So I tried to take a little more time on this one, starting by blocking the hair into larger sections before using the light and dark areas to define it a little more..

So there you have it, the finished product, it started out as a mess but it actually turned out pretty good for my skill level, probably one of the best jobs I have done when it comes to sketching hair, plus this face is fairly big, I usually draw faces about 1 inch by 1 inch, super tiny where I can't get much detail in and probably don't get as much out of it either. So you could argue parts of this were out of my comfort zone. Still a long way to go yet though and there are noticeable mistakes.

Here is a link to the photo reference of Angelina Jolie that I used in case any one wants to give it a go - http://images.wookmark.com/511337_wookmark.jpg
The pencil I used for this one was a Pantel mechanical pencil 0.3mm (because I am too lazy to sharpen a pencil..) with a H lead in. Then just a Staedtler eraser and of course the sketchbook itself which is a Daler and Rowney Jumbo Sketchbook (95gsm)
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Disneys Inside Out 'Anger' digital painting time lapse

Thew new Disney film Inside Out comes out in a couple of days here in the UK and I have noticed recently a fair bit of art work dedicated to the film, so I decided to my own fan art of the character Anger and use it as a study i.e improve my general illustration, digital painting, and choice of colour skills etc..

I actually started off thinking this Anger character looks fairly basic and easy to draw so I could do a how to draw Anger from Disneys Inside Out movie video, they seem to be popular on Youtube, but I realised I am too slow to get him looking decent and way he is supposed to look so decided I would just make a time lapse painting. That way it doesn't really matter how long it takes as I can just speed up the video. The only down side is I don't give instructions, meaning it is not so much a tutorial like I initially wanted. When I improve my illustration skill I would definitely like to make more tutorials on 'How to draw' characters.

Anyway.. I couldn't decide whether to stick a voice over on the video or whether to just use a song from the Youtube library, I was feeling lazy so I went with the Youtube library :). The video is below so I hope you enjoy it, also what do you think to the new thumbnail on the video? My hand drawing the Anger character and half of it being a sketch.. figured I would try something new like that and I really like it!

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How to draw a dragon in Photoshop tips and paint over

Hi everyone, haven't posted here for a little while, I have made 2-3 videos since I last posted so I thought.. maybe it's time to catch up, starting with my dragon painting video.

The reason for me making this video was that a fan sent me a message on my facebook page, showing me their illustration of a dragon they had drawn / painting from a side profile after watching my 'drawing a dragon from a side profile' video ( which I will post further down ). They asked me for some tips and advice on how to make the dragon look less flat and cartoony and more 3d and realistic. I am by no means an expert at drawing dragons but I tried my best to give some tips, I was also due another Youtube video so decided I would do a paint over. Meaning I took the original dragon drawing sent to me, and painted over the top of it showing how to make the dragon look more 3d and realistic. For this I used Adobe Photoshop CS6 and my graphics tablet, a Wacom Cintiq 13hd, that being said, the program and tablet you use aren't that important, you could probably pick up some tips even if you are working digital. Bare in mine this dragon paint over video is in real time so get comfy for the next half an hour :)

Hopefully this video was not too boring, some people love long real time video tutorials like this when it comes to drawing, others prefer quick 2 min video tutorials, it can be difficult to please everyone :P See the before and after picture below.

Here is one of my older painting a dragon video in Photoshop, this one was a little random and I was going for an armoured dragon, maybe it's time I learn how to draw a dragon head from more then just the side profile ;)

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Adobe Photoshop Cs6 shortcuts for beginners and digital artists

I have tried to keep this to be a fairly short video aimed at beginners, maybe someone who has just purchased a graphics tablet along with Adobe Photoshop, in the case Photoshop CS6 although I think most of the shortcuts should be the same. I have tried to make this video from a digital painters point of view but I am sure it will be helpful to any form of digital artist, photo editor or just anyone who needs to use a shortcut in Photoshop. So here the video is below, as usual please do subscribe and like my Facebook page to show your support. I have also listed the Photoshop shortcuts below the video :) 

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Digital painting keyboard shortcuts - Photoshop CS6
B - Brush
E - Eraser
I - Eye dropper
L - Lasso
Z - Zoom
V - Move
H - Hand
P - Pen
O - dodge, burn, sponge.
X - Switch foreground and background colors
G - Gradient
R - Rotation
F - full screen mode
T - Text

Hold Shift with shortcut to cycle
 [ ] - Brush size
1234567890 - Brush opacity

 Ctrl + D - Deselect
Ctrl + Alt + Z - Undo
Ctrl + Shift + Z - Forward
Shift + Tab - Hide panels
Ctrl + Backspace - fill background colour
Alt + Backspace - fill foreground colour

Clean line art, Lazy Nezumi, Photoshop line art and Manga studio inking, which is best?

Something I know a lot of people wonder when it comes to digital painting / working on a graphics tablet ( including myself ) is how to get clean line art, by that I mean smooth lines that are not all over the place. If you have used a graphics tablet before you will probably know, slow careful line work usually looks very shaky due to graphics tablets being so sensitive. So the general advice here is long fast stroke to get a smooth line, and to be fair, it does work!

That being said I work in Photoshop CS6 and I have to say my line work and inking is absolutely terrible. I had heard of a program called Lazy Nezumi which works with Photoshop to smooth your lines, it has many presets with the option to adjust the settings. I will admit I haven't played around with the settings yet but I made a quick video with my initial thoughts and the results of the line art too. I think the program works but aside from the string pull option it didn't do as much as I was hoping - see the video below -

After making this video I decided to use the same image to make a comparison between Photoshop and Manga studio for line art. Photoshop CS6 VS Manga Studio 5 to be exact, and I think the results are pretty impressive, I will definitely be using Manga studio over Photoshop for inking and clean line art from now on. In Manga studio I used the G pen for inking, works really well with a pressure sensitive tablet and is great for varying your line weight too. I have also heard that in comparison with Photoshop, Paint tool SAI and Corel Painter are pretty good, I haven't tested that yet though.
Anyway.. I have posted a video comparison of Manga studio Vs Photoshop for line art so be sure to check it out and let me know what you think to the results :)

Thanks for watching guys, be sure to subscribe. and don't forget to like my facebook page too! :)
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How do I rotate my canvas in Photoshop CS6 and other versions tutorial + How to flip my canvas

A few people have recently asked me how to rotate the canvas in photoshop. I use Photoshop but the process should be the same in all versions. I also made this video for the 'help I accidentally rotated the canvas in photoshop and can't get it back!' people, and that was me when I first started using Photoshop :P so I thought a super quick video tutorial only a minute long will help people. Although I know there are a lot of videos out there like that already so I am not entirely sure if mine will get viewed or not haha.

anyway I show you a few quick tips in the video and it's only a minute long so I hope you guys like it, alternatively if you have been linked to this page / blog post and just literally want to know the hotkey / keyboard for rotating the canvas in Photoshop, then just press the 'R' key :)
Whilst you have the rotation tool selected you can also press a 'reset view' button along the top toolbar which will straighten your page back up. :)

http://youtu.be/ADCxjDQLCro

Whilst I am posting this quick video on my blog I may as well post one of my other quick tutorial that is related to rotating the canvas, and that is, flipping the canvas in Photoshop! Or even better then that I actually show you how to create a shortcut to flip your canvas in Photoshop whether its horizontally or vertically, that way you only need to press one key / short cut on your keyboard and your canvas will flip, simple :)

Armoured dragon digital painting in Photoshop plus video process

I started a random piece a while back working in gray scale in Photoshop a while back, started as a bit of a doodle of a dragons head from the side view, I ended up spending quite a bit of time on the dragon and decided to add armour too. There will be a lot wrong with this painting especially how the lighting reflects off the metal and such but I still thought it was a pretty cool design so carried on anyways :P
I painting this dragon head over the period of about 5 hours in Photoshop CS6 using a Wacom Cintiq 13 HD. I want to start some tutorials when it comes to drawing dragons but I have very little experience with them to be giving other people tips, plus I am so slow at working that I think it would just bore people too much, we will see, maybe in the future..
Speaking of video tutorials, I have recorded the full process of this painting and sped it up to be a digital art time lapse video.
You can see the image and the video below :) Thanks for watching guys, be sure to subscribe.
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