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! :)
https://www.facebook.com/learningasidraw

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.
and don't forget to like my facebook page too! :)

https://www.facebook.com/learningasidraw

Copic sketch markers and working traditionally

Hey everyone,
I purchased some copic sketch markers, the cool gray colours, I have been doodling with them and then I have sketches 2 pin up girl pieces, I am not gonna lie, I am finding them extremely difficult to use! I think I need to invest in some better paper for copics, I am using the copic marker pad at the moment but the pages are super thin and don't seem to be too good for blending :).

Anyway here are the two images below and then below that is a link to a time lapse video of my copic marker sketch (My first traditional sketch video!)
Thanks for watching guys, be sure to subscribe.
and don't forget to like my facebook page too! :)
https://www.facebook.com/learningasidraw

My armour studies and building a visual library

The idea of these  pieces is to draw armor using some reference and then take the reference away and redrawing the armour to see how much you can remember, this is great for building your visual library when it comes to drawing armour, something I struggle a lot with and still have a long long way to go with! This means that you should eventually be able to draw some bad ass armour off the top of your head with no reference :P

I got this idea from Alex Negrea, he is currently my favourite digital artist, his skills are incredible and he is very dedicated to his art, I definitely recommend checking out his work! :)

So these drawings are a little bit.. rough, because the idea is not to spend too much time making it neat and rendering it well, it's to build your visual library, anyway I have done a few pages of these which I will post below. I also recorded a video for one page of them just so you can see the process, thanks for watching :)

digital painting realistic skin for beginners, tutorial video

I decided it was about time I get another video made as it has been a little while. People have been requesting more tutorials and my subscribers are very gradually increasing which always makes me feel good to know people can learn even from me :)

So anyway.. I decided digitally painting realistic skin could be a really good video to make. I am by no means a master of it myself but I like to think I have at least learnt enough to teach a beginner or provide them with some tips. When I first started digitally painting I was struggling with this the most so I thought my video may be able to help someone out in the same situation I was in.

In the video I show you how to make the skin more realistic by adding colour to shade the skin and using imperfections to really bring the realistic skin to life. When I first started digitally painting I used to just shade everything with black, which I show in the video, looks absolutely terrible, so if nothing else, that is a great point to take away from this. I have tried to keep this video tutorial down so it's not too long but hopefully you learn something from it.

As always please do subscribe and share the video to see more content - Youtube Channel
And please show your support by liking my facebook page - Facebook page
 Thanks! :)

Realistic pikachu

Hello everyone.
I haven't been updating my blog recently because I have not had that much new stuff to upload due to uni work :( That being said I do have some things and I am going to work harder to get them done now and keep posting more on my blog.

You may have already seen my realistic bulbasaur image and video that I painting, someone commented on the video requesting I did pikachu, it started off mopre as a doodle then anything but it turned out okay :) So here is the Youtube video of me painting a realistic pikachu and the finished image below. let me know what you think :).
As always please do subscribe to my Youtube channel for more videos and be sure to like my Facebook page to show your support. thanks!