Tutorials

Tips for Printing Digital Paintings at Home

Posted on December 10, 2008 by Dani

You work hours and hours on a digital painting. You render in tons of details, play with the values, and fuss with color until it is just right. You finally get it about perfect. And then you go to print it…

If, for you, this story ends in disaster this article is for you.

Let me start by saying that I am not an expert on this subject. Printing can get complicated and messy, and terms like ICC profiles, color spaces, and monitor calibration can really make your head spin. For the most part, I leave these things for the professional printing arena. In my own work and in this article, I try to keep things simple – creating good quality prints to display, promote, or sell without them looking stupid.

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Posted in Tips & Tricks, Tutorials | 11 Comments

Picking Colors in Photoshop

Posted on November 19, 2008 by Dani

Color

When you paint digitally, one of the most intimidating tasks can be choosing colors. On a traditional palette, you might have 6-12 tubes of paint to work with, but on the computer there are millions of colors available. How do you work with options like that?

Here is how I have tackled this problem.

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Posted in Tips & Tricks, Tutorials | Tagged Adobe Photoshop | 14 Comments

How to Make a Textured T-Shirt Graphic

Posted on October 10, 2008 by Dani

Bat

In my latest experiment, I recently opened up an account on a site called Zazzle, which allows you to order custom products featuring your own artwork. So far, I’ve been having a lot of fun experimenting with creating some simple, graphic characters for some t-shirts. Here is a little behind-the-scenes look into the making of this cute bat character.

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Posted in Tutorials | Tagged Adobe Photoshop, Tutorials | 6 Comments

Five Ways to Create Textures Completely in Photoshop

Posted on December 17, 2007 by Dani

Digitaltexture06

I like creating new textures, and I’ve written about how to use them in digital paintings before. Most of the time, making textures involves getting out some scrap mat board or bits of paper, and just going to town with some acrylic paint, gesso, and modeling paste.

I think of it as play time, because anything goes. You can spray, drip, or even fingerpaint. You’re not worried about creating anything concrete or beautiful; you’re just setting out to find what kinds of things you can do with your tools and to stretch your limits a bit.

This can be a really useful exercise for traditional painters, because 1) you can use whatever textures and effects you create for future paintings, and 2) you learn a lot about the materials you are working with.

Well, I think digital painters need a little play time too.

So, here are five exercises I’ve come up with to help inspire you to play with your digital paint. And the best part is you don’t have to worry about cleaning up the mess afterwards.

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Posted in Tutorials | Tagged Adobe Photoshop | 3 Comments

How to Draw Children

Posted on November 14, 2007 by Dani

Kids

At first, drawing children doesn’t seem like that much of a challenge. I mean, you take so many figure drawing courses in art school and you start to think you can draw pretty good. And if you’re good at drawing adults, drawing kids should be pretty easy, right? Well, after you’ve tried dozens and dozens of times, and all you come up with are a bunch of freaky midget creatures, you start to realize how wrong you were.

I realized this shortly after I graduated from school and decided to go into children’s publishing. My first assignments were, I admit, less than stellar. But I’ve learned a few things along the way, so I thought I would share some tips with you all.

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Posted in Tutorials | Tagged Tutorials | 18 Comments

Make Your Own Sketchbook

Posted on September 19, 2007 by Dani

Sketchbooks

Have you ever had trouble finding just the right sketchbook? Maybe you can’t find the right kind of paper, or they are just too darn expensive. Well, it’s probably easier than you think to make one of your own, and everything you need might already be lying around your house.

Why Make Your Own Sketchbooks?

Use your favorite paper. Why settle for the same old white paper when you can use toned, textured, heavy weight, watercolor, or lined paper instead? Or, this is a great way to get rid of all those half-used sketchpads you know you’ve got tucked away somewhere.
It’s cheap. Since most of your materials consist mostly of scraps, paper, and glue, this project is pretty easy on the wallet.
Style points. No more boring black sketchbooks! Choosing the colors and patterns to use for your sketchbook is half the fun. I once made a sketchbook that was entirely pink, just for the heck of it.

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