Darkmatters' 1st speedpaint attempt

http://i76.photobucket.com/albums/j8...erpaintWeb.jpg
Ok, finally got myself a tablet 2 days ago and been pretty much doodling with it constantly ever since.

It's my 1st time using a tablet, but keep in mind I have done some digital coloring/painting before using a mouse, which I found extremely frustrating, and I've been drawing all my life (all 49 years of it) and painting for a few years using traditional media as well as working with colored pencils and cray-pas for like 10 years now.

What you see above is the result - as of now. Below I'll post pics of it at various stages of creation in order to document my process and possibly help anyone who might want to mess with digitla painting.

Bear in mind, I am not well versed at how to create digital art AT_ALL!! I'm pretty much just muddling around trying to find my way, and it's kind of funny that this thread is called 1st speed paint attempt, because it's taken me 2 full days' work so far and is still ongoing! :lol:

But I am finding techniques that are starting to work, and after using them enough I expect to be able to work much faster and start to get decent results right off the bat rather than having to struggle and fight to make things look good like I did here.

Ok, with minimal commentary I'll just pop the rest of the images in below. Any questions or comments, fire away! (And no, this is not Joey Belgier - it's a character named Fafhrd that I've painted several times before)



http://i76.photobucket.com/albums/j8...ststateWeb.jpg
I won't even show my actual 1st doodles - they were just squiggly lines and circles that came out looking more like weird drunken spirals with corners. It was really hard at first to get used to drawing on the tablet while looking at the monitor, but now it's second nature. Heh, and incidentally, I decided my 9x12 tablet is a bit too big - I end up having to lift my hand and draw using whole arm movements rather than just movements of the fingers and wrist, so I re-mapped the surface area to about 6 x 9. Doh! If I only knew that going in! Could've bought a smaller and less expensive version!

But anyway, here is the 1st stage. I'm working on 3 separate layers - one has the pencil drawing, one is just an overall beige layer to tint the page and give me a nice ground to work from, then there's a red layer where I just roughly blocked in the entire figure to approximate a light flesh base color. At this point I had my layers set to transparency which I now think was a mistake, but I managed to make it work for a while.



http://i76.photobucket.com/albums/j8...ndstageWeb.jpg
Added another layer for purple, which is my shadow color. I've always like to paint using a limited palette, only a few colors plus a few more added in later to punch things up. Basically I choose a light flesh base, a mid-tone flesh color, and then a shadow color. The shadow color is for shadows on everything, not just flesh. I also use the flesh highlight color (which I haven't added yet) as an overall highlight color, because the same light is causing the highlights on everything. Same is true for shadows - whatever is the overriding color of the environment (blue or purple sky light if it's outdoors, wall color if it's indoors, could be green leaf color if it's in the woods etc) tints all the shadows.

Notice in my initial pencil drawing I added outlines indicating where I wanted shadow areas.


http://i76.photobucket.com/albums/j8...agecopyWeb.jpg
Here I first decreased the transparency of the layers because it was looking really faint. I also began picking out highlights in the red layer . Heh, forgot to use the tablet for this and defaulted to using a mouse the way I"m used to working. That's why it sucks so bad.


http://i76.photobucket.com/albums/j8...-faded_Web.jpg
Upped the transparency a bit again and added a layer for white, mainly just to separate the figure in places from the background. I know it's a mistake to do a figure like this without also drawing in the background at the same time, but I was in a hurry and all excited about the new tablet, so screw it!! :lol:

http://i76.photobucket.com/albums/j8...agecopyWeb.jpg
Started using the eraser to scribble out highlights in the purple shadow layer. Also copied the pencil drawing to a Multiply layer that I moved to the top so it wouldn't get obscured.


http://i76.photobucket.com/albums/j8...agecopyWeb.jpg
More of the same here, plus doing the same to the red layer to let the beige base color show through. Also did a little fine-line scribbling on the white layer for sharper highlighting to bring out roundness of form in places. This is not good speedpaint technique - all the fiddly fineline work takes too long!



http://i76.photobucket.com/albums/j8...ound001Web.jpg
Decided it was time to start on a background. Beginning to get disgusted with the pale watercolor look of it all.



http://i76.photobucket.com/albums/j8...erpaintWeb.jpg
Darkened it all up using Levels, and filled in background colors more. Oh, I also realized it was fruitless to keep working on different layers, and was causing a lot of problems and making things really complicated, so I flattened it all and began to just paint right onto the background layer (which is now the only layer). I saved it first though with all the layers intact in case this crazy experiment was a disaster. Luckily it turned out to be the right thing to do. In fact I saved a version at every stage you see here - one in Photoshop format so if I screw things up I can always go back to the last good version and start working again from there, and a duplicate jpeg of each for posting on the web.

Oh, at this point I also was looking at a lot of speedpaint demos and getting frustrated because they were showing the process without explaining how they worked. Decided Cellar fcp is a speedpaint god and one of my new favorite artists. Look him up - most images NSFW.

This stage took the longest of them all. I won't even mention how long I spent pointlessly doodling around on the background without making it look at all like a landscape. I don't have much experience at doing landscapes, but if you can do the human figure you have the skills to do anything, and so I just kept at it for hours and hours. Eventually, little by little, mostly by a series of sheer accidents that I noticed and exploited, it started to come together.


http://i76.photobucket.com/albums/j8...erpaintWeb.jpg
Which brings us up to date. This is the 1st image from the top of the thread re-copied here to put it into chronological order. The figure was looking too bright so I painted transparent layers of greys and browns over it everywhere and brought all the colors down (maybe a little too much - I need to go in and punch them up a bit now).

Looking good, especially for your first try. I prefer the colors a couple steps back though... that "watercolor" look. I like the bright colors and contrast. The final result honestly looks a little muddy and dull compared to the previous versions, but still good. Keep it up!

Oh I agree, though the earlier version looks kind of neon or fluorescent to me. Yeah, it's dulled down pretty bad now, but I'll fix that. I do tend to like muted colors, but yeah, this is too muddy right now. Think of it as a stage it's passing through.

And thank you!

http://static.quickmeme.com/media/social/qm.gif

I like it! Keep it up! but I want nipples!!!

Thanks Mancon.

Haha - I saw what you originally wrote! Male nipples are something I've always struggled with - and ironically I just asked what their purpose is on Dianeva's Information Generator thread the other day. If you do them a little bit wrong they can feminize an otherwise male figure, or make it look dirty. I the past I always just ignored the fact that they exist, but I should begin to deal with them. I usually also ignore belly buttons - perhaps because (true story) in my college art course the female model we had didn't have one. I wonder if everyone from that class was left scarred and still can't draw belly buttons? :lol:

Omnis - I can't see whatever meme you posted.

Here are my earlier 2 paintings of Fafhrd - the same character I'm doing here:

http://www.darkstrider.net/images/faftorso.jpg

http://www.darkstrider.net/images/fafhrd.jpg

No nips. I see I did do belly button on both though. Alright, this time I promise - just for you Mancon, I'll paint some man-nips. Gotta push beyond your comfort zone if you wanna improve, right?

This is very good. Especially for a first time. Although I do recommend that you look at some anatomy books and work on that. All in all it's very good.

http://memegenerator.net/cache/insta...6/11414329.jpg

http://memegenerator.net/cache/insta...6/11414424.jpg

Wow ok, I think I liked it better when I couldn't see it!! :roll:

2 new versions:
http://i76.photobucket.com/albums/j8...rpaintcopy.jpg

http://i76.photobucket.com/albums/j8...rpaintcopy.jpg
Just working on the background in these. And damn!! When I make a jpeg it really washes all the color intensity out!! In photoshop these look so much crisper! :shock:

What, the ultimate honor is to be memed!

Or copied, or something. Idk.

Awesome. Quick question though, why not a cute redhead?

Here' another take on Faf:
http://i76.photobucket.com/albums/j8...ndPortcopy.jpg

I'm getting so tired of everything I do looking like crap!!! I can draw - but when I bring color into the equation I get lost - plus I don't know how to work with light over dark - something I've never really been able to do in pencil before. But I have confident that after I battle my way up this impossible hill I'll suddenly be good or something. Anyway, this one shows some promise, even though it started from a pretty f'ed up original drawing.

Ok, been working on this one a bit more, and decided to try making it into a cover. That's why I originally left so much space at the bottom and the upper right corner. If you're doing a cover illustration you need to plan for these things. Here's where It's at now:

http://i76.photobucket.com/albums/j8...FafhrdDark.jpg

I'm not totally happy with it - I consider it a first attempt and I'd make a few changes before finalizing the cover template - mainly I'd push the whole title down closer to the bottom. Also I just noticed that transparent rectangle I added behind the title to make it pop out more looks a lot like he's wearing some kind of shoulderless dress.. :panic:

Back to work on this one:
http://i76.photobucket.com/albums/j8...capeWeb001.jpg

I looked at some real trees outside, and they're not brown - they're blue-grey, ranging from almost white to almost black, many with a slight hint of brown in them. And also very surprised at the diversity of dirt colors from a quick image search. Everything from light grey (almost white) or tan to black, red, orange, blue--- hell dirt can be any color!!

Anyway, I'm starting to get the feel for working with the tablet and stylus, and beginning to get along better with color, though still my color choices are usually wrong the first 3, 4, 5 - maybe 8 times. Using the wrong color makes everything else irrelevant. But I'm starting to be able to eventually find it, and I guess that's a good start.

Of course both of these images were difficult to begin with because they weren't good drawings. For the speedpaint I was too impatient and just did a loose doodle and started painting, and the face one was something I started the same way and colored with Cray-Pas on very textured paper, so now I can't duplicate that texture using the tablet of course, unless I want to mess around with the clone stamp tool everywhere.

Getting the figure cleaned up a bit
http://i76.photobucket.com/albums/j8...aintNew001.jpg

This is becoming an orange/blue composition, with some green for spice. I like it.

http://i76.photobucket.com/albums/j8...ntFacecopy.jpg

Damn I hate those roots now!! Spent the better part of 2 days on them, and now they look like they belong in a Doctor Seuss cartoon. It's so hard drawing the small fiddly details - but with enough practice I'll develop the skill.

This is the second face - the 1st one looked like an undertaker.

Ya know one thing I hate about this? The upper spine and neck are in perfect alignment, making the head face perfectly forward without any angle or turn to it.

Like one of these:
http://www.illuminara.com/wp-content...onent_0001.jpg
(No, I didn't draw that, found it online)

Plus his face has no expression - no tension at all. He looks like he just woke up and has a headache or something.

And I know it's because the day I first got the tablet I was impatient and just scribbled out a super-quick figure sketch so I could get started - no thumbnails to determine a decent pose or anything. But damn, it's a momentary lapse pf patience that's haunting me now.

I still plan to finish this just as a practice piece and to get loads of experience. Just sharing some frustrigation.

This is great. I love seeing how the picture is progressing. I look forward to seeing more.

(I'm sorry that you are feeling frustrated at certain things about it. I know from my own artwork how that is. I know the artist sees way more "flaws" than anyone else.)

Thank you! :cheers:

http://i76.photobucket.com/albums/j8...rpaintFace.jpg

Doing some detailing, including Mancon's requested nips and a belly button. This was my 3rd attempt at the abs - I finally broke down and looked up some photoref on the internet.

http://i76.photobucket.com/albums/j8...vlet001Web.jpg

Worked the face and midsection some more, mainly using the Liquify filter - an amazing tool. I used it to stretch the face into a smile and to stretch the abs up to reach the bottom of the pecs - had too much extra space there. Now it's starting to look like Fafhrd to me, a big brawny but happy-go-lucky barbarian. This is when he's a strapping youth - I look forward to also doing an older Faf with more bulk and facial creases. Should be fun!

I want to post a dream here, because it relates directly to this painting. It wasn't from last night, but from the night before.

I dreamed that I was posting on the message board, and I didn't see what I was posting, but I saw that I was using a flesh-colored font exactly the same orangey color as what I'm using for Faf's skin here.

And somehow I got the feeling that this was very powerful - that when I made a post in this flesh font it caused several other posts by other people, as if they're not real people but sort of puppet-people controlled by me through these posts.

This idea actually ties in strongly with a theme for my story Passing Strange (which I'm writing simultaneous to doing this painting, and in fact the painting is a practice piece before I start doing illustrations for the story). There's a line someone is going to say very soon: "We all contain multitudes". This image of controlling puppet-people by "writing in flesh" is almost an illustration of that idea.

Amazing the way the mind works - so much information compressed into a single seemingly simple dream image with a thought attached.