Digital painting - how to start.

I decided to make a few tutorials about digital art. :) I'll try to submit one every week on this blog. I hope you'll like them and find them useful. I'll start with the very basics, so even if you've never tried, you might as well start now. :)

Digital painting is the art of creating paintings by digital means. To start, you'll need:

-a computer (desktop or laptop, whatever),

-graphics software (I'll be focusing mostly on Paint Tool SAI),

-graphics tablet (I know that some people do just as well with just a mouse, but still, tablets give more freedom and are easier to work with, I'll explain this further later).

So we have everything ready. Now, run the program, click 'File'->'New' (a window should open, like on pic. 1), here we'll set the canvas size. You can choose it by yourself, but basically, I don't recommend small images, because it would be much harder to work on fine details, though if the image is too large, it can slow down your software. I often work with images around 4000x5000.

A canvas should appear; it's actually a good idea to save the file already by the way. To save, click File->Save or just press Ctrl+S (a window should appear, pic. 2). Type the name in the Name: field, and choose the file format from the Type: list. You should choose Photoshop PSD or SAI while you work on the painting, because these formats support layers so they won't merge. I choose Photoshop PSD, because it's more universal and allows to open the file in other editors. After finishing the work, save the file as PNG or JPG. There are also other formats, but I won't talk about them right now. ;) I use PNG almost every time.

The canvas is now saved, so we can start working on the painting itself. Let's start with trying to imagine what we want to paint. Then, fill the first layer with the color roughly the same as the background should be. To do this, choose the bucket tool, select the color and fill the layer. Now, create a second layer (red arrow on pic. 3) and start painting.

At this point we should check if the tablet is configured properly. Choose the first tool: Pen. Set the Size to 100, Min Size: 0%, Density: 100 (pic. 4) and draw a line (don't use full force while dragging the pen across the tablet). The line should be thinner around the ends than in the middle. If the whole line has the exact same thickness, it probably means that your tablet drivers aren't installed properly (refer to your tablet manual). You can draw a line with a mouse for comparison - it should have the same thickness among the whole lenght, UNLIKE what the one drawn with tablet should be.

I said "start painting", but how? There's no perfect method; I think it's the best to find your own by trying and practicing. In future tutorials I'll show a few of the techniques I use - maybe they'll inspire you and help you start. :) It's worth mentioning that at this point, you should check out the variety of tools (and their settings) SAI has to offer: it'll allow you to play with the program and who knows, maybe something good will came out of this? 

If you created something, feel free to show it in the comments here or on my fanpage! :)

It's pretty long, I wonder if anybody has made it to the end? ;) I promise that future tutorials will have shorter text; the beginnings are always the hardest, but without them, we wouldn't be able to do anything. Anyways, good luck with painting! :)

PL: http://nimfpa.blogspot.com/2015/03/malarstwo-cyfrowe-digital-painting-jak.html

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