Doing the Wacom thing

PRACTICE!!!
But yeah as for the sketchy problem, I suffere a bit from that as well. There are things like putting a bit of paper down between the tablet and pen so the surface isnt so smooth; or do what i do and sketchbook n scan. However its mostly about confidence with being a able to put down a line and know that its "correct" and that is something that only patience and practice can provide.
Simple excercise are the way to go for starters, training your eye to see something and put it down on paper. Doesnt matter what its like, its about repetition and training.
Hope that helped abit

Hey MoonUnit! good to hear you are getting the tablet into order - it really is a necessity for drawing/painting into the computer direct if you want to get anything other than compromised results.

I have included a sample of a recent advertising visualisation to show what sort of results I am getting with my current setup.

[img]icon_paperclip.gif[/img] Download Attachment: [url="http://www.sumea.com.au/forum/attached/johnn/20066173019_cleanUp.jpg"]cleanUp.jpg[/url]
58.09 KB

I'm only using photoshop at the moment but I'm sure painter has equivalent paintbrush features.

okay photoshop setup first...

1)I used a small brush (2-5px in size), hardness 100%, spacing 25% (in 'brush tip shape' section.

2)'Shape Dynamics' checked and size jitter set to pen pressure, minimum size 1%.

3)'Other Dynamics' checked and opacity jitter set to pen pressure.

4)from memory I have opacity and flow set to full... if they weren't, they were probably both set at about 60%-70% (a setting I use alot when painting).

tablet setting next... I would recommend that these settings are something that you experiment with, as an appropriate setup will depend on how you draw, and the results that you want to get. It wouldn't be unreasonable to to expect to change these settings as you progress through an individual piece of work to suit the effect you are trying to achive either, so what may be the 'correct' settings for you one moment could be wrong the next.

my settings most of the time: default, except for 'feel detail' in the pen settings. Here I got the sensitivity one notch to the firm end. This allows me little more lee-way with sensitive line strokes. If you are a little heavy handed or want finer line work this setting may be the first stop for you with experimenting.

lastly technique: do whatever works for ya! ...I am tending to do multiple strokes as I line up the line/curve/stroke I want. These strokes either don't come out or are really faint, then as I get the line I want I smoothly increase the pen pressure often building the darkness and strength of the line with 2+ strokes over it. I also have a hot key set on my tablet to reverse through the history allowing me to remove lines quickly giving me the opportunity to have a fresh go at a line that would have otherwise looked overworked. Lastly my sample was about generation 4 of the initial sketch. So I initially did a rough sketch turned its opacity down, made a new layer then drawing again using the old one as a tracer image, making refinments to the overall composition and details/linework as I went... then repeated the process till I had found a balance between running out of time and being satisfied with with the final drawing.

and for the eye-monitor coordination - make sure you tablet is always parallel to the monitor. Get into a good sitting position for drawing (can be hard to do at a desk designed for typing at) and practice practice practice.

...hoped that helped

Thanks heaps guys, i didnt expect such a detailed response so fast! Ive been too busy to visit these forums in a while, ive forgotten how usefull they can be :)

makk: Dont worry, ive no illusion that the most important thing here is to just keep doing it :) Putting down paper might be a good idea especially since my plastic sheet has an annoying deformity in it from when i think i dragged the pen too hard once. The real pain is youd think something like that would be replacable without changing the entire unit but its not attatched that way.

John: dont worry, im photoshopping aswell. Thanks for the settings ill have to play around with that (oh note though, ive only got a graphite so no fun wacom button features :( ). I actually noticed when drawing that image that i needed to change the sensitivity for the cranium of the head (which im still not really satisfied with) then the rest. I think by and large im a firm sensitivity kinda drawer. I also noticed just how much pressure it takes to get it making lines of decent thickness, but again thats probably a slider or two to fiddle with. Gotta say the first thing that really jumped at me was the idea of just layering attempts with the wacom to get a smoother picture, that totally makes sense. Admitedly its kinda time consuming but seems like a good helper especially to get the ball rolling. On the desk thing i work on the most crammed messy desk imaginable, theres actually no space on here for anything but the computer and i worked with the tablet on my lap. Good thing im desk hunting soon anyway, just another reason.

thanks again for all that help, ive got mid year holidays coming up so one of my big project will be to just get drawing with the tablet.

I find it helps to try and use your elbow to do longer flowing storkes. This also takes the pain away from your wrist and/or fingers :)

When I sketch now I try to do as much of a line in one quick, flowing stroke as possible, then try and go over that stroke on the exact same path. (to make it darker or thicker) This helps with my accuracy and also I find it can look better than to erase fuzzy edges.

I have a custom brush at 100 hardness, and set on foreground/Baground jitter in "other settings" Opacity jitter gives me alot of fluffy edges when I sketch. Its all a personal preferance really.

Goodluck with it anyway ^^

anuxinamoon: thanks, i tried using f/g jitter but it didnt really come out like i wanted it to. Im still playing around though. I know what you mean about fluffy edges though. thanks

http://www.deviantart.com/view/34164658/
Another piece i cooked up today, just filling up a page with random things. Started with cartoons to get the basics down but worked my way up to something a little more complete. Theres faults that are more an issue of my drawing ability :P but im really enjoying just drawing random objects and images in one random collage.

I see whats happening here, Try having a standard hard brush at 2 pixels and lower it to 80 opacity. also try to be a bit softer on your brush. You will end up with a sore hand very fast if you press too hard :)

I find the hardest strokes are the ones that are horizontal in nature. so if they come out looking flyffier, its just cause its a more difficult stroke. I have a shortcut to rotate canvas 90? for that sort of thing. But you would only really need to do that if you were cleaning up line art for model sheets or something.

That baby is funny lol xD

Draw while zoomed in...try 200 or 300% The smaller the brush the more jitter you will get so zooming in helps a lot.
USE the erase tool to clean stuff up.
Use a big brush and then erase bits to make it look like what you want for bigger areas. If you want very clean lineart then use illustrator.

Press "e" to erase and then press "b" to draw in photoshop.

everything that has been said is on the money. but try scanning a picture in and tracing it with your wacom. helped me heaps.

Just to show you how clean illustrator looks, it's your drawing traced...kinda
[img]http://img20.imageshack.us/img20/7918/trace1jr.jpg[/img]

Well in illustrator you don't have to worry about fury lines etc.

thanks for all the help guys :) i havent been back to post because recently i discovered some potentially nasty errors hapening on my hard drive and was advised against using programs like photoshop which make constant writes to the scratch disk (same drive) untill the issue was fixed. Its now fixed and my last exam of the semester is actually today (yeah i know, ill get back to studying) so more wacom fun soon!

Scratch disk stuff can actually f up the hard drive data, so I'll advise you use 2 drives and put photoshop out by itself and keep the scratch data on that drive.
That's how some people crashed the mac's completely anyway.

im afraid i dont really have funds, ports or other resources to put photoshop on its own drive.

Thanks everyone for your help again, i quickly ran this up without playing with too much though (as you'll see its rather sketchy, ill use illustrator when its more appropriate)

Another one: http://www.deviantart.com/deviation/34552222/

Yes thats a selfportrait, so if you see someone who looks like that in the street feel free to go up to them and ask them if theyre moonunit :P That picture will probably make a lot of people cringe as its hell messy, i just wanted to knock something out to keep drawing. Thought id give overlaying a photo a try this time.

My next question of wacom crazy hapenings, do people use different settings when theyre colouring? I had a quick shot and it came out how my attempts at digital colouring allways have, fragmented (that is to say essentially blocks of clour beside each other). I am kinda hoping with a tablet i can get a better kinda merger and blending of colours, this could also go into a lot of lessons on how to actually colour digitaly which is something ive been needing to learn for so long. Any insight and wisdom is appreciated :)

custom brushes are a god send, i see you have a deviantart account by memory there are a lot of brushes available for downlaod there (free i believe but most ask for rating boosters). but i would recommend making your own, its a lot of fun when you get the hang of it and in my opinion a good texture brush is priceless. there are some great tutorials over at 3dtotal.com once you go thru a few of these u should be able to make your own and each tute should only take a few minutes. so next time uve got a few spare minutes give it a go.

Well ive had another mess around and ive come up with this

[img]http://www.sumea.com.au/forum/attached/MoonUnit/20067611359_eyeballjpeg…]

recently finished the tony hawk PSP game so the neversoft logo eyeball was as good as anything. Im starting to get some sort of grip on colouring, im trying to avoid using the smudge tool if i can help it because that can turn large sections into mush from my experience so instead im using a variety of brushes and fiddling with the opacity slider constantly so that my colour has a more subtle effect when applied as apposed to being a block of colour just dragged along. Im rather happy with the eye and "tail" but the spear i dont really like, this might have something to do with organic vs non organic objects.. that and just my skill level in general. Still progress made, woo! (there was actually a few sketches i did the other day but i accidently deleted them, arrrrgh!)

Fiddling with the opacity is a great way to get good blending of colours, i found the best tutorial on how to setup your brush for it using just 50% opacity and a few settings. http://www.deviantart.com/view/24105181/
i highly recomend it, taught me alot and i dont leave home with out that custom brush saved on my usb :)

another great painting tutorial can be found here http://www.furiae.com/index.php?view=gallery the steps are very vague so i recomend learning the first one then moving on to these.

that tutorials really helpfull but im totally stumped as to where the "spicy curry brush" is supposed to be... nearly pulled my hair out when i realised id been reading another tutorial that once it got to the important part (blending the colours) made a one sentence instuction with no explanation... please help..!! Is it supposed to be a custom brush im donwloading somewhere? Is it the brush that i setup earlier? How does a brush itself help me blend? it just applies more colour... raaaargh confused

I always thought the ?spicy curry brush? was the brush settings he/she describes at the beginning of the tute?

Logo looks cool btw.

Yes the brush is the custom one he makes at the start you should be able to make a copy of it by following the instructions, ill do a little quick thing on how i blend with it since he only provided one sentance :P
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v105/Nefquareiel/brushthing.jpg

Ok this is all with that brush
1. set the brush to 50% opacity your brush strokes will be light so paint over that area lots like i did in image 2
2. Ok so where going to be blending the pink and blue together so using the colour picker (alt) grab your blue colour and do one stroke over the pink area like in the third picture. the only reason for this is so we can grab a 50-50 mix of those 2 colours and use that to blend.
3. so using my new pink/blue (red circle) i painted over the blue area as shown in my uber diagrams. You have to brush a few times to get the colour to show up. :)
4. so now i take that new blue colour (green circle) and paint over the hard edge in the center.
5. finishing touches are where u see 2 edges of different colour, colour pick one and single stroke over the edge (maybe more then one :) depends on how different the 2 colours are.

i can email the brush to u if u need it.

could you actually email it to moonie1988 at gmail dot com so im just positive ive got that setup allright. Thanks for that though thats essentially the missing step i needed. Allthough theres still plenty of practice to be done... im having a fair bit of trouble getting a sort of smooth blend as apposed to just gradiating blocks of colour.. heres a semi sucesffull attempt:

[img]http://www.sumea.com.au/forum/attached/MoonUnit/200679221751_blend1.jpg…]

and thanks palantir :P

Thats looking great :D i personly dont think it needs more smoothing but im a real sucker for seeing brush strokes in digital art i just think it gives it a more realistic traditional feel.

emailing you the brush now :)

It seems to be impossible to not have some kind of line on the edge of any colour transition though (well no, just at my current skill level and such). Like allthough there's some purple mixed in the brown still just kinda stops at one obvious point. Plus these are large squares and transferring this knowledge to all kinds of spaces and shapes is quite difficult. Thanks for the brush, came through :)

looks fine to me! if you want no brush marks use a soft edge brush - easy :D I don't think you should fuss too much with custom brushed yet - they won't provide a magic solution to your delemma and will only serve to mask short commings in techique.

Your last posted sample does has quite strong vertical bands: try a smaller brush and/or brush strokes that vary in length, direction and weight to create a potentially more interesting/organic/natural texture within the blended colours.

once you have gotten some blending techniques down you could start applying them to simple volumes like boxes, globes, cones etc. for the next step... maybe the whole process is worthy of a project in the 'quick activities' section ... ?

Well i wouldnt really be much good at giving instruction in that regard obviously :P Thanks for the tips JohnN, though i gotta say i noticed that smaller brushes actually made it harder to conceal obvious edges, as ofcourse they have less of a fading edge... could you explain a bit further how a smaller brush would assist?

smaller brush and more brush strokes will allow you to blend the colours in more steps - so the colour difference between each brush mark will be less, and hence less noticeable...

To follow up on my comment about practicing blending and its application I have started doing a warm up before painting along those lines. Just using tone and experimenting with different brushes and settings in P'Shop.

[img]icon_paperclip.gif[/img] Download Attachment: [url="http://www.sumea.com.au/forum/attached/johnn/2006712205243_warm-ups.jpg"]warm-ups.jpg[/url]
37.45 KB

A worthy excercise - you could even just do several tonal blends and post them for feedback/suggestions on how to change you brush setup. Then when you got several brush setups working apply them to some basic forms.

thanks for putting the time into that JohnN :) unfortunatly i have to report another hardware issue with my computer (its worse this time, got the black screen of "your harddrives probably 100% kaput" death. On borrowed laptop) which has halted my practice again -_- ... get a call from the shop tommorow with some kind of diagnosis hopefully (sounds very medical dosent it...)

Sorry for double post but ive gotten my PC situation rectified again.... ugh. Anyways the point of this post is to link to my exhibition thread, i figured i was finally doing something worth posting out of my newbie thread so click over to:

http://www.sumea.com.au/forum/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID=3994

HUuuuuuuuuuuuuuUUUUUUuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuge thanks to everyone whos helped me out here, im so excited that im finally looking at work im producing with satisfaction that i have some ground in this area.

OI dude, the face looks fantastic. Keep up the good work hey! Show us some other stuff too whenever you get around to it. Good one!