First digital painting, in need of a bit of help.

Ein

So I should probably preface this by warning that I've never done this before. I should also provide a little background on what I'm doing.

So, my girlfriend has gotten back from a trip through the American southwest and she's showing me all of these lovely pictures she's taken. She was telling me how she stopped in an art gallery and saw some work by a fellow named Charles H. Pabst that she really liked. Thinking to myself that it might be a fun gift to get her for Christmas (Look honey, I really was listening!) I ventured online and pretty much fell out of my chair when I saw the prices on some of them in the $10,000+ range. I don't really know anything about the art and painting world - it could be pretty standard price, but I certainly can't afford them as a college student. I live off ramen, damnit.

My girlfriend is a really good painter. We usually have a thing where we make sure at least one gift between us is handmade, so we don't end up just shoveling store-bought crap at each other. Over the past two years as Christmas gifts I've received two really marvelous works that she's painted for me. This year, I thought I might want to repay the favor. However, I've got no real talents when it comes to sitting in front of a canvas with a brush, so I thought I might take the alternate route and try painting something in photoshop, and then getting a canvas print of it to give to her. It's not quite the same thing, but I think it's fair, and I do have a wacom tablet at my disposal so I may as well use it. So, I set about trying to duplicate one of Pabst's scenic vistas.


Navajo Sunset

This was, unfortunately, the biggest picture I could find of the original.

Here's what I'm working on:



The full size is here if you want to get a look at it. I think I'm going to have resolution problems, but I'll touch on that in a bit.

I really have no idea what I'm doing. I've been attacking this by sampling colors here and there from that image above and brushing them in roughly, and then smudge tooling the life out of them until they blend into the approximate shapes and sizes I want. I've seen some photoshop tutorials where they do a step-by-step on painting like this, but I seem stuck at an intermediate step - somehow, they always sharpen and develop the details up very nicely in a way that I can't quite seem to figure out. With that in mind, I'm hoping to get a couple tips or pointers in how to put more definition into things. I've tried just getting a thin, mostly transparent, small black brush and just having at it, but it tends to look scribbly.

My sky also sucks ten kinds of ass.

Also, I have a bit of a printing concern/question for anyone who is familiar with the process or has done it.

I figured there would obviously be a need to work at a huge resolution with this thing so that it would print out nicely. Unfortunately, I think I underestimated just how big it needed to be. The canvas I'm working on is 40"x40", but at 72 DPI. I'm worried I overlooked setting it to 300 DPI when I started and now my image is going to be too small to print adequately. I'm looking at getting it done at maybe something like 26"x26" because the pricing doesn't seem to bad, but how much of an issue is this resolution and DPI going to be when it comes time to print? Am I going to have to redo this all at a higher DPI so it's suitable for printing? I don't want to give her a pixellated gift.

Thanks guys.

Mykonos

It looks a bit flat and ofcourse it is lacking alot of the intriticate detail from its source. Personally, I feel this may be a bit to much for you to try and mimic on your first digital piece, and I would recommend going with something simpler until you fully get a grasp of everything. I don't know how well you fare working with tradition tools, but I do know its a whole other ball game when switching to photoshop.

Ne ways, if you want to nail some of that detail, I would recommend you edit your brush to a thin vertical oval shape, and give it a bit of texture. Get a dark shade of brown and try to fill in the detail on the rocks for your shadows and whatnot. vary the opacity and size accordingly, and take your time when doing it. Save often.

As for printing: If you want the highest quality hard image of your image, then you may have to submit them to some site like deviantart and reorder them as prints. I have had terrible experience working with standard printers, and prints via DA is the only thing I can think of atm with regards to getting what I *think u want.

Edit: Stay the F*#$ away from smudge! It's a huge noob trap, and one that I am guilty of. Stick with your brushes, avoid using everything else.

sonictk

Printing at 150 DPI is generally enough for media that is meant to be viewed up close and personal, imo 300 DPI is actually kind of overkill and creates all sorts of other concerns (e.g. higher risk of bleeding if your printer sucks) At 26 x 26"...you can probably get away with even lower, so it's not that much of a biggie.

Also realize that if you actually were working on this at 40x40" at 300DPI that would be like 12000x12000 pixels, so every brushstroke you make would probably make your rig lag like hell, yes? Trust me Photoshop is not fun when you have to create insanely huge banners and stuff with limited hardware (e.g. 1 GB RAM 2.4 Ghz P4)

Ein

Mykonos wrote: »

It looks a bit flat and ofcourse it is lacking alot of the intriticate detail from its source. Personally, I feel this may be a bit to much for you to try and mimic on your first digital piece, and I would recommend going with something simpler until you fully get a grasp of everything. I don't know how well you fare working with tradition tools, but I do know its a whole other ball game when switching to photoshop.

I am sort've jumping in with both feet, but I think I can do it.

Ne ways, if you want to nail some of that detail, I would recommend you edit your brush to a thin vertical oval shape, and give it a bit of texture. Get a dark shade of brown and try to fill in the detail on the rocks for your shadows and whatnot. vary the opacity and size accordingly, and take your time when doing it. Save often.

Noted. I'll try doing this some more, it just seems that I can't quite get the hang of where to put the lines down for proper definition of some of the details. I'll probably go look for some pictures of similar rocks.

sonictk wrote: »

Printing at 150 DPI is generally enough for media that is meant to be viewed up close and personal, imo 300 DPI is actually kind of overkill and creates all sorts of other concerns (e.g. higher risk of bleeding if your printer sucks) At 26 x 26"...you can probably get away with even lower, so it's not that much of a biggie.

Also realize that if you actually were working on this at 40x40" at 300DPI that would be like 12000x12000 pixels, so every brushstroke you make would probably make your rig lag like hell, yes? Trust me Photoshop is not fun when you have to create insanely huge banners and stuff with limited hardware (e.g. 1 GB RAM 2.4 Ghz P4)

I'm not too concerned about my computer dying during the course of this - I've got 4 gigs of ram and a quad core. Still, I see your point, and thanks for the info on DPI.

sonictk

It's not just system resources - if you're using anything other than round brushes they're going to end up blurry anyway as the brushes are basically composed of bitmaps anyway, and I think even the round brushes have a limit before they start to look jaggy (was it 600 px size? Can't remember) so you would either have to use more strokes and keep the detail or just go ahead and use bigger brushstrokes but risk having jaggies.

Also I want your rig.

Mykonos

I am sort've jumping in with both feet, but I think I can do it.

wow, now you sound just like i did.

Heartlash

Your issue is that what you've painted is a base summary of the original. Like taking a high res image and reproducing it highly compressed and low res.

Areas with a tremendous amount of detail in the original (i.e. the precise shading on the faults in every rock, the form of each blade of grass, the color dynamics in the cloud) are, in your version, simple solid colors.

That said, you're on the right track, and have a good idea of where everything SHOULD be. Now all you need is the patience to sit down and really mesh out all the details area by area. It will require tremendous amounts of time and a smaller brush for sure, but hey, art = work.

After this btw, I highly recommend you go out and paint a landscape while you're actually looking at it. It will give you a deeper understanding of reproducing MASS as opposed to reproducing SURFACES. You may be asking yourself "Hey, what's the difference?" But as you go along, you'll understand that gaining knowledge of how things work in the natural world will allow you to adequately reproduce them on paper.

Keep it up.

***EDIT***

Also, DO NOT RELY ON SMUDGE. It undermines how good a job you can actually do. I know this is not what you want to hear, but you pretty much HAVE TO actually paint the shades in. The best way to go about it is layers of colors and the eraser mixed with lower hardness on your paintbrush.

Mykonos

keep working on it and keep reposting the progress you made so we can tell you if your going in the right direction. It's actually not bad being that's its your first. Just force yourself to stick with nothing but the brushes and you'll be amazed what you can turn out. Smudge is a very deceptive tool and fools newcomers into thinking their making easy masterpieces when really their undercutting themselves. Don't believe me? Look at this

First one was my second painting on ps, using nothing but smudging



Then I went ahead and forced myself to to stick to nothing but the paintbrush and painted over the whole thing till it came out like this. See the difference?

Miette

I think it looks great for how much you say you're having difficulty... Obviously it can't be as polished and detailed as the original at this point, but I think it looks really awesome It reminds me of something that would be a background to an animated movie or something... Just keep working at it (but don't overwork!) and I think it'll turn out awesomely.

Oh, and that's a really sweet thing to do for your girlfriend!