Need help learning to use a tablet.

[E-mannor]

Alright I've had my Wacom Intuos 4 tablet for about a year and have finally set down and used it for a complete project in photoshop. The results were great but I could not help but feeling I was doing far more work than necessary.

Here is the result: http://www.furaffinity.net/full/3304847/

I'm wondering of anyone knows of any good brush packs that allow for good inking lines.

Also any tips on layering, coloring, shading, etc are immensely appreciated ^_^ No joke, if I find your reply exceedingly helpful I will give you a free request to the same artistic caliber of the example, what ever you want

 

[Fuzzle]

First thing you want to know are shortcuts. You could apply shortcuts to the buttons on your tablet like undo, but in the meantime have your keyboard close for a CTRL + ALT + Z.

Now I don't believe there are any brushes out there that will help you with ink lines, its all in the technique. I'd recommend buying a downloadable program called "SAI" It is AMAAAAAAZING for ink lines once you set the brush to the proper level of control.

The thing with photoshop is you can create your own brushes, I wouldn't rely on any stock brushes or other peoples brushes besides a regular soft and hard brush. You need to play with the brush settings tabs. Scatter, shape dynamics, other dynamics and so on can drastically change how you're brush works. Its great, this is what I use for shading and you can check my recent gallery for the results.

Take a soft brush, say a 45 soft brush and go into the brush tab. Set the spacing to 0% / turn off shape dynamics / turn on other dynamics and set both options to pen pressure and 0% / set brush to 14% and save it as a tool preset.

Then when you want to blend, I recommend doing your picture in black and white first so you can get an even tone as different hues of color will screw with your sense of even lighting. Take your new brush and get your finger on ALT so you can constantly sample new gradients of gray and blend it with another. Just go back and forth with the sample tool (ALT) and your brush to get an even blend.

You may notice you are painting outside the lines because of the range of the soft brush so before all of this you may want to create a layer with a solid color in the shape of your character or what you want to shade so that you can select its layer transperancy, OR make a new layer above it and link it to the layer you want to paint on by holding control inbetween the two layers and clicking. I understand it may be hard to understand all the things I'm instructing but you are free to contact me with any questions you have.

 

[E-mannor]

Thanks fuzzle!

I have to say 90% of that went right over my head, but it gives me some things to try out. I'll have to mess around with brush effects for a while to get what I can even do.

How would I go about creating a custom brush? And you mentioned using gray scale before adding color, what method would be used to add the color afterwards?

 

[Fuzzle]

Thanks fuzzle!

I have to say 90% of that went right over my head, but it gives me some things to try out. I'll have to mess around with brush effects for a while to get what I can even do.

How would I go about creating a custom brush? And you mentioned using gray scale before adding color, what method would be used to add the color afterwards?

Ah right. Well first, to create a brush, simply open a new file, make a new layer and draw the basic brush shape in levels of gray. 100% black will be completely solid and 100% will be completely opaque. For example, place about 5 or 6 pixels spread apart so they aren't touching and go to edit and define brush preset. Now, take that new brush and go into the brush panel and set the spacing to 0% and turn on other dynamics and both pen pressures to 0%. Now you have a nifty hair tool You just need to get creative with it, you can create a ton of cool stuff.

For color, after you have your gray toning done, make a new layer above it and set the layer itself to "color". This means whatever color you choose to paint with, it will use the layers of tone underneath it to create the tones of the shade of color. Try it, you'll see. Remember, it might look weird if you use a high saturation color over very dark colors like black, so you'll want to blend together high saturation and low saturation levels to create an even tone. Blend blend blend, its the key.

 

[E-mannor]

Hmm after some screwing around I managed to make some easy brush patterns, but I looked around and could not find any options in which to alter the brushes I made. Where is the menu for changing the spacing and dynamics?

 

[Fuzzle]

Hmm after some screwing around I managed to make some easy brush patterns, but I looked around and could not find any options in which to alter the brushes I made. Where is the menu for changing the spacing and dynamics?

Theres a toolbar on the top, on the right you will see a tab that says brushes.

 

[E-mannor]

Alright I think I've got things working, one last question though. How do I save the brushes so they are in the menu? When I go and save them to the brush folder I have to reload them each time I need to use them.