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Tutorial - Common Digital Painting Mistakes
Published: 2012-06-07 04:07:53 +0000 UTC; Views: 230949; Favourites: 12214; Downloads: 4631
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Description
A guide to common digital painting mistakes that I've either seen or done myself...hopefully it helps
UPDATE
If you have questions please visit my journal for a list of FAQ first, you might find them answered there.
[link]
Otherwise, ask away!
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Comments: 759
1. blendings tricky. i guess it is sort of like just a thing you get a feeling for with practice in terms of overblending/underblending etc. I like to leave some of the brush strokes in the piece to keep it from looking flat. In terms of blending, start opaque, but draw on strokes of less opaque colors on top. Gradually use the eyedropper tool to pick out these in-between shades and add them in lower opacities on top of everything else.
2. I've never really used textures; I prefer to render everything with the brush. But, some people do use them successfully and it enhances the painting. I would try playing with the blending modes of the layer that the texture is on, like put the texture in black on overlay - that can give some cool effects.
3. A specular highlight is white. For other types of highlights it often depends on the way the light interacts with the surface. For example, on skin, areas with high amounts of light will experience sub-surface scattering, which results in an ultra-saturated red of the light hitting the blood below the skin. This appears to be a more saturated orange on the surface right where the highlight hits the shadow. Obviously these kinds of effects are different for different materials so the best idea is too look at references of materials similar to what you are trying to paint and observe how light hits there. And for the last question, highlights are a combination of the figure itself and what is around it but this also depends on how shiny the figure is, how strong the light is, and what colors are present around the figure.
4. Make sure you add shading to the eye just like anything else. Very little is going to be pure white - add greys to make it look round like you are shading a sphere. In terms of making the eye look wet, pure white highlights are the way to go, as well as white highlights on lower opacity. It helps to look at like mac icons and stuff that are super-glossy and study their use of white gradients.
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hmmm ok, that is all very helpful thank you <33
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thanks!! definitely need the advice!
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this is a big help, thanks for taking time to help us lesser mortals
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I have done a tutorial about skin shading inspired by your work: here it is ---> [link]
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This one is FCKN Great, Many many thanks!
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OMG this is a really great tutorial I have many tips of them learned by the time but now I know more it really explains how it is ^^ thank you
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Your guide was incredibly helpful, and I recognize a lot of my own mistakes here! Thank you so much for taking to time to make this.
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You said everything I was needing to hear! I try to learn to draw and paint by myself and it is very difficult to realize what is wrong in my work. Now I know about a lot of things I need to correct and I hope to get better and better at digital painting after read this. Thanks for sharing this. Love you *-*
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Great tutorial, you obviously know what you're talking about
One thing I would say, however, is that I often use both the smudge tool and the dodge/burn tools, and am very pleased with the outcome. This might have somethnig to do with the fact that I commonly work in monochrome, at least to begin with, but I always find that using the smudge tool is what makes my pieces so much better, and definitely what stops them from just being sketchy-sketches
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This was great. I'm guilty of many of these and am still very new to digital art. Thanks for the tips!
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Perfect. Exactly the type of tutorial that I really needed. Thanks for the help.
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Thanks for the guide. It really helped me alot, since I've been interested for digital painting for years, but I've never got out of things you mentioned in your guide. I think that im getting now one step further to be better artist. Really thanks, instantly faved this! and Im glad that you help out us, the novices.
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This is my new Bible. I will read it each time I sit down to paint. I'll learn chapter and verse
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Thank you for making this to help poor unfortunet noobs like me
Awesome Tutorial!
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thx for the tuut. Congrats on the Daily D!
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This is great. Thanks so much, it's really good to know.
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so basicly it's okay to cheat as long as you do the basics right, sounds pretty mutch like my last art teacher 
will try some of this stuf out for my next test with my tablet (i still suck so mutch that i don't wana show the world ^^)
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Thanks for the great tutorial !!!
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Wonderful tutorial, extremely helpful! You've separated the mistakes in so well-defined categories that a person can not only fight the particular mistakes he has but also his emotional drawback - his laziness, fear or misconception.
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Thanks for letting us host this terrific tutorial in
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A great tutorial, very helpful, thanks a lot! I hope you will do other tutorials.
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Many times it isn't using the burn/dodge tool that's the error, but how and when they are to be used. Most people don't take the time to learn and understand when and how to use them.
Here's and example of very successful use for blending using the smudge tool from a pro artist
[link]
The end result of full: [link]
And also here is a magazine that used burn/dodge very effectively to create initial highlights and shadows to be painted over:
[link]
I think the problems that arise are not that the tools are the issue but is that people do not know how to use these tools effectively. I won't lie, I to made the mistake of using burn/dodge for shading, but now I STILL use burn/dodge for shading (when I do digital paintings, not CG) but in an effective and subtle way as this magazine taught me. I don't claim to be a pro, but I do understand better now.
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Very useful tips, thanks.
I draw digital since 2003 and use a tablet since 2006 and still I do some of that errors.
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This is great! I still struggle with some of these mistakes, especially with monochromatic colors! Thank you so much for this!
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I have one thing on the "hard to go too dark":
When i draw my darker colored characters(like with dark blue), i try to keep my lines, but i have to keep it from going to black because the character is a very dark blue in some times.
In this way, it is easy to go too dark.
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This is awesome! Thanks for the info and advice!
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thank you so much for this great tutorial x)
i learned a lot!!
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Okay, I definitely recognize my mistakes back to when I was starting out in digital painting.One problem though : I don't seem to understand what reflected light is.
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every object reflects light (except it's pitch black and more like a black whole than an object). So if you're standing next to a person with a bright green t-shirt and you wear a white t-shirt a person taking a photo of you would probably notice that your t-shirt has some green shades on the side facing your "neighbor". This is because the light, that hits the green shirt is reflected by or even bounces off the shirt and then hits your white shirt. That's why it'll seem a little green (just like if you pointed a green torch on your white shirt you would have a green spot ^^).
How much the light is reflected depends on the light-condions and if the object is glowing (then it "gives" light so other objects around it will have some reflections, the glowing object not) or if it is shiny/wet (then it reflects light -> you will see a lot of colorful reflections on the shiny object from glowing objects around it) ... actually it has a lot to do with the surface of the object: smooth/soft surface = little reflection; hard surface (like glass) = a lot of reflections
Phew - I hope this helped a little. Actually this has a lot to do with physics
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Thank you for making this. Its very helpful.
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Oooooh, very helpful! Thanks for taking the time to make this!
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i was planning to start digital drawing
i think this will help me alot!
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If I could I would put this as my background to remind myself of common stuff I tend to mess up on and to remind myself, to take my time and not rush or get lazy xD
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Thank you for this 
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Thank you so much! I'm around the fear section 
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Yes <_> so helpful. I learned many of these things myself (I was quite guilty of the smudge tool thing when I first started) I think the only thing I still have problems with is the monochromatic shading. Still do it ><
But this. I've been trying to teach some friends and such these things and this will be SOOO helpful. Thank you.
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