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By several requests, here is the digital painting tutorial for “Pushing Color” using a digital painting software program of your choice for painting brush strokes and then using Adobe Photoshop or Element to push the colors with the “Liquify Filter”. It gives more dimension, texture and depth to your digital painting.

Download the following sketch to work with in this tutorial — right click your mouse and save to your computer

(Image above) To create your own “pushing color” technique, start with a sketch or drawing of an image. For the tutorial, we’ll use the image above that you can right click your mouse to save on your computer. Once you save it, open it in the software program you prefer best for digital painting. I like to use Corel Painter X because this program has the widest variety of brushes.

In Step Two (image above), select the brush and colors you want to use for your painting. I used Corel Painter X Oil Pastel, Variable Oil 30. For colors, I chose a soft pink hue for the background, deep violet purple, lavender, and bright purple for the center of the flower that I simply stroked without worrying too much about where the color was bleeding. Then, I used three shades of yellow from soft to bright for the outer edge. I added a white and pink edged tip for the petal on the left. I also feathered the edges of the purple center of the petals for a natural appearance.

In Step Three (image above), I added a few muted shades of plum in with the soft pink at the bottom right corner. I also added soft yellow tip to the largest petal.

Step Four (image above), I saved the file and re-opened in Adobe Photoshop CS2 in order to use the first ”Liquify” filter in Adobe Photoshop, which you find by selecting “Filter” and scrolling then selecting “Liquify”. If you use Adobe Elements, I believe you have to select “Filter” then “Distort” and then “Liquify”.  

For the first filter, I use the warp tool and push the color from the outside into the center to create distinct movement and lines.

Here’s a quick look at the other tools available in Liquify:

• Warp  Pushes pixels forward as you drag.
• Reconstruct  Fully or partially reverses the changes you’ve made.
• Twirl Clockwise  Rotates pixels clockwise as you hold down the mouse button or drag.
• Pucker Tool  Moves pixels toward the center of the brush area as you hold down the mouse button or drag.
• Bloat  Moves pixels away from the center of the brush area as you hold down the mouse button or drag.
• Push Tool  Moves pixels perpendicularly to the stroke direction. Drag to move pixels to the left, and Alt-drag to move pixels to the right.
• Mirror Tool  Copies pixels to the brush area. Drag to reflect the area perpendicular to the direction of the stroke (to the left of or below the stroke). Alt-drag to reflect the area in the direction opposite to that of the stroke (for example, the area above a downward stroke). Use overlapping strokes to create an effect similar to a reflection in water.
• Turbulence  Smoothly scrambles pixels and creates fire, clouds, waves, and similar effects. To adjust the smoothness, drag the Turbulent Jitter pop-up slider in the Tool Options section, or enter a value between 1 and 100 in the text box. Higher values increase smoothness.

   

In Step Five (image above), while still in Adobe Photoshop, I select “Filter” and then choose “Artistic” and “Watercolor” to add depth. (You may not see the difference until you do it in your own painting or download this image and enlarge it to see the texture added.   

Step Six (image above), I added various shades of green brush strokes around the upper right corner. I added deeper orange color near the tip of a couple of the petals. Next, I selected “Filter” and “Liquify” again using the clockwise tool to create an interesting center, pushed more color in different directions within the flower.

(image above) To complete this simple painting for the tutorial, I saved the file and re-opened in Corel PhotoPaint in order to add my infamous dots, a raindrop element in the far left and the smudge tool to soften some of the edges.

(image above) Same final painting — however, changed the “Hue” to darken the color to show more blue purple instead of violet. I show this so you can see that you can alter an image just by working with “Adjustments”.

Click on the link below to download lessons fourteen & fifteen that finishes the tools lesson. The other 15 days of the 30 days are practice sessions using the brushes in a daily drawing to be painted.  I’ve been learning a great deal from everyone who has used the tutorial. I think I’ll eventually reorganize all the material to make it a 30 day practice vs. full tutorial–providing lots of practice opportunities with cheat sheets and guides. For every step I wrote in the lessons, it took me several hours of thinking and writing. Plus, all the images used in the tutorial (which makes it a large file).

 I love the progress of everyone and what you’ve painted so far. It’s thrilling to see your artistic expression and how you’ve grasped the medium of using a computer program to paint.

Don’t forget when you download the file for this tutorial, password is ‘intro’. And, you have to download the image file below by right clicking and saving on your computer.

http://www.shibuistudio.com/FourteenFifteen.pdf

 Genece

I keep plugging along with Adobe InDesign though since it is a new application for me, I do have some learning curve. Nothing that difficult — just time consuming. I am glad I’m uploading a few days lessons at a time. It’s helping me keep focused on the full document that one day I promise will be completed. In the meantime, pieced together still gives you the lessons! Here’s the downloads (don’t forget the password is ‘intro’)

 http://www.shibuistudio.com/TenandEleven.pdf

http://www.shibuistudio.com/TwelveandThirteen.pdf

You’ll also need to download the house below and the fish. Right click and save to your computer.

I’m still transferring everything over to Adobe InDesign. To keep you in the flow of lessons, I uploaded 6 & 7 yesterday and now I am uploading 8 & 9. In Session Eight, you’ll learn more about the color palettes and in Session Nine, you’ll begin painting again–starting with adding an underpainting layer to a simple drawing of a house. Until I get all the materials transferred, I’ll probably upload two files a night as pdf files.

 http://www.shibuistudio.com/EightandNine.pdf

Don’t forget to download the house image from yesterday if you haven’t yet. You’ll need it for Session Nine. And, remember that the password is ‘intro’.

We should be back on track within the next few days. I was able to recover some of the MS Word files and then I added back in the missing images, saved as a pdf and now uploading so you can have the completion of the tiger and the week of work.

 I’ve been transferring all the work over to Adobe InDesign and it is going much smoother (except for getting the text to wrap around the images — any help from someone who knows this program would be appreciated). I’ll upload the next full week of painting exercises since Week 2 is a lot of painting using lots of different brushes from the mediums and variants.

 Download the completion of Day Six and Day Seven as soon as you can if you are currently working the tutorial. You’ll see in Day Seven there are about 2 dozen brush images of the variants that you can print on a printer and have next to you for the series of exercises to come with Day 8 to Day 14. By the end of the second week’s lesson you’ll be ready for drawing/sketching and building images from nothing or from photographs that will be intense interactive sessions in the third week of lessons (God willing, we’ll be fully on track that week).

Hope you can make sense of what I’m writing — very sleepy

Here is the download file http://www.shibuistudio.com/SixandSeven.pdf  password is ‘intro’

I’m also uploading a couple of practice images that you can use while practicing the brushes and variants–to get you going until you receive the new file that brings everything to date. To download the image files, right click on the images below and save to your hard drive.

After 18 hours this weekend catching up with the tutorial and ready to upload, the file corrupted my MS Word and now I have to reinstall the software. A majority of the work has been lost, I’m feeling highly frustrated and realizing this project has felt weirdly jinxed since day one. (Is Mercury in Retrograde)? Some of it is due to Vista which is a poorly designed operating system — I’m going back to XP!

I’m aborting the project and will not pick it back up until I can at least restore a majority of the work and de-stress my spirit. It will get done — however, it may not be on the timeline originally shared.

If you have downloaded the tutorial to date and are working on it, contact me at http://www.shibuistudio.com/contact.html and I will arrange email lessons with you.

I’m really sorry everyone that this has not happened the way I sincerely intended. I’ll let you know when I’ve cooled down, restored the software and hopefully, recovered some of the work.

Genece

I’m getting there — think I should be caught up with everything by tomorrow night. Hopefully, we’ll stay on track once I get caught up with all the typing, thinking, typing, thinking….

In this lesson, the tiger is getting more color and his green eyes. Have fun experimenting!

http://www.shibuistudio.com/DigitalPaintingforBeginners.pdf

FYI — every time I finish a day’s lesson, I upload the file to Adobe’s online service and they convert it into a pdf. I hope it doesn’t confuse you that the file name never changes. The file changes and that is why you need to download it every time I post on this blog. Make sense? I hope so.

In today’s lesson, you’ll actually begin painting. I’m getting more into the flow of writing and preparing the files now since the lessons have evolved into the painting aspect. However, now I have a new frustration with Adobe — they’re taking forever to convert my files over to pdf. I use their create pdf online service which I love — it’s just that lately they’re taking longer. Must be that the method of creating pdf’s has grown in popularity. Or, that their server is slower due to heavy traffic.

I’ll keep uploading as I get the documents back. Though, I think it’s best that I ‘not’ commit to the time ;-) 

Here’s the link again to new stuff (cleaned up some of the formatting as well of the first few days that got thrown off in conversion). http://www.shibuistudio.com/DigitalPaintingforBeginners.pdf.  You’ll also need to download the following image file that is a drawing of a tiger’s face–this is what you will be painting the next few sessions.

http://www.shibuistudio.com/tigerdrawing.html. Once you download the file, right click to save to your computer.

More to come…

Aghhh, I’m frustrated! It’s all in my brain and pulling it out to type and prepare is taking longer than I want. Yes, yes — patience, patience. I just keep diligently working at it and hope the ‘flow’ of putting it all on paper arrives soon. What else can I do?

I apologize that I’m off on the days I committed to having it all to you. Even if you’ve downloaded the program, I promise you’ll have more than enough time to work through all the days during your free trial.

Here’s the link of Day Three added (didn’t realize the formatting is a little off when transferring to Adobe pdf — I’ll have to check into that). http://www.shibuistudio.com/DigitalPaintingforBeginners.pdf and password ‘intro’.

So you can get going on the next lessons, I’m uploading a revised Day One and Day Two (cleaned up all the icons and included more activities starting in Day Two). This evening, I will upload more lessons and have all of the first week’s lesson available by the weekend. I think you’ll be pleased with how the document reads, especially once you get into Day Three when you’ll see the toolbar on the right side of the lesson pages I’m including that highlights the tool being used in each painting exercise.

http://www.shibuistudio.com/DigitalPaintingforBeginners.pdf (don’t forget, the password to open is ‘intro’)

You see, I’m a bit of a perfectionist! That’s why I had to pause the process a couple of days so I could work out the BEST way possible for you to learn with greater ease. I want you to have a fun experience. Yet, I want you to have an outstanding learning experience as well.

There is a quick change of plans. No Day Two today — instead, I will upload a full week of lessons on this coming Saturday, October 27. It will make it easier in the flow for you and for me. I appreciate your patience — it’s taken me much longer than I originally thought it would. Then, it is coming out stronger than I thought by repositioning how I’ll deliver it. I can keep the flow of writing going and not interrupt it to do a daily upload. Hope this all makes sense.

Whew! My fingers have been typing, typing, typing and my brain has been thinking, thinking, thinking! I wanted to have the first day of the 30 day tutorial up by this morning. Ha! It’s taken me until 4 pm CDT to get Day One completed. I tried making the document as clear to read as possible. I will admit you at least need to know computers and how to get around in a software program to do this tutorial. However, I really have tried to be as basic as possible and give as much beginner details as my brain could. I think if you stick with it and follow this through for the full 30 days you will get the hang of everything as time progresses.

Digital Painting for Beginners
30 Day Go-at-Your-Own-Pace Tutorial
Using Corel Painter X and Adobe Photoshop Software

The name wasn’t to suggest that anyone taking the tutorial is a beginner. Mostly, the tutorial is for anyone–beginners and current users of the software.  The first few days is mostly reading and studying the basics. Sorry, I believe it is important to learn the basic tools right up front. This will provide you with easier learning and a lot more fun when you move into experimenting and painting.

Each day, you will need to return to Atelierdigital to download the next lesson that always be a .pdf file. I will provide a link in the blog for the download. The password on all the .pdf’s is ‘intro’ — you’ll need this to open the documents. I do this for copyright purposes since I am submitting this to a major publisher (after editing is completed and revisions to prepare for commercial market). 

I’ve concentrated most of the tutorial on learning how to experiment with techniques of digital drawing and painting. After about the third of fourth day, the tutorial is highly interactive for the balance of the 30 days. Believe me, your creativity will get plenty of challenges and fun!

Here’s the link to Day One .pdf file — don’t forget, the password is ‘intro’

http://www.shibuistudio.com/DigitalPaintingforDummies.pdf

Next week, I will be starting a 30 day digital painting tutorial for anyone interested in learning how to paint using Corel Painter X and Adobe Photoshop (both programs have free trials you can download right before we start the 30 day program). If you use a Wacom tablet, great! If not, I’ll give instructions for mouse users as well. All you have to do to participate is download the daily image lesson and come to The Digital Atelier where I’ll be posting the tutorial daily lesson.

Also, I’ve been working on a painting the past few days giving people an opportunity to see the evolution. If you’ve missed seeing the digital painting in progress on my daily blog (http://sanctuaryofstillness.wordpress.com), here’s the evolution up to day four of the painting.

For this montage, I started with mud and a pair of eye balls. Intuitively, I placed the eyes in the mud. Everything else came as I was pulled more into the montage and what it was speaking to my soul. The picture was created in Corel PhotoPaint and Adobe Photoshop. I usually like using two to three software programs when creating a photo montage or digital painting. Here’s the poem that was written after completion of the montage that tells the story:

languid in the sun
memories fly with the wind
pregnant with meaning

while brown earth and me
shape form and creative mind
into molded myth

and mud eyes that see
principled composition
captures the fancy with moist lips of red,
soft and sensual movement,
evoke artful dreamsfree and powerful,
a prophetess of stillness
expresses innocence

I love digital painting–each stroke of color, using different brushes & techniques, and the click on my Intuous pen! It’s not just a passion. I’ve turned it into my career as an artist showing in galleries. After having the art generated onto museum quality canvas, each painting is hand embellished using oils & acrylics to give added texture and color. Combining digital and traditional painting is a joyful experience. If you haven’t ever tried it, you’ll find it to be quite rewarding on many levels.