How to Art: painting more Gum.

Ok. So I'm going to take that last bit a little further.

The very next thing I did was push the character around a little. and tweaked some of the proportions.  I also changed the base.  It wasn't interesting enough, so it had to become something from the environment of the character.  You know... it was just lame.  I liked it mind you, but it was lame.  Here's the tweaked Gum with a change of base.

Gum in a slightly more interesting base with some minor proportion tweaks.

Ok.  After that I get straight down to business.  I start painting over the picture above.  I'm not going to worry about the base.  It will go through the exact same steps, but it's not interesting now.

Brushes - this is an important part of the process.  Use the brushes YOU're comfortable with.  If you use my brushes, it may drive you f_cking nuts!  Having said that, feel free to use my brushes.  I mean, they aren't anything special AT ALL.  It's all about a workflow that you are comfortable with.

I mostly use the hard round pressure to opacity brush.  That's my favorite thing.  I blend with it - go from one patch of dark to a mid-tone to a light.  It's super easy and messy.  Don't worry about the mess just build up from sloppy to clean over time.

Here are the brushes I use in order of important/order of workflow.  I don't go straight from 1 down to 7 in order, it's back and forth, but mostly it happens like this:  Start with the hard round and finish with the little tight one.

Always paint with a brush that's one size too big for what you're doing. (^___^) Too small and you're F_CKED.  Trust me.  Save tiny stuff for details at the tail end.

This is my current set of brushes.  It's usually smaller, because why waste all that time looking at a list of bad brushes?

Oh yah - CANVAS SIZE!  I like to paint zoomed in a little bigger than how the final will look, but constantly look at the thing at the final size and a little smaller.  Painting closer than it will be seen will allow you more detail.  I won't tell you how close to get, but I will warn you that getting too close will lose your focus and waste strokes.  Get comfortable with your own process/zoom level but keep in mind the final size.  I care about silhouette and some little detail here and there.  I over render stuff, but I like it.  Get a feel for your style and nail it.

The next step if blending color over everything.I'm super sloppy about it.  This is going to look like a mess but it's all on a layer above, so I will eventually carve the silhouette back out, but I just want to get a better feeling for some of the shapes and colors I'm going to be using.

WHAT A MESS! Gum, you're one sloppy bitch.

A couple hard lines are in there.  You can get those by using your hard edge and coming in super tight with your tiny hard edge brushes. You can also mask stuff off, but that takes allot of time.  There are a hundred ways to do it.  Finding those hard edges important to make the piece not look like it's falling over or a puddle of color.  And that's one of the next steps, finding more and more of those to exploit for shape as well as noodling detail. 

It's insanely easy to add in details like little fabric bits and or that letter print on her clothes, screw holes, frill, etc.  The important part is hitting the general shapes and having your paletter.

Immediately after this I'm going to cut the silhouette of the character our as clean as I can, then I'll start finding edges and adding tiny details.

Some of the highlights I added are greedy.  Save those for last.  I didn't need to waste time on those yet, buuut you know, it's a process.  Have fun.  If you're not having fun it will show.  Also if you're not having fun, how the f_ck are you going to be motivated to make hundred of these?  You're not.

I hope this is helping somebody out there!

be seeing you,
&.