Digital Painting Tutorial: Dragon Summoning

Welcome!

First of all, this is not intended to be an all-inclusive tutorial on all forms of digital art. This is just a peek at one of the methods that I use for one type of project: a digital painting in a fantasy-type style.

There are countless methods for achieving the same result, and by no means am I trying to advertise my way as the "right" way. I'm just sharing this method, and this project, and hopefully you'll find it helpful in your own work, or maybe it'll just inspire you to create some paintings of your own.

Honestly, this isn't a great example of my usual work. I put a lot of time and effort into it, yes, but it was specifically designed to demonstrate one way I take a piece from start to finish... not something which really inspired me, or something which came to be sheerly for the sake of creating art. Nevertheless, I think it came out all right -- and it was good practice for an upcoming commission, as I was a little rusty on the subject matter.

One way to begin is with several small sketches, to get an idea of what sort of pose you want, the anatomy of your subject, etc.

I already had something in mind, so I just went in and made a (very) messy outline. I decided that, in something like this, it was better to do each piece of the creature in a different color. That way I could determine what colors to use on each piece: I wanted each body part to fade more and more into the background, to create the illusion of depth. Also, as the anatomy of the dragon contains fairly complex, overlapping shapes, this gives me a better idea of where things end and begin -- I can clearly see where his tail is behind his wings, and it's harder to get confused about what lines should be erased later.

Notice also that each piece of the dragon is drawn on a different layer (the window under the color wheel displays the layers). This means that if I want to erase or redraw a certain part, I can do so without worrying about any of the others.

In this phase of your painting, don't be afraid to use long, wild strokes, especially if you're working big. Also, don't be afraid to rework these guidelines over and over... it's harder to adjust something you don't like later, after you've slaved over color and line work for hours.

Line work.

This part is the most tedious. Naturally, this is what you will probably spend the most time on.

I used to spend hours cleaning up my lines and getting ready to color. However, these days I tend to pass the lines up in favor of slapping paint directly onto the canvas. If you're a beginner to art, I don't suggest that method. It's better to get a good feel for your underlying shapes.

In fact, if you're a beginner not only to digital art but to art in general, I suggest you go the pencil-and-paper route until you've developed a strong foundation. There are things you simply will not learn if you jump straight to computerized art, and your work will suffer for it.

Here is the finished line work. Note how I work with layers to save memory -- the underlying guide has been deleted, and the finished lines are all on one layer.

Now that the lines are finished, it's a good idea to give them another going over: clean them up a little, sharpen the corners with an eraser, or thicken them up where needed. This is one of those tricky things about "teaching" art; I can't tell you which of these your art will need. Maybe you like a thin outline, maybe a thicker one, for a more cartoon-style appearance. So much of art is personal opinion that it is hard to define what is talent and personal preference, and what just "doesn't work".

Here is one major point at which digital and traditional artwork part ways.

I can hide my upper layer, and paint my background underneath it. It's also a great relief not to have to wait ten years for my paint to dry.

I used some nifty tools here to create my "fire" effect: glow is wonderful for creating embers, and smudge is fantastic for dragging the effect of glow into flames. But again... while I said before that most things in art are about personal preference and opinion, please, please don't go overboard with the shiny special effects. Ten million "sparkle" stamps will not make your piece better, it will only make you look as if you have nothing to offer but special effects.

Here's some more fun: using layer blend modes to adjust colors.

I know I more or less dissed the multiply mode before, but that was in relation to using it as your color layer. Using it to modify your colors is perfectly acceptable... and, as you can see in the image above, served to make my original palette "pop".

Note the "Layers" pane to the right. See how the layers are identical? I used the "duplicate layer" tool to make a carbon copy of my background, and then made the top one the "multiply" layer (or "shadow map," as Corel calls it). Remember I said it darkens all the colors beneath it? There you go!

It's difficult to explain the range of effects you can achieve with blend modes. The best way to learn is by doing, so have some fun with it and experiment.

All I've done here is to merge both color layers to save memory, and "unhide" my line work layer (well, I also added some detail to my background, creating a "summoning circle" effect. This is the point at which I realized my image was inspired by a few too many hours playing Vagrant Story for Playstation).

Now, here is where my plan starts to unfold. I could have gone one of two ways with this -- create a new layer above my colors and under my lines, and "flat" color, creating that cartoony "cell shaded" effect, but I wanted something a little more advanced, so I decided to fill in my dragon directly on my background. That way I could take advantage of Painter's ability to beautifully blend colors. Remember, I mentioned earlier that I wanted to create the illusion of depth.

After a while, it started to take shape. I focused heavily on the body of the dragon, especially the head, because I wanted them to be the focal point of the piece. As for the tail and the wings, I merely smudged them in to cover the flames and embers for now, trying to amp up my atmospheric depth effect.

Here I've added color to the tail, the bony parts of the wings and the leathery parts close to the glow on the floor. The top half of the image is still largely done in that "transparent" mode, allowing the focus to remain mostly on the dragon's head.

This is the image at 100% zoom -- the actual working size of my canvas. This finished piece will likely be half this size or less, which is why it's so important to work big.

A lot of flaws in a piece are made less noticeable or are entirely eliminated by making it smaller. Sound like cheating? Nope. This method is used by all professional artists, and was achieved in other ways by artists before digital art made it easy.

Here's a secret: my program of choice for post-processing is Paint Shop Pro 6. It's an old version, made, in fact, in 1991 (making it almost as old as my younger sister) by Jasc. Corel bought PSP later on, but I've been using it for years simply because it works cleaner than anything else I've found. Hard to explain, but some of the tools are just better than more modern software.

Part of the reason is that modern software tends to rely too heavily on anti-aliasing. In some instances, such as when using the "sharpen" filter, you want that sharp, pixelly line:

The image on the left is the result of applying the "sharpen" filter in PSP6. Notice how the original colors are untouched, but the image is crisp.

On the right, the same filter applied in Corel Painter IX. The colors have been blurred and altered, and even the lines seem softer... not exactly what you want in something called "sharpen".

Now, having told you this, here's the bad news: it's unlikely you'll find a version of PSP6 for download these days... at least not legally.

Once I've finished a project, resized it and sharpened it up a little (my very simple post processing... process), I like to test out a few more colors and effects. Here are just a few I tried, to give you an idea of the vast array of effects you can achieve.

Above: added a new layer, filled in with solid brown.

Well, that's all there is for now.

Hopefully you found what you were looking for, or were at least enlightened or perhaps entertained. If you found something lacking, or you've got questions, feel free to ask! This is a subject I love and I will gladly assist any way I can.

Also, if you'd like, you can request a Hub on a particular technique or art-related issue, and I'll be happy to do that as well.

Thanks for reading, and if you plan on applying what you've learned here, remember to have fun with it.