The Joker

This is the sketch for this post's piece. I tried to keep it quite loose as often many things change during the process of painting.

As you can see I haven't included Harley Quinn in the final painting because I wasn't happy with the way she turned out. Instead I have put one of the Joker's famous lines from Christopher Nolan's The Dark Knight.To start with I looked on Google Images for some reference material. After making a sketch I blocked in the mid-tones. Then I started adding the highlights and shadows to give the character depth. I then used the 'felt marker' to add details such as the hair. One thing I found challenging was working out where shadows would fall. Also the folds in the clothing were difficult because it is hard to know where to put them. I found it helpful to have lots of images to look at whenever I got stuck with a detail like this. 

Inspiration

Its often hard to come up with ideas of what to draw. Sometimes looking at what other people are doing can help inspire you. Whilst on holiday I saw a street artist using spray paint to paint scenes that looked as though they had been done digitally. I never realised that you could achieve some of the effects he was using with spray paint. One effect he used was to apply a layer of paint and then spray over it in another colour. He then scraped away some of the second layer so the colour underneath showed through.

When I got home I didn't have many drawing ideas and then I remembered the street artist and decided to have a go at some of the things he was doing with spray paint, but with the airbrush on Corel Painter.

The street artist at work

This is what I did

I found that getting the same result as the street artist was getting is extremely hard, it must take a lot of practice and experience to master what he was doing!

Practicing drawing techniques

It's always good to practice from photos, especially if you find something difficult. I used some old holiday photos as reference for this sketch to practice perspective.

Going out and seeing things for real helps to gain an understanding of how to draw them. Even if you are into drawing fantasy or sci-fi, drawing from real life can still help your understanding.

Sketch

Photo

The Right Brush for the Right Job

Different brushes have different functions that make them suited to certain jobs. For example, a wash brush is good for covering large areas in colour and pastels or charcoal brushes are good for highlights.

For the portrait above I used several brushes. The rough sketch was done using the fine point pen and then I started to block in mid-tones using the wash brush. I added shading and highlights using the charcoal brushes. fine details like the hair were done with pen brush.

The Anatomy of Colour

In Corel Painter Essentials you can select colours using a colour wheel. It is helpful to create your own to understand colour and how to get the colours you want from the wheel. Just like the brushes, it's best to practice and experiment!

Anatomy of colour

Getting Started on Corel Painter

When I first opened Corel Painter I didn't have a clue what to do, but I found it helped a lot to just experiment with the different functions and tools and I found that I quickly began to pick up some of the basic functions.



Experimenting with brushes

Practising Using the Tablet

Before I started drawing I found it was very helpful to start by warming up. Here are some exercises I did before I begin to draw. These exercises are also very useful when you are new to using a tablet, even if you are a very experienced artist it can be very hard to get used to using tablets.



These are some examples of some good exercises to practise.

Another way of getting used to using a tablet is to trace an image. Here is an example of a tracing I have done to get better at using the tablet. I also changed the colours of the image to be blue.



My Set-up

I will be using a medium sized Wacom Bamboo Fun tablet on a laptop. The program I will be focusing on is Corel Painter Essentials 4.

Wacom Bamboo Fun

Introduction

This blog is about me learning how to use a graphics tablet to produce digital art. I will be posting about a variety of subjects and techniques as I learn and progress.