We've got some news regarding the digital painting course. First off, the not-so-great part - Jon Neimeister won't be able to wrap up the remaining lessons of the course. We know many of you have enjoyed his insights and teaching style, and it's a bummer not to have him finish up the course. However, life throws curveballs, and we're committed to delivering the quality education you signed up for. The good news - we've put together a team of digital painting instructors to take over and finish this course. We selected artists that specialize in each remaining topic. It will move much faster since multiple artists will be working on videos at the same time. Producing this course is at the top of our priorities right now. Stay tuned for more updates about Jon's replacements, and as always, we're here if you have any questions or need a hand with anything.We appreciate your patience and understanding, Stan and the Proko Team

Here's my intermediate assignment, still life of a lil planter pot

Easy Assignment: Relatively easy. Blending super subtle transitions was hard for me though, even with a soft airbrush it felt jagged and muddy Intermediate Assignment: The first page went okish although I struggle with cast shadows. 2nd page feels all wrong but idk how to fix it Advanced Assignment: Also feels wrong but I'm not sure what. And I'm still not great at painting faces so the guy looks more like a brother or a cousin to the ref

When I watch this, I'm experiencing lots of backwards skips of about 1.5 to 2 seconds where the video acts like a scratched record. Is anyone else having this happen? Previous videos have had a slipping and video distortion that needed to be reloaded to correct. I know this isn't a huge issue, but it is distracting as it keeps happening.

Ayy, welcome back:). And thanks so much for the critique. Some of those tips are immediately helpful for an illustration I'm working on right now. Also now I kinda just wanna go and paint some magical effects haha

Hey, everyone! I hope you've all had a fantastic start to the new year and are excited to dig into the next segment of this course. I wanted to give a quick update on our plans for this year as there's been a slight change to our production schedule. I've accepted a new job on Hearthstone which is very exciting but also means I have to move across the entire country, which has been consuming every waking moment of the past month or so. As such, there will be a bit of a delay in the release of the next episodes until I can get settled into my new place and re-establish my recording setup. We have a LOT of great content coming for the course this year that I'm super excited to share, and I want to be sure I give it 110% effort rather than squeezing it in between a million other things. I do apologize for the delay, but I can promise the next section is gonna be awesome and well worth the wait. Thank you so much for your patience, and I can't wait to continue painting with you in 2023! <3

I don't think I have too much to say about this one. I feel like I learned a lot more about adjustment layers and blending modes with this piece and am more comfortable with them, which feels really nice. (also it wasn't as frustrating as the last assignment since I'm not so confused about AO anymore) I ended up not rendering this one much and just kept it as a rougher colour study, hopefully that's ok. I think all the important elements are there though so it reads fine

Alright, a little late but here's my assignment. Not really sure how I feel about this process. In theory I like the step by step and organisation, but having a bunch of layers with a bunch of different blending modes got confusing and overwhelming for my lil add brain. Probably I just need more practice with this kinda workflow though. Also I kinda got confused with the term Ambient Occlusion, I thought it was the darkest part of shadows where no light or reflected light could reach? But it didn't seem to be used like that in the demo. So my AO and Core Shadows kinda got mixed and messy. Maybe I'm just overthinking it though. I think next time I'd just combine the two into one layer. That being said, I'm really glad we're going through all these different workflows. It's nice learning different processes and figuring out what you like and don't like as well as having different options/solutions for different pieces. So thank youu, I'd probably never learn these or think to try them without this course

Here's my attempt at the colour study using one of the references that were provided. I also included the thumbs I did. Not gonna lie, I didn't really know what I was doing with them. In theory I understand composition and know the 'rules' and strategies of it but in practice all that kinda goes out the window for me. I think I just need to be more focused and deliberate with my decisions rather than being hella indecisive and hoping things will just fall into place as I wing it. As for the process it was pretty similar to the one in the video. I started out with colour, and used a couple gradient maps, colour balances, and various blending modes throughout the painting as I rendered. For layers it was just 2, Sky and the rest of it

The imbedded video on this site, and the download, both have serious distortions, pixilating, delays, and artifacting that's really distracting. It actively makes it difficult to follow along in the lesson because the video will stick while Jon is talking and the viewer can't see what settings or controls are used. By the end of the video it's a severely jumbled mess. I'm hoping this was an rendering issue with the output file after editing, and hopefully a new pass can provide a better file for the viewers. If someone could look into this, it would be greatly appreciated.

(I wasn't really interested in colourising any of the paintings from the Greyscale Assignment that I hadn't already colourised so I just painted a new one.) 1. First image is a greyscale painting referencing another pic from a Grafit Studio pack 2. Second image is the first one reworked from imagination like the 'Layers Demo 2' lesson 3. And the third image is the second colourised As for the actual process I used.. I kinda forget, I just kinda messed around using trial and error, seeing what I like and what I don't. But, (for anyone that wants to know), from what I do remember, I started off just painting on basic/normal local colours using mostly the 'colour' blending mode on my brush. Then once that was done I used a gradient map on top of that to create some atmospheric colours with a bluish/green cold colour for lights and a warmish purply for shadows. I then set the gradient map to a blending mode called 'average' since it added colour while still preserving my values, then turned the opacity down and proceeded to merge that gradient map to each layer. After that I painted normally and with various blending modes on my brush and messed with colour balance a bit as well as HSL adjustments

Is there an option for a refund? In the rare case that upon checking some of the full course disovering that it is not benificial for me?

Hey all, just wanted to give an update that the latest critique video is taking a bit longer to finish up than we expected so we're aiming to release it early next week. Very sorry!

I can't learn any of Digital Illustration and Advanced Techniques. what do you mean?

I've been doing Still Life studies of random things on my desk in-between assignments so this is one I was working on when this assignment came out. I ended up just setting my brush to Saturation mode for the chapstick after painting it cause it was looking kinda muddy due to it being too desaturated. And I also set my brush to Colour mode at the end of the painting for the hand sanny to add some yellow for the light-source that was hitting it For the actual attempt I ended up colourising my Greyscale Layers Assignment of the Shaman, or whatever you wanna call it. I grouped my greyscale painting layers and then made another group above that using layers set to Overlay to colour it. I ended up not liking this technique, it didn't feel very intuitive and was kinda messy so I'm gonna try doing it a different way next. I do like the method of going from greyscale to colour though since I'm using to pencil drawings and have very little experience with colour. I just need to find a way to make it look less like a colourised greyscale painting though

Here's my second attempt at seriously using layers, referencing the same photo and following a similar process as Jon in the 'Layers Demo 1' lesson. This attempt went waay better than my first one and was a lot more enjoyable. The tips and techniques Jon showed in the Demo videos were incrediblyyy helpful. It had a solution for pretty much every struggle and problem I was experiencing in my first layers assignment. I've watched them a handful of times now to make sure I've not missed or forgotten anything. I'll try to update again when I've finished my second version of this painting (:

Here's my rough layers assignment. I kinda just separated most elements onto their own layer, just incase, but ended up just making two shirt versions and two different props (cat and wood) which can all easily be mix & matched. I'm used to working on one, maybe two, layers so this assignment was kinda overwhelming keeping track of everything and not accidentally painting on the wrong layer since I'm usually the kind of artist that works on everything at once and jumps from one area to the next cause I get distracted by all the things that need fixing. Soo ngl, working on this felt like a chore but I'm seeing just how useful and valuable layers are so I'm hoping that it will become easier to juggle them over time and with practice. (Also photo ref credit: It's from the Diplomat Photo Pack by Satine Zillah)

Hey, I am sorry if I missed this.. does anyone know the deadline for submitting works that may potentially be on a future crit video? THNX!

First assignment done :) I'm primarily a traditional graphite artist so painting is wildy unfamiliar to me, especially digital painting. It's often a struggle and can get pretty frustrating cause I'm so lost, so I'm super happy and appreciative of this course As for the drawing, I used the hard round brush and a bit of the softish round brush and it took ~2.2hrs I'd post the ref photo but it's from Prokos anatomy class so I think it's copyright