Digital Painting in Grayscale

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128K

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Assignments 289Lesson NotesDownloads 4

Digital Painting in Grayscale

Lesson by

Proko

Jon Neimeister

in Digital Painting Fundamentals

128K

Mark as Completed

Course In Progress

Assignments 289Lesson NotesDownloads 4

Now that you've seen me do it, it's your turn to practice working from a reference to understand how shapes and values work in real life!

Start with a clean drawing, do a value block-in, and then build up your painting working from general to specific details.

You're more than welcome to find your own reference, but I've also provided three references that can be found in the downloads tab for this lesson. There is an easy reference, an intermediate reference for those who'd like to try clothing a figure and painting fabric, and a hard reference with lots of costume details and fun material challenges.

Caitlin

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I used a brush from Marc Brunet’s free brush set as I found it was the easiest for me to work with. I will say, I think I’m not using my full value scale enough, and there were definitely areas where I could’ve pushed the light and shadow. On top of that, I’m still kind of shy with letting go of hard-edged line art, but I’m hoping as I continue this course I will break that habit. If anyone has any thoughts I would love to hear them! Thanks

Lin

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These look amazing! Are they Photoshop or Procreate?

Melanie Scearce

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I definitely agree with you on the value point, but you're in a great position now to use lighter values strategically to define the focal points. These are awesome paintings, just push them 5% more!

Natalie Castro

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17d

I tried my hardest. This was done with a low round brush on Procreate. I think it got the job done, but I feel it wasn't the best brush to use. If anyone has any good shading brushes, let me know. I'm not very good at making brushes on procreate yet. Nevertheless, I see that I'm learning, which is great!

@anthony_shearing

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21d

Done with the airbrush in krita. I changed to that thinking my brush could be part of the problem? I didn't finish the whole thing because I feel pretty frustrated by how terrible it looks. I've made many attempts at painting using this procedure but they all kind of look messy, like I just throw random values in places and just blend until something looks kind of right but still really wrong. Jon appears, to me, to put a value in a certain place and it just magically makes it look really good. I don't know what my problem is but I can only assume it is because I don't put the right values in the right place?

@anthony_shearing

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18d

Making progress

@anthony_shearing

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19d

I'm trying to draw the arm shapes by themselves but I'm kind of stuck at this point. Nothing I do seems to accurately represent the model's arm. I can make a metal looking box at best or a mess at worst.

@anthony_shearing

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25d

I have a question about bocking in. Am I supposed to be very accurate? I notice that Jon applies pressure to put in darker shadows where they are dark and lighter shadows where they are lighter. The best I can do is revisiting the shapes and putting a second layer of strokes over the darker areas. Mine also looks very messy. I don't know if it is because I'm using krita and the brushes I have are different or what exactly, but I have a lot of trouble getting my shadow shapes to look as accurate as Jon's. Any ideas?

Laura Taylor

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30d

i'm realizing i don't think i know how to shade an egg. Jon added so much stuff I didn't see and made it look so sexy. in contrast, i felt i could spend an eternity on this drawing and it would just get more bizarre and geometric. ::sobs::

Melanie Scearce

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29d

Learning the basics of light and form will help you a ton when rendering. Once you know it, you can apply it to most any shape. Here's an old Proko video explaining how it works: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V3WmrWUEIJo A five part system is pretty common. Highlight, form light, core shadow, reflected light and cast shadow. Start out practicing on simple shapes and then move on to more complex. Once you have a working knowledge you will see where you can apply to the figure.

Kwame Alexander

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1mo

Here are my three assignments, plus a bonus. The portrait took an obscene amount of time to finish. I actually did the bonus first.

Rachel Dawn Owens

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1mo

You would probably enjoy this assignment more and take less time on it if you focused on designing rather than copying the reference. There’s a lot of camera distortion in that 3rd image especially that you managed to draw it exactly the same. Think about forms not features. Work big to small. Start with simple forms. Boxes and cylinders. Then the rest is just about shadow design and edge work. Don’t worry about details until the very end. I think you would get more out of this assignment if you focused on simple forms rather than coping the reference. thanks for sharing and nice work challenging yourself with these complicated subjects. Keep it up Heres a couple of study pages that might help you out:

c cosm

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1mo

I think the head came out too big and I probably should push the values more. Hope to learn a lot from the course.

Šimon Lánský

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2mo

Hello, I am starting your course and it's very informative so far, here is my attempt, which honestly turned out better than I expected. Any feedback would be very much appreciated! :)

@bland

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2mo

someonehelp

Benjamin Roseman

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3mo

Alright here's the spearman assignment. This took much longer than I wanted in to but here it is. Some of the brown underpainting still showing but this is as far as I'm going to take this. I think I need to get much better as simplifying my work and study more anatomy. I tried to alter/enhance the form a bit instead focusing on accurate representation. Let me know what you guy's think.

Melanie Scearce

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3mo

Awesome work! I like the effect of the underpainting showing through. And great call to interpret the pose rather than copying. You did a great job emphasizing that S curve. Only critique of mine is that the right leg above the knee is a bit short. It competes with the gesture to have that knee be higher than the left. I would move it down and maybe shave off a bit of volume in the left leg.

Rachel Dawn Owens

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3mo

You did great! I appreciate the quality of rendering on the forms here. It’s ok to take your time on detailed drawing like this. Keep practicing and the simplification will get easier. I think a few simple adjustments could add more depth to your figure. I made a draw-over for you here:

Juice

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3mo

Here is my assignment. First time i painted like this digitally and it was great fun! I did 3- value tumbnailes before i started like ive just learned from drawing basic course. After that i had a better clue of what value composition i aimed for. I only used maybe 5 brushes. Trying to use them all at once just makes me overwhelmed. I will learn the tools little by little. (I Upload this for second time because i found a little proportion issue i wanted to change that i now have fixed)

Melanie Scearce

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3mo

Good idea to use thumbnails to work out your values. This painting turned out awesome!

James Paris

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3mo

Hello ! This time I took my time and did every example ( First and Third pics were my firsts attempts , did them a WHILE ago ( 2 years actually ) the rest was done this month ) I would appreciate any feedback, I really pushed myself this time and would like to know if I can improve more. Ps : My Drawing tablet and my screen have different contrast, never know wich to trust so feel free to tell me if it lacks contrast :)

Melanie Scearce

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3mo

These are incredible @James Paris! Your hard work is definitely paying off. This critique I have is very minor because you have everything you need here for successful pieces, but hopefully it can help you moving forward. Your pieces are dark, but you can use that low-key value range to create a dramatic effect if you add contrasting higher values in strategic areas. Be mindful of what you want to the viewer to look at in your work and design accordingly :)

Giorgi Karkuzashvili

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3mo

Really took my time with those. I really liked the painterly approach mentioned in the first demo!

James Paris

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3mo

I like the style !

Benjamin Roseman

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3mo

Last little study I'll get on the assignments

Carlo Julian

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3mo

My attempt for the first photo reference. After a while I started to lose a sense of how much contrast the image had and wasn't sure if I it was too contrasty or not enough. Same with the overall brightness. After viewing it on multiple devices, like my phone and computer monitor I got even more confused! I also think I overworked it and started looking at small details too much. Any feedback is appreciated. I'm looking forward to painting the other three references.

Siddharth Gupta

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4mo

Any critics are welcomed

Benjamin Roseman

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4mo

I've had an issue with getting the line drawing to disappear under the painting. I keep at light, dark, and halftone, however the pencil still shows through.

@morelock

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4mo

Hey Benjamin, Cool study! I think what would really help, at a core level, is having a strong separation between light and shadow, and simplifying your values in general. Everything in steps. Right now the shadow on the arm is the darkest point in the picture, darker than even your occlusion areas and similar/darker than the hair. Also some more subtlety in the midtones and especially in the highlights. Too much core shadow or bright highlights will produce a "silver surfer" or chrome body look. With digital, you should be able to just remove the pencil layer once your values are roughed in. All those lines are just values edging against each other. Keep it up!

Melanie Scearce

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4mo

In my experience, using a watercolor brush pack or similar that's higher in transparency results in a lot of laying that ends up looking muddy, or the layin showing through -- which, is part of the appeal of watercolor I figure. I personally like using opaque brushes. This is a nice painting! I love her facial expression.

@john_rupert

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4mo

Enjoyable lesson. I think I need to plan out the values a little better.

LuckyMignon

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4mo

Here's mine! Learnings: maybe I should pick the colors to a palette instead of constantly picking new colors so that the values would stay more consistent...? Also I blended a lot with the soft brush which tends to create too airbrushed look. Also the edge quality suffers in my mind since soft and hard edges mix too inconsistently. Anyway, I'm happy I completed it!

Benjamin Roseman

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4mo

Here's my first attempt before using these reference photo's. I tried using multiple brushes and get an understanding of how they work. She's got an aura looks about her I know. I tinted the background after completing the figure should have done it beforehand. Let me know of anything improve the painting.