Digital Painting in Grayscale
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lesson video
Digital Painting in Grayscale
courseDigital Painting FundamentalsSelected 2 parts (97 lessons)
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assignments 187 submissions
@philipp_stein
Hey jo people,  here are my submissions for the assignment, I spend about two evenings on one piece, my most obvious weak points I think are the hands and feet.  Something that I really need to work on is keeping a consistent edge quality when working with a textured brush, as I find myself losing control more often than not and getting a muddied result in the end. I hope you like my pieces and feedback of any sort is greatly appreciated.
LESSON NOTES

In this digital painting fundamentals lesson you’ll learn about grayscale painting from reference! Jon shows you how to lay-in an accurate initial drawing and then work with shapes and values. He’ll also show you some ways you can utilize your software to its full potential. 

Related Links:
Getting Started with Digital Painting
How to Draw a Figure
Digital Painting Basics - Simple Forms to Complex Paintings

DOWNLOADS
zip
Assignment-Images.zip
20 MB
mp4
digital-painting-in-grayscale.mp4
480 MB
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digital-painting-in-grayscale-captions-english.srt
25 kB
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digital-painting-in-grayscale-captions-spanish.srt
28 kB
ASSIGNMENTS

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. 

Newest
andres ovalle
And two more to go!
Alison Shelton
I feel good about what I did here. I like the impressionistic feel to it.
andres ovalle
The hardness of the brushes is still a challenge for me. I will love to get rid of the lineart, hope this course will help me to achieve.
Jonathan Fisk
I'm very new to digital painting and painting in general, so I opted for a tomato as my subject so I could focus more on learning process and the software; for the same reason, I just used the Procreate round brush, rather than one with a texture/behavior I'd have to learn at the same time as everything else, and I stuck to just 6 values. I definitely have a ways to go, but I'm still fairly happy with the results and I learned a lot along the way about how to use the brush and render more skillfully.
Jonathan Fisk
Attempt #2 after watching the demos! For this one I used the Filbert-Thick-Wet-Clean brush from the supplied brush pack since I wanted to try a looser and more painterly look, and I'm really happy with the results! I tried to go much less "paint by numbers" with my sketch and instead let myself iteratively feel it out. If I wanted to spend more time on it, I'd play a lot more with edge control (e.g., sharp, highly defined edges with the leaves, medium edges with their shadows, and very soft / almost negligible edges separating the values in the shadow region of the tomato, especially the lower left. All that said, I learned a lot while doing this piece and had a lot of fun!
Hauke Fallenbeck
Here's my assignment. Coming back to painting after a big break. Have done digital painting for some time, but I never learned properly with courses or school so I'm looking forward to the course. My biggest problem is either rushing and having everything look cheap or putting in so much work, but never get a good balance with texture / edges / softness and usually it just looks too soft. Didn't notice the example videos so I took references I found online and will now watch it afterwards,
@deadsm
2mo
Theres a lot I feel like I still need to sort out with figures but hopefully turning this into a project helped me learn more about keeping a 3-value system readable. I may need to go back and do more studies in the figure Drawing class before moving forward. Self critique: Proportions are not consistent. (See head of sitting figure) gesturally these could be improved. Values are not showing color -> greyscale value instead everything is rendered like a clay matcap. Soft and hard edges are not used to emphasize focus. (See lost edges) Overall the biggest issues start with the sketches and unified shapes. Perspective and lighting are present but do not work with the gesture to create a mood.
Harry
3mo
Hi There, First post and first full figure drawing ever - found it really challenging across the board, particularly organizing the values and rendering. Any feedback/criticism on it is much appreciated, thanks!
@ecodoggi
3mo
Hey! I know this is a bit late after your initial post, but I think this looks great! I think overall, you captured the form and gesture of the sitter well. Furthermore, I think you did a nice job at placing down your values. I would only encourage a bit more work on rendering the forms and blending between values to create areas of either distinctly hard or soft edges. If I squint, your values blur into a really convincing image--how far you go depends purely on the style you're aiming to achieve. Great job again!
Harry
3mo
Just a quick update to say I had a crack at refining the upper back in light to be a bit more cohesive + more clean up.
Caitlin
4mo
I finally was able to do the lessons over again! It took me a bit since I was following each assignment with the tutorial, but these are all my second attempts. I wasn't able to finish the lady posing as I was struggling with the shading and had already spent a significant amount of time on the drawing, but I pushed myself to finish the portrait! These drawings have spanned from the past few months, but I feel like I've improved vastly, especially on the portrait. There are still some things that are incorrect, odd, or need tweaking, but overall, I'm happy with my work. Any critique would be greatly appreciated! First attempts are in my profile if your curious
Enzo Emilio Parente
Hi, this is my second attempt
Enzo Emilio Parente
Hi, this is my attempt. First time I draw with Photoshop. I really need to find (or create) the right brushes for me because I don't feel comfortable with those I've used so far. I've already learnt a lot with the first lessons. I'll keep submitting my exercises. Thanks!
Melanie Scearce
Hey @Enzo Emilio Parente, this is a lovely digital painting. Fabulous work. I wanted to offer this suggestion -- if you want a more natural appearance, bumping up the lightness from 100% black to about 90% would help. It's a small change but has a big effect on softening the shadows. It's personal preference of course but using pure black can feel a bit jarring since it doesn't often occur in nature. Hope that helps!
Jose Carvalho
Desafiante mais muito legal
Jose Carvalho
Rachel Dawn Owens
This is looking good. I love the expressive brush strokes. It gives the drawing energy. I think you could push that energy even more if you harmonized the shapes together more. Rendering each individual ab is distracting from the overall idea of the painting. Find the bigger shapes of value and build from there. Think about how the different shapes connect together. I made an extreme example here- i hope this is helpful. Keep it up!
Kiki
4mo
I haven’t done real life gesture drawings in years as I’ve been focusing on original concept art but this has sparked a new interest in it. I’ll definitely be practicing it more often now. Your assignment critique video was really helpful in fixing my own pieces :)
Rachel Dawn Owens
Wow! These look amazing!! Your studies look even better than the photos! Nice!!
@janestra
4mo
Patrycja
4mo
Hello everyone, the real time video on this painting doesn't work for me. Is anybody having the same issue? Also was this done only in one layer?
Patrick Bosworth
Hey @Patrycja! I was able to play the real-time demo for this one. If you're having trouble playing a video, clearing your browser cache may help, if you're still running into difficulty feel free to reach out directly and I'll see what we can do. I believe Jon was working on only one layer for this demo, trying to emulate a traditional painting process.
Azmerath
5mo
I know its a bit rough, and i kinds went a bit lazy at the hands, probably go back and try to fix em, but here my practice and ref
@nekki
5mo
Hi everyone! Need some feedback, please:)
Shaun Friedberg
I am not a professional so forgive me for chiming in, I mean no offence… This looks really great! There is so much to love about it. If I were to give a critique it would be that certain forms feel thick and out of place, namely the Face, and the Gun, and her right knee, looks like she has 2 knees. The gesture is superb, I really feel the weight and energy.
Ariana Peralta
Hi everyone, I'm not able to download the practice files. Every time I try, I get an error message. Is there anyone who can help me, please? :) Thank you!
Martin M
5mo
What kind of an error message do you get? The assignment files are in a zip format. So after downloading you will need to first unzip the container before you can use the images.
Martin M
6mo
This first assignment of the course does not feel beginner friendly while the course is marked as "all skill levels". Don't get me wrong, I know I have a lot to learn. And I want to learn about these fundamentals. And I see a lot of content mentioned during the video. But it is not broken down into specific skills to practice or assignments to focus on. I might be biased as I am currently taking the drawing basics course. The chapter there on values is really valuable (pun intended). While over here I feel like we went over a whole chapter worth of painting techniques in a demo video. The first demo video covers: grouping of values, shapes, edges, splitting values into light and shadow and keeping them separate, value steps (phrase like "going 2 steps down on my value" only make sense if you learned the value scale before) , layers (I only noticed during my second watch that there are specific points where he creates new layers. The video is edited in a way that you don't really see how many or which layer is being worked on) This is all super interesting to hear. Clearly this is a master sharing their process and it must be great for intermediate and advanced painters. But for a beginner like me this has been many hours of struggling with the tools and concepts. I see the mistakes in my painting and I struggle to fix them without introducing new mistakes. I want to get into painting. But perhaps this course expects us to already be able to paint traditionally before starting these lessons on digital painting.
@cattlewagon
Here’s my go at the assignment. It took me a while so I have to admit I got a little impatient towards the end, I’m also less familiar with the anatomy of the legs than I am the arms and torso, I’m happy with how it turned out overall though Feedback very welcome :)
Melanie Scearce
Great work, @cattlewagon. I really like how you painted the forms in the torso. It feels very three dimensional. One thing I noticed is that you used the lightest value throughout the figure. It was noticeable to me because the foot has the same value as the light part of the hip, ribs and forearm -- if you squint at your painting they all have the same visual importance. If you bump down the highlight values as you move down the figure you can give the effect of light falloff. You can also use this technique of limiting your lightest value to specific areas to draw the eye to those areas. In my draw over of your painting, you can see that I'm putting the emphasis on the triangle of the forearm, hip, and ribs area. Where you direct attention to is personal preference, but it's a powerful tool. Hope that's helpful!
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