African Oliphaunt

I've never been great with presents. If it's someone I know well, I'm ok, but even then I never know how far to go. I like to make the recipient happy, but not uncomfortable. Alright, maybe I just think too much about this stuff and over-analyse. But anyway, this time I thought I might do something a little special.

Having spent quite a lot of time over the past few months basically learning how to draw and create art, I now have a creative tool that I can put to good use. My sister's birthday was coming up and I thought it might be nice to paint (can I still call it that if I'm using a computer?) something and use it as a birthday card.

She likes elephants. They're her favourite animal. I can kind of draw animals so I thought that's a good start.

Here's the first sketch.

I then added the outline and coloured the eyes.

I started with shadowing and then realised I had gone way too dark, too early. I did some colour editing on that layer to enhance the midtones, so in later images those shadows aren't so obvious. I also added that grey wash.

Used a fairly low opacity brush for the shadows and played around with the layer opacity to get it the right colour. I also added a foreground layer for the grass. The grass brush on CS4 is awesome. I've tried creating custom brushes and it's hard to get the settings just right. It's nice to have something so useful that just works right off the bat.

I used a really large brush to do the blue sky and used the grass brush again to create more...grass. I also had to add a white underlay to the elephant because the blue background kept showing through. I did this manually but I'm sure there must be an easier way. If anyone reading has any photoshop experience and knows a better way, I'd appreciate the info.

[click the image for full res]

I was also going to include this message as the inlay, but I didn't get around to it. I'm a bit of a sucker for that messy-but-somehow-neat script.

Sarah, if you're reading, Happy Birthday. Hope you liked the card.

Do How Photoshop I?

I had some more free time recently so I thought I would try practice shooping because I suck at photoshop. I think I'm ok at drawing using a tablet so I've managed to create decent images, but then I've ruined them every time I tried to add colour. Digital painting, it seems, requires skills I do not possess.

Trying not to let this crush me too much, I went back to basics and just watched scores of youtube tutorials. After an embarassingly long period of time, I managed to create my first passable painting.


Yup that's right, folks - a ball. Couldn't really get much simpler than that. However, it did teach me a lot about how the program actually works and the importance of layering. I also learnt the importance of keyboard short-cuts. These drastically speed up your work.

I learnt a lot, but it's frustrating not being able to create what you envisage. On this next painting I tried to be far more ambitious with the complexity and range of techniques I used.

First, a basic sketch. I decided on Samurai Jack. He's a simple, bold character and the artwork in that program was just so stunning. He felt like an appropriate choice.

Next using paths I created an outline. I've never used this tool before so it was a little hard to get used to, but it's just perfect for creating smooth lines.

Used the gradient tool here to create these...gradients. A very simple effect but adds depth and some shadowing to the image.

Finally I created a background using brushwork and colour overlays. This was probably the most complex part of the image. Many layers of varying opacities and effects are used to make the fiery red tones. [click on the image to view full res]


Pretty happy with the end result anyway. It's nothing incredible but it looks decent and, more importantly, I've learnt a lot on the way.

Final point. If you haven't watched Samurai Jack, just do. Incredible animation and style. It's one of the best (if not the best) Western animations about.