January 22, 2014 - 6:35pm — Worlds.Fool
Hello everyone, as you may or may not know I am still very new to this forum. The Endless Forest is a wonderful game and experience, so much so that it has drawn out the artist in me. Which says a lot considering that I don't draw very often.
That being said I am trying very hard to work with my tablet. Yes I have one, but I much prefer paper and pen rather than online drawing. However, with my deer anatomy lacking and wonderful pictures out there I can trace outlines of, I can't help but ask.
Could anyone give me tips for working with Paint Tool Sai? Many layers and practice is a given yes but I'm horible with recognicing layers and which to shade with. I always start with layer one being the vast outline, all together. Then I work on the pelt from lightest to darkest. Starter at Lightest (the white and pale colors of the fawns coat) to Whiter (The light tan to peach color of the pelt.) Darker (The chestnut and tan colors) to Darkest (the red and brown colors)
Then comes the shading and that where this get tricky, how do I start blending the colors? Do I make a new layer?
Any tips would be appreciated. Thank you, as you can see from one drawing i have I seriously need to work on my practice.
"However, with my deer
^
I'm going to just point out that tracing other peoples art is a horrible way to learn and not something you should be doing. If you are discovered posting art that has been produced by tracing the hard work of other artists on this site, you will be asked to remove it. The one exception to this is if someone has produced art and explicetly stated they are allowing people to trace it, in this case you should be crediting them for the lineart and following the creators rules in regards to how the lines can be used.
That said, if you would like I can put together some tips for learning to draw deer anatomy. I don't have SAI so I'm not the best person to advise you on shading in that program but hopefully another member of TEFc who uses it could help you out in that department.
What Tera said on the entire
to blend the colors, you use the water brush, oil water brush, or maybe blurr brush. Water & oil water both help mix the colors together to give it a paint-like effect. Blurr brush helps the colors transition smoothly. You can also use marker to blend, but it makes the strokes more edgy. Acrylic does the same thing as the oil water & water brushes, i think. it makes it more painterly-like.
to shade, set the color to black [or a very dark color that blends in with the pelt] and start putting strokes down. it may take a while for it to appear if you have it set on 100 blend, and it will be like using the pen brush if the blend effect is on 0.
another way to shade - open a new layer and just stroke with the airbrush tool at your favorite brush that looks like fur. then, set it to multiply, but make sure none of the strokes go too far onto the canvas; this'll look bad.
you can also use the shade and luminosity tools, but these are hard to control so i'm going to let you experiment.
Wait wait wait, what I meant
Sorry for the confusion!
I wouldn't trace at all, even
A tip that I have for using tablets: If the tablet screen isn't what you look at to draw, then tape a piece of paper over top of it. It will take away some of the weird 'disconnected' feeling that comes with switching over to digital work. I know it helped me a lot.