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Comic Book Action & Watercoloring

Lesson 36 from: Painting With Adobe Photoshop

Jack Davis

Comic Book Action & Watercoloring

Lesson 36 from: Painting With Adobe Photoshop

Jack Davis

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Lesson Info

36. Comic Book Action & Watercoloring

Lessons

Class Trailer

Day 1

1

Introduction

37:33
2

Why Do Expressive Painting

21:39
3

Adobe Bridge Setup & Image Optimizing

27:03
4

Jack's Painting Presets

15:18
5

Enhancing Source Images

24:01
6

Photo Hand Tinting & Workflow Options

26:23
7

Working with Brushes & Palettes - Part 1

20:10

Lesson Info

Comic Book Action & Watercoloring

Let's do another since that sketch went over so well, I'll give you another one that I'm giving to you all, and I'll just run it and you'll see that this is fun, and this actually goes into that idea of graphic design, and I'm going to run this on a couple images so actions is ones that I've given you is part of this set of painting actions is the comic book action that I mentioned before little lichtenstein. So I'm gonna just click and run it. You don't have to do anything to it. It does do a number of things to your file, and I mentioned this kind of liechtenstein exaggerated half tone dot scenario, and it actually does it in science yellow, magenta, uh, and black it's not using an rgb half tone dot mention this yesterday that actually converts your image in to see him. Why kay and back to be able to run that? But it's a fun filter, and especially since retro and offset printing and old printing that was perfect purposely out of registration, all these things can be kind of fun, so t...

he fact that we are going from here to here is certainly going to give you some cool, groovy, graphic design effects, and this is where and see if we've got this filter, let me open up this image we've got this in light room right here I think this one let's zoom up on this one will open up this one here. So this is that one that I mentioned this one that was done for the america's cup race down in st thomas originally done an illustrator taking advantage of the grade ian's their actions comic book coming up and so a very different look so for though all of you doing you know your rave party posters and everything else it should be a big hit here in the bay area it's just a very, very different look to the standard you know, hard edge computer graphics that's got a nice, fun, funky look to it and I came up with it. It also has about a zillion different steps to it in order to do it, but basically there's a filter to notice half tone dot and to do it correct you wanted to convert your image into process colors sigh in yellow magenta in black. So that's another action that I've given to all of you here and of course you could find tune it if there was something in this this action actually what it does the first step because I knew that if I did that to somebody's original they'd go what did you do? So I purposely automatically made a duplicate of your file so the first thing that that action does is it leaves your original alone and takes your copy and does the work to the copy so if you wanted to combine these two I actually purposely didn't want something as exaggerated is this to mess with yours so you can drag one into the other and then you can do whatever you like if like as an example that typography you want to use the regional topography you would just do a mask and paint in whatever you want so there's nothing stopping you from you know, combining these different techniques you know? Okay, so just as a reminder so that well if you if you like lichtenstein orwell war holes any world's pop effects then we'll call this a painting as well getting in there this is another start for one this is a very basic start of a, uh, image being changed from a hard edge graphic into a hand painting so that when we're probably will not get too we had that there just in case of emergency this one right here let's do exactly what we just did except now do it the right way actions we're gonna go into our sketch, we'll start off with our regular sketch we'll say thank you very much we'll do a regular sprayed strokes and now what we're going to do is we are going to add a watercolor on top of this okay, so we've got our pencil sketch we already know that we can put this inside of a brush for our watercolor effect by simply going up here and say edit defined pattern right don't bother naming it we have our image here we actually don't need this anymore we can put it into a folder if we like but really all we need to do is add a one of our papers we'll just go ahead and add our watercolor paper now that you guys have done this you go I got that I remember that maybe reduce the opacity so we'll do a little trace um and we will come up here too our layer created empty layer this is where we're gonna put our paint our pattern stamp tool watercolor large just exactly like we did with the tulip just a little bit ago in this case again we're taking a hard edge photograph could be a logo could be clip art could be anything and I'm gonna come up here and d'oh a watercolor wash to see how big my brushes do exactly what we would do with the tulip but now we're going to do it really rough with our manic in here I'm going to reduce that down just a little bit more so I can see where that neck is so now our story is going to be just because they're of our subject matter we've got this you know, surreal mannequin versus a pretty flower it's automatically going to do all the wonders well shading for us we've got all that range of tones here inside the mannequin because of how it was enhanced. Of course, now you all know the enhancing procedure in light room or a c are so that's not you've got that down pat, we're going to come up here and let's use that original size is actually that big, so now I'm going to do a wash speaking of wash, I almost brought in and war a shirt that I have with kaylie on it and for those of you who are brown coats, in other words, fans of john sweden's flyer firefly universe that was our trivia question for the first day is what famous tv character's name was wash and that is the answer is wash from the tv show fire flight by john sweden, director of the avengers and the new tv show joss sweden has a new tv show coming back on the air, which is called agents of shield it's a continuation of the avenger story as a tv weekly tv show and agent coulson is back alive. You're going what you're doing, jack yeah, well, I'm painting and I'm trying to fill empty space but doing trivia did you watch the movie fire fire? Wasn't there a movie there was it's called serenity and it's excellent don't watch it until you've actually seen the tv shows, because there's a huge spoiler in there, but it is a great backstory, there's also a whole series of comic books on firefly, because for those of you who are firefly geeks as an example, you want to know what is book another great name, what his books backstory, he's, a preacher, a pastor missionary also happens to know way too much about ways of killing and mercenary and guns and things like that, and the comic books explain where book got hiss his backstory. So all those questions that were left because firefly was canceled way too soon are explained in the comic books. So that's a great thing, forget forget buying the class. You just got the price of admission by finding out what was books back story, and now, you know, you can read about it in the comic books, okay, so and here I'm actually going to do a little, um, strokes in here to get a little bit of kind of a model look on here, other questions while I'm finishing this up in a second, we're gonna add that sketch that was our starting point on top of this, and you're going to see where I'm going with this. Ah, and says that you had said that you were going to show us how to turn a horizontal picture into a verbal one. Yes, and retain the main elements. Yes. Okay. I said, please don't let him forget to do good. I like that. Thank you for that reminder. I will not forget that that is using content or scale, and it is freaky. Cool. All right, well, q and I was going to chuck, maybe you could we're doing question answer right now. So even though the people are, we're doing question answer right now, so well, I continue to paint, go ahead and answer ask your question, ok, well, this questions had come up from cayenne, and I'm not sure if you actually address this on day one, but the question was talking about when you're filling up your brushes, how do you how do you basically clean that? Your palate? That is, when you're talking about the mixer brushes specifically what you're talking about there's really not another brush that even gives you that option of the cleaning method, and I'll just jump over here to the mixer brush to answer that question, and that is this little button right here this is whether you want to load the brush with each stroke and this one right here clean the brush after each stroke so these are the two icons that you use on whether you want to clean it whether you want to keep using it it really it's it's a wonderful concept because it's actually how a real brushwood work most times in the digital realm um you don't want it to stay dirty you want to it to be a fresh dip into your color well and so those options are if for some reason dirty brushes turn you on or there's some affect your going for um dirty brush so jack can had a actually clarification um they'd like to know how to clean the paintings out of the brushes you mean like this pattern right here that I'm using you just you can't just simply choose another brush if I want to move to the tulip or whatever you're selecting the photograph is in the brush because you're choosing it in this palette this pattern selector inside the options bar for the pattern stamp and you don't ever clean out that that actually is a really, really good question because you should because guess what? That's the entire document is sitting there in the pattern and that is part of the memory footprint for photo shop so that's actually is a really, really good question and that's why the pattern stamp should not be how you clone photographs code wise, I hate to say it it's really silly to force a person to make a pattern out of a photograph in order to use it as a painting because you're right, they do stay in the memory and you should clear it out when you're done with the painting, you should go into your palate and you should come up here and if you hold down your option key, you'll notice that becomes a scissor so you can actually throw that out and it's no longer being part of your memory, you're still gonna have that photograph elsewhere so you can still use it, right? It's not just that's, not where you're going to store your photographs but a really good question because that does take up memory and that's not a good use of clamoring. Okay, great, very good. Okay, so we've got our photograph here we've done another watercolor one more watercolor, something a little bit more expressive how do we add the density to this image? Just duplicated command j so now we've got our little watercolor mannequin I'd probably do some more related to our neck here, but that certainly makes it a more graphic element. We've got our little actions like our edge enhance will go ahead and do it um ej enhance extreme not only regular edge in hands but extreme ok, so now we've got some real exaggerated edges to it may I take that down? I don't know I'm actually I'm thinking that the lighter washed because what we're going to do now is this group at the bottom what does this have in it? This has my sketch I've only was using this part when I made a pattern out of it but this entire group is my sketch and this group can be brought to the top and this group can actually have something like multiply applied as a blend mode so what I can do is I can actually use multiply or color burn or linear burn is another nice one to add a sketch really effect even and uh hand painting is being done sort of speak on top of it so you're combining of a kind of sketch look by something like that little sketch technique and again I can reduce that opacity so it's more subtle and combination depend upon whether I want to emphasize the painting or the sketch maybe the sketches at one hundred percent and again this thes painting layer is way reduced down so it's mainly sketch with just a little bit of color one hundred percent whatever you whatever you'd like to do so um that is just as you come up with these techniques I actually I love the the watercolor technique because it's such a quick easy way to do a coloring based upon a real photograph or real logo or clip art or anything you get this wonderful organic coloring, and then you can add it to either really hard edge graphic, like your real logo rial typography like that poster of santa cruz or, in this case, a very graphic photographs like the mannequin. So this ability to add hard edge and soft edge organic with graphic for me I love I love playing with that with both of those. What else are we going to do for the final? We're going to do it. We're going freak people out with some third party filter or some other ways of imitating filters. If we can, we're going to actually even, um, well, see, we may even project my iphone into our recordings and show you some of the apse. If not, I have most of the apse actually on my computer as desktop. Perhaps so we're working other ways of doing it, which again, like this could be a situation where you use a third party out for something and then combine it with a hand technique and photoshopped. We're basically gonna have more fun, all right?

Class Materials

bonus material with purchase

Painting Files

Ratings and Reviews

Shannon
 

Okay, I'll be first. Jack has an easy, approachable way of teaching. It was more like being in the room with him, watching over his shoulder as he created something utterly new and exciting. Even when he worked on images he had done many times, I never sensed boredom or a lack of enthusiasm. He was patient with questions and answered them completely. I hope Jack enjoyed this way of teaching as much as the world enjoyed watching. Maybe he'll find more to share. I know I'll sign up for his next one. This workshop inspired me to start creating art again. I'm slowly losing my sight and sad to say, I was starting to let it get to me. As I watched Jack, I tried just a few things and realized that I can do this. Digital art is much easier for me than pencil and paper because of the technology. I miss the pencil and paper drawing, of course, but this is so much FUN! The techniques that Jack shared are wonderful and the results rockin' ... or as Jack says, bitchin'. Thanks to Jack and creativeLIVE I'm back in my head in a good way.

Shannon
 

Okay, I'll be first. Jack has an easy, approachable way of teaching. It was more like being in the room with him, watching over his shoulder as he created something utterly new and exciting. Even when he worked on images he had done many times, I never sensed boredom or a lack of enthusiasm. He was patient with questions and answered them completely. I hope Jack enjoyed this way of teaching as much as the world enjoyed watching. Maybe he'll find more to share. I know I'll sign up for his next one. This workshop inspired me to start creating art again. I'm slowly losing my sight and sad to say, I was starting to let it get to me. As I watched Jack, I tried just a few things and realized that I can do this. Digital art is much easier for me than pencil and paper because of the technology. I miss the pencil and paper drawing, of course, but this is so much FUN! The techniques that Jack shared are wonderful and the results rockin' ... or as Jack says, bitchin'. Thanks to Jack and creativeLIVE I'm back in my head in a good way.

a Creativelive Student
 

Thank you Jack Davis. Having tried to paint, both in the real and digital worlds, this is the first time I have seen a comprehensive demonstration of the techniques and philosophy for the artist. This course is valuable for any aspiring artist, digital or otherwise. By the way thank you CreativeLIVE for the long form training space you offer both the teachers and students. Jack is inspirational, talented and sometimes funny. Watching him paint in real time is by far the most impressive sight but the information about why is more valuable. Overall this course will give you ideas, knowledge and skills (if you practice). I highly recommend this course for anyone that has tried to paint in the past and was underwhelmed by the results.

Student Work

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