Step by Step English Bulldogs

English Bulldog Breed Art

English Bulldog

     Well I just finished a commission this past weekend, and I am making good progress on another commission, so I thought it was a good time to get started on my next addition to my Breed Art Series. I have already done the Labrador Retriever and the German Shepherd, so now I am doing the English Bulldog. Here is the line drawing to the left. Reference photos are from my own collection and creative commons. I will be doing this painting in steps and showing how I do stuff as I go. The next few blog posts will be on this. Hopefully this helps people understand digital art a little better and maybe even learn something new.

     So all my breed art series is in this montage style with the head study and then the smaller full dog profile. I try to get different coat colors when  I can. I basically sketched this one out in the app Procreate on my iPad Air 2. I like using the HB pencil for the sketch portion and I choose blue for the color because it shows up better than grey. So we are just in the beginning steps. I try and draw all the major guide lines i'll need while painting. All the painting will be done on a separate layer from the line drawing, and I will eventually delete the line drawing in the end. This is all I have so far so stay tuned for next weeks blogpost and progress on our Bulldog painting.

Thanks for looking!

Eye Tutorial

Simple Eye Tutorial

     Today I am going to do a simple eye tutorial. If you do portraits, whether animal or people, the eyes are the most important part of the painting. I start all my portraits with the eyes. If I can get the eyes right, the rest of the portrait will usually fall into place.
   
     An important part of drawing or painting eyes is knowing the basic anatomy of the eye. This will go a long way to getting them to look realistic. The major parts are the pupil, which is the black part in the middle, the iris which is the colored portion of the eye and the sclera which is the white part of the eye. In animal portraits, most of the time the sclera won't be visible. Parts that are often forgotten in drawings and paintings, but help the eye look real are the catchlight or highlight. This is the reflective part of the eye and adding it will help make the eye look wet and round. There is also the eyelid shadow at the top part of the eye. This is the area of the eye that is usually darker because of the eyelids shadow on the eye. It is often forgotten in painting, but when added, makes a more realistic eye.
   
     Last part before the tutorial, make sure you know the specific eye anatomy of the animal that you are drawing. Many animals have different shaped pupils, but this isn't noticed by the artist and they may end of drawing an incorrect eye. A couple of examples are that cats have oval pupils, not round like people or dogs. I've seen horses drawn with round pupils countless times, but in reality they have rectangular pupils! Snakes have slit or oval pupils as well, so it pays to know the anatomy of the subject you are going to draw.

Now I am going to use my cat Katie, whom I used for the fur tutorial. so lets get started.

Step 1: I start with a line drawing on the bottom layer. On a new layer, I take a dark black color and color in the pupil and the eye rims. I have it at about 80% opacity so build up color layers til I get the depth I want. Since I am working in Procreate, I am using the Round Brush at about 50% size.

Here you can see the different layers. Layers are great as they keep the parts separate and the colors wont get muddy and blend into each other before you are ready to blend them.

Step 2: On a new layer below the pupil layer, I add a medium yellow green color for the iris color. I add it as an even flat color for now.

Step 3: Next, I add a darker yellow green color on the same iris layer. I radiate this color out from the pupil in a fan like pattern. We will blend these iris colors together in a future step.

Step 6: Here we blended the two colors together on the iris layer.

Step 7: I add a medium brown color to the eye rim on the pupil layer. This can also be done on a new layer if you want as well. If you do it on a new layer, place that layer below the pupil layer but above the iris layer.

Step 8: I add some peachy and pink colors to the eye rim and blend  together with the brown and black of the eye rim.

Step 10: Here we add the eyelid shadow on the iris layer.

Step 11: Here the eyelid shadow is blended in so there aren't any harsh lines. Sometimes I will add the eyelid shadow on a separate layer above the pupil and iris layers. Either way works.

Step 12: On the pupil layer I add a light blue color to the lower eye rim and blend in. This adds a shine and makes the eyelid look wet and gives more realism.

Step 13a: On a new layer above the pupil layer, I add our highlights. I usually pick a very light blue almost white color. I never use just white though as I think it looks too harsh.

Step 13b: Here is the highlights. They look white here, but in reality they are a very pale bluish white. It depends where to put the highlight, but I usually add two to each eye and have them half on the iris and half on the pupil. This isn't a set rule though.

Step 14: Blend the highlight so there are no harsh lines. You can use an airbrush blender or the round brush blender on 90% opacity.

Step 15: I add some extra blues and greens to the iris layer and blend these in. You can add lots of colors to give the iris more interest. Irises are never just green, blue or brown. There are usually lots of different colors in there to make each eye unique.

Step 16: I went back and added more color to the highlights. At the very end, I will merge the pupil, iris and highlight layers together and then blend. I feather out the pupil into the iris and blend the highlight into both so that it looks natural.

Step 17: This is before the merging of layers, but at this point I will merge the layers together and then blend to get everything blended together and looking natural.


















     I hope you enjoyed this tutorial! It is very basic in how I approach eyes. I will spend a lot of time adding colors to the iris to add depth and interest and I will go back and forth a lot on this step.

I hope this helps anyone who is curious on how to draw eyes digitally!

Weekly Promotion for 5/20/16!

Weekly Promotional Painting

                                                                 

 

Secretariat

     In honor of the Preakness Stakes this weekend, I am offering another of my horse racing portraits as a limited time promotion. This one is my Secretariat Portrait . This is being offered as a 24x36 inch gallery wrapped canvas for $100. Offer is limited to 5 prints or until Sunday, May 22, 2016 at midnight. Be sure to check back each week for the new promotional painting of the week!

Thanks for looking

--Becky Herrera

www.beckysdigitalart.com

www.pixelpaintcreations.blogspot.com

How to Add a Canvas or Paper Texture to your paintings in ProCreate

Adding a Canvas Overlay In Procreate

     There are a lot of advantages to digital painting, but sometimes the resulting paintings can lack a texture. I notice this a lot in my digital pencil drawings. To remedy this, I like to add a paper texture to my drawings.

Drawing Paper Overlay

     Since I like to paint and draw digitally in a realistic style, I also like to add that extra texture of a drawing paper or canvas to my art. All my digital pencil drawings have an added overlay, and only some of my digital paintings will have the canvas overlay.

     The border collie drawing to the left has a rough paper texture added, which I think lends to a more authentic look.

Contemplation with  canvas overlay

     This is my snow leopard painting, "Contemplation" with a canvas overlay. Now I don't always add the canvas overlay to my digital paintings for a couple reasons, mostly if the painting is going to already be printed on a canvas wrap, the canvas overlay can actually muddy the colors. A canvas overlay is great though if the painting is going to be printed on paper,  it gives that oil painting feel. I have actually had people think that my paintings and drawings were done in traditional methods, especially with the overlays. I am always honest though with how my art is made, so when I upload to the printer of my choice, I always state that it is a digital painting or drawing.









     So here is how I add the canvas or paper overlay.
First, you need the canvas or paper texture of your choice. You can go on google and find paper textures under public domain websites or you can purchase the texture off sites like Shutterstock or Getty Images. I actually have found that another art program that I use, Art Rage has some awesome textures so I will open Art Rage on my iPad, click create new painting.You can then choose paper or canvas and how rough or smooth you want the texture.

     Next, I will save the Art Rage canvas as a new painting and export to my camera roll. You can then import this canvas texture into your Procreate painting as a new layer. In the image to the right, you can see the canvas as the top layer. I have it invisible right there, but when clicked on it will cover the painting.

     Now with the texture layer selected, go to the blend modes for that layer. You just tap the N next to the layer to bring up blend modes. Default mode for the layer will be Normal, but you want to go down to Multiply. This will allow your painting to show through the canvas or paper layer, but still allow the texture to show.






















































     Here you can see the close up of the canvas texture on my painting. It adds that much more of a finished or polished look to it. You can  use this method with many types of textures, not just paper and canvas. There are many cool effects that can be created using this method and the blend modes in digital painting. Try out all the different blend modes and see what you can create.


I hope you enjoyed this quick and dirty digital painting tip!


--Becky Herrera
www.beckysdigitalart.com
www.pixelpaintcreations.blogspot.com

May 13th Weekly Promotional Painting!

Weekly Promotional Painting

     Well it's that time again! Even though it is Friday the 13th, you could be lucky and snag a deal on this weeks promotional painting. I am offering my German Shepherd Breed Art Painting as a 24x36 inch gallery wrapped canvas for only $100! This offer is good until Sunday 5/15/16 or until 5 prints have sold! 

Be sure to check back next week to see what the promotion will be or hit subscribe to have any new updates delivered to your inbox.

Thanks for looking!

--Becky Herrera

www.beckysdigitalart.com

www.pixelpaintcreations.blogspot.com

Realistic Fur Tutorial

How To Paint Realistic Fur

     Today I am going to give a quick, basic tutorial on how I create realistic fur and hair. For this tutorial, I am using an iPad Air 2, a Wacom Bamboo Stylus, and the app Procreate. Procreate is a very versatile and intuitive app and is what I use 95% of the time to create my paintings.

     The first step to realistic fur, is to figure out which way the fur grows on your subject. It is important to have your brushstrokes follow the same growth pattern of the fur. Most fur grows the same way, out from the nose and eyes in  a fan like pattern. In the photo below, of my cat, Katie, you can see the red arrows show the direction of her fur growth. This is the same direction your brushstrokes will go.

Fur direction is out from the nose and eyes

     Next I make a quick line drawing on the first layer. In digital art, you can use a wonderful tool called layers. This allows you to draw and paint without ruining a top or bottom layer. My line drawing is always on a separate layer and I actually delete it when I complete a painting. I also make a separate layer for my color palette. I like having my color palette easily accessible so having it on a separate layer works for me.

     Here is the
line drawing on the left and on the right I have my basic color palette as well as some blocking in of color.







     So in the above images, I have the basic line drawing. This is on the bottom layer and will be deleted when the painting is completed. On the right is my basic color palette, again on a separate layer. I picked a couple different tan colors for the base color as well as a darker brownish black that will be used as a shadow color and for the stripes.

     Normally when I paint, I start with the eyes and paint those until completion. If I can get the eyes right, the rest of the painting should come out ok. I didn't do the eyes here for this tutorial, but will do an eye tutorial in the future. I also work sections of the painting to almost completion. Each section is on a separate layer, and then merged down towards the end. In the above right picture, you can see I laid in some base tan color.

     For fur and hair I use a round brush at various sizes and opacities. In digital art, there are unique brushes called stamp brushes that can simulate hair and fur, but I've never found those very useful in giving a realistic look. They can actually look artificial. The round brush may take longer, and be more repetitive, but the results are worth it.

Here you see the round brush highlighted. It is the round brush that comes with the app, but I have modified it slightly to be more opaque and have more of a narrow tail at the end of the brush stroke. This helps it create fur more effectively.

In the image on the left, I added the slightly darker tan color and on the right I started smudging in the direction of fur
growth.









      So in the next steps above, I add the slightly darker tan color and add it in with a large round brush at 75% opacity.  On the left you can see that I have blended these colors together, all with the growth of the fur.

     Now on a separate layer, I'll start to create the stripes of the tabby coloring.

Here I added more of the lighter tan colors and then added the darker stripe color roughly where they need to go. I turn off the bottom layer, and then smudge out my stripe layer as seen on the right.





     On the left above, I continue to add some of the tan colors on a new layer. I also add in my stripes roughly where they are supposed to be. My brush is full opacity and almost full size. I then turn off my base layer with the tans and concentrate on the striped layer. I smudge out my stripes using the round brush as a smudge tool. I use it at 75% opacity and about half full size.

Here I continue to add more stripe and base color, going back and forth. I then smudge the colors together. At this point I take my round brush smudge tool and shrink it to about size 12 or 15, pretty small and opacity between 60 and 75 %. I now pull individual hairs, pulling light over dark and dark over light, to mix the stripes in with the rest of the fur.

     Here you can see close ups of the fur detail. I am pulling the stripes out into the lighter color. Each smudge creates the illusion of hairs. You can shrink your smudge brush even smaller and get even more detailed hairs. This takes a lot of time but I love the results. At this point, I've merged the stripe layer down into the base color layer and continue to smudge the layers creating my fur details.

     You may notice that the layers are still kind of thin and transparent. I remedy this by duplicating my paint layer as shown below. Duplicating layers builds up color quickly. I can then either merge these down or even use another layer trick by multiplying the top layer. Using layer blend modes such as multiply can have interesting effects. Multiply, tends to intensify the saturation of the color.

     To continue on a painting, I'll follow the same steps above working on different sections of the painting at a time. I'll work each section on a different layer and once they are close to done, I'll merge down to the base layer. 

     Working in sections like this rather than working on the whole painting at once, allows me to focus on the tiny details in that section. It is like working on a bunch of mini paintings that will create a larger painting when completed. 

     There are many ways to create fur, and this is just one way. In fact, a lot of digital artists will probably frown upon this way, because of my use of the smudge tool. A lot of digital artists are not fans of excessive smudge tool use. I personally don't care, and really like the results I get with this method compared to others I have used. Again it take practice. Don't be afraid to use layers, experiment on a separate layer so you don't ruin your painting. If you don't like how something came out, delete that layer. In fact, you can duplicate a whole painting, layers and all in Procreate, so you can save  the whole painting before going and trying something experimental. Digital art can be very forgiving in this way, and I've learned a lot just trying new things on different layers.

     I hope this tutorial helps. If anyone has questions or comments, feel free to leave them in the comments section below!

--Becky Herrera

www.beckysdigitalart.com

www.pixelpaintcreations.blogspot.com

May 6th Weekly Promotional Painting!

The Duel

      Well tomorrow is the first Saturday in May! All horse racing fans know what that means, Derby Day! In honor of the Derby, I am offering my painting, The Duel, as this weeks limited time promotion. Check it out on my website here, http://beckysdigitalart.com/weeklypromotion.html?promotionid=194011
This painting depicts the battle between the 1978 Triple Crown Winner, Affirmed and his rival, Alydar, as they battle it out in Triple Crown. This painting was done on an iPad Air 2 using the app Procreate.

     I am offering this painting as a large 36x24 inch canvas print for only $100! The offer is good until Sunday, 5/8/16 at midnight or until 5 prints have sold.

     Good luck to all this years Derby contenders and may the best one win. Who knows, we might be lucky enough to have back to back Triple Crown winners like they did in 1977 and 1978.


--Becky Herrera
www.beckysdigitalart.com
www.pixelpaintcreations.blogspot.com

My Art Studio

     While most artists have a dedicated art studio or at least a dedicated portion of a room devoted to their art, I don't. Another reason I love digital art. When I used to work traditionally, I used to take over the kitchen table with all my colored pencils. I had a whole closet dedicated to art supplies like pencils, papers and a portfolio to store completed works. Living in smaller apartments, and wanting to go even smaller, this storage and accumulation of art supplies is not appealing. In fact, I would go weeks without drawing or painting because I hated lugging the supplies out and putting them away when done.
   
     Well now my art studio is small and portable and can be set up and put away in less than 3 minutes. It only takes up one laptop bag to store everything I need. The ultimate in portability! Another major plus is I never run out of supplies which is huge when there are no art store nearby.

     So what do I use and where do I set up? I mostly set up at either the kitchen table or my computer desk, but the key is being able to put everything away so quickly so it is out of the way when I am done.

     My main device, and where most of the work occurs is my iPad Air 2. I got it last year in June so it is a little less than a year old. I really want a, iPad Pro, but will wait until I get a little more use out of this one. I have the iPad in a slim case so it fits nicely in my purse or laptop bag. This allows me to paint and draw anywhere.

     My main program that I use on my iPad is Procreate. I use it 95% of the time, even though I have several other art programs loaded as well. Procreate is very intuitive unlike Photoshop. It is also a steal at only $5.99. in the app store. I will do a more in depth review on it as well as other art programs in the future.
   
     As for styluses, I've tried many. I have settled for a "dumb" stylus over the bluetooth ones as I've never really liked any of those. The one I use is a Wacom Bamboo stylus. You can replace the nibs when they are worn and it is very solidly built. It has a great feel that I haven't found in any other stylus. It is $14.99 on Amazon. It also comes in different colors but I just have the basic black one. I also have a Sensu Brush, but I don't use it nearly as much as the bamboo stylus.

     Last but not least, I use a Macbook Air 13 inch laptop. I came from a huge 17 inch PC laptop that was really a desktop replacement and not very portable. This new laptop is great. It is small but still has a decent sized screen. Since it is a Mac it works more naturally with all my other idevices. I love the amazing battery life and it does everything I need it to. I use the Mac to do final color corrections to my paintings. I use a program called Photoscape that is $30.00 in the Mac app store. I also use it to show my reference photos so I can zoom in to the details when needed. I store all my completed paintings on the Mac and on an external drive. I recommend the 13 inch Macbook Air to the smaller 11 inch one because of the SD card slot that the 13 incher has. I use a jetbook lite SD card to expand the storage of my Macbook by an extra 256 gigs, which is awesome, especially in the more limited harddrive space of these smaller laptops. This macbook starts up blazingly quick due to the SSD drive. It starts up as fast as my iPad. This machine completes my art flow as I will upload my completed paintings to my various online stores, color correct as needed and add any final touches that may be necessary.

     All in all, this is my art studio. It works great, is extremely portable, and I never run out of supplies. I still have all my traditional art supplies stored in that closet, but maybe I will one day free up that space by getting rid of the supplies I no longer use.

     What are your digital art studio setups? Feel free to comment below!

--Becky Herrera
www.beckysdigitalart.com
www.pixelpaintcreations.blogspot.com

Mother's Day Sale!

www.beckysdigitalart.com

I am offering a 25% off Mother's Day Sale on all my prints. Just use offer code HSPUDA at checkout to receive your discount! Offer is good until 5/7/2016!

Checkout the site at www.beckysdigitalart.com











--Becky Herrera
www.beckysdigitalart.com
www.pixelpaintcreations.blogspot.com