General rendering and problem-solving
Here is where I begin rendering the rest of the painting. I’ll start by making sure my darks and lights are strong enough, then start to work on details throughout the picture.
I use a lot of tools and filters to render, but these are the three most common:
1. The Paint Brush. I usually have it set it to a hard edge, with about 20% – 40% opacity. Of course, sometimes it’s more opaque, and sometimes it’s a softer edge, but that’s my workhorse setting. I set it to have the size controlled by my stylus, and the opacity control OFF. I play with the opacity setting as I go by typing in numbers (which changes opacity at 10% increments.) I change the size of the brush as I go with the brackets: “[" makes it bigger and "]” makes it smaller.
2. The Doge/Burn tool (which lightens and darkens the picture). I usually use the “highlights” setting at 10%.
3. The Smudge tool. This one is set to have the opacity controlled by the pen, and the size variation turned OFF. I find that a setting of about 80% gives me a lot of control here – a very light stroke will smudge just a bit, and a very hard stroke with smudge the heck out of a line.
I usually use the Smudge UNDERNEATH, and the Brush tool ON TOP, and use the Dodge/Burn to make adjustments as I go.
Note that as I got to this point, I was trying to find any major structural problems that remained. Boy, did I find one! The guy on the right needed his belt moved up – his upper body was too long. This sort of change gets harder and harder to do as the picture nears its final state, so try to find these things as early as you can.
When doing straight lines or hard edges of any sort, don’t forget to use paths and selections for nice, sharp edges. Any man-made element, from swords and straps to buildings and boards, will look sharper and more professional if you start with a selection. You can create the shape with the pen tool, then select the area you’ve drawn with the pen, as shown here:
If you’re doing small, detailed objects, try doing them larger first (in their own layer), then shrinking them down to the final size needed. They’ll have a crisper look that way. Also, if an object is to be repeated, be sure to leave it in a separate layer and copy/paste it everywhere it’s needed. Here, the detailed doodads on the ends of the leather straps were done this way. Note that I resized, rotated, and changed value where needed:
Now, I went a little out of order on this one and put the building behind the characters in AFTER I’d almost finished them. I wanted to do this because I just wasn’t sure quite how much detail I wanted to include, and thought that I’d know better after I saw the rendering in the foreground. You’re allowed to make up stuff as you go like this! Never get so caught up in a rigid order of process that you can’t be a little spontaneous.
Perspective
So, now that I was going to put in the blocks, it was important that I do it with the correct perspective. To get the perspective right, I use the Pen tool as a guide. First, I find the Horizon line (the point at which the “camera” is situated or they eye of the viewer, if you will) and draw that in. Then the perspective lines come out of that. This takes a bit of background knowledge of perspective, and I’d suggest studying at least one book on the subject. Once you know the principles of perspective, using the Pen tool to create your guide lines becomes quite easy.
