Luckily for you, today we’ve put together 7 solid-as-a-rock techniques for quickly improving your work.

Interestingly enough, they’re all based around a single premise: referencing.

Let’s get started by diving into exactly what referencing is, and how it can help you.

Step 1 – What is a Reference?

A reference is something you look at to inspire your own art, and possibly draw direct elements from. It may be a photo, a sculpture or anything from the real world. Everything you draw is based on a reference, even if that reference is based on a memory, as drawing itself is a way of copying the reality. Using a reference in the moment of drawing highly increases your learning speed.

In Photoshop you’ll usually use a reference from the Internet. It means you need two documents open – the reference and your new document. There are two ways to place your reference for comfortable work. If you’ve got a big screen, you can work in Standard Screen Mode (it’s default), with the reference window on the top. Just grab it and move it out of its place to get this effect.

When you work on a laptop, you’ll probably want to use Fullscreen (click F for it). In this mode you’re not able to use multiple screens, so you need to place the reference in the workspace. Go to Image > Canvas Size to make the canvas bigger and paste your reference. Lock its layer to avoid mistakes.

Step 2 – I Can’t Find The Perfect Pose!

References can be great for estabilishing a pose, and you don’t even need the same object/creature you want to draw (they just should have similar anatomy). If you take a good look at your reference, you’ll realize every object consists of simple shapes, like circles and lines.

Now you just need to draw these simple shapes. Forget about rulers – you need to see and understand the measures. See proportions, not distances! As a result of this process, a lot of concepts will be planted in your mind. It will be a vector type structure, easy to reuse and modify!

Here’s the simple sketch. It may not be perfect, measuring with your eyes instead of other tools takes time to master. It’s worth the effort though – everytime you do this you’ll improve.

Now you need to get the skeleton dressed. You can imagine you’re using a tight stocking for every part – it will bulge on the circles and straighten on the lines.

If you were using the reference in the step before, now it’s time to get rid of it. Forget about that stock picture, you don’t need it anymore. Create something that’s really yours (like this fire goathorsepard).

Step 3 – The Colors Don’t Match

Sometimes a picture draws your attention even if it’s not very realistic or skillfully painted, and vice versa – the technique is perfect, but it still doesn’t look ok. There may be a problem with colors – they’re more important than you think. Look at these two dragons: the first is artificial, like a toy, while the other gives more realistic feel.

How can a reference help? Just find a photo with colors that you’d like to use in your work – you can create your own palette of colours with it. First, clear your current Swatches palette (hold Alt and click them very fast or just download an empty set and load it.

Now use the Eyedropper Tool (I), pick a color you like and click New Swatch icon. You can name it and then it’s being added to your list. Don’t pick more than 5-10 colors – they should be a base for you, something to create more shades of. The colors you pick should be as varied as possible.

Once your list is ready, save it for future use (a meaningful name of the file will help you find it later).

You can also use this trick to prepare a list of colors of particular object, like an animal’s skin. This way you’ll be able to use its realistic colors without any reference in the future.

And here’s a sample of how you can use it:

Step 4 – I Want the Picture to Look Interesting

Composition is a way of how particular elements of a whole are placed. If it’s correct, the viewer sees exactly what the artist wanted them to see. Otherwise, their eyes may wander and pass over the most important elements. It’s because the composition tells what’s most important and what to look at.

You may have heard about golden ration, but if you still doesn’t understand how to use it in practice, you can find a reference with a good composition and analyze it.

Once you understand where to place the most important elements, you can draw your own picture using the same composition:

Step 5 – I Don’t Know How to Make This Part…

Even if you’re an experienced artist, sometimes you struggle with a detail. You can try to guess how the details should look, but what’s highly recommended is finding a reference image to complete your knowledge.

A detail reference is the easiest to find, because it doesn’t need to be perfectly accurate. You don’t care about the perspective or other elements of the picture – you just take this one object and analyze it, step by step.

Step 6 – Biceps, Triceps, Quatrceps?

References are a perfect way to learn anatomy. No matter what your style is, if you want to break the rules, you need to learn them first. The Internet is full of references for both humans and all kinds of animals.

When you want to learn anatomy from the reference, first you need to establish the pose (Step 2). Then you can look for other basic shapes (mostly loose ellipses) and redraw them on your own. It’s good to treat it as an exercise and do it regularly until you’re familar with body structure.

Step 7 – Endless Possibilities

References aren’t just learning tool – they bring inspiration and let you create complex pieces. You can prepare “raw” (unblended) photomanipulations of references and then create something totally new of them! See where your imagination can take you.

Step 8 – Where to Find Reference Images?

It would be the best if you had your own base of photos (visit the zoo!), but if you don’t, you can still use these sites:

• deviantArt stock gallery
• posemaniacs.com – a base of human anatomy references
• anatronica.com – interactive human anatomy
• practice all kinds of animals
• practice human poses
• a huge base of chargeable materials

Wrapping Things Up

As you can see, references are very powerful tool to become better artist. But, be careful – references are just a part of your learning process and you should treat them as a way to get better. Use them for exercises mainly, because the more you rely on a reference, the more originality and your own creativity you lose. Use them as long as you need to get skills you want, and then enjoy your knowledge!

What Do You Think? Leave a Comment Below!

Hopefully this article has helped you better understand how to use references in your artwork.

We would really appreciate you leaving a comment below. Did you find the techniques explained helpful? Perhaps you have something to add?

We’ll respond to every comment, so let’s get a discussion going.

If you have ever tried to paint metal, you probably know how tricky this kind of surface is.

It tends to reflect everything and distorts the reflected image. It’s also very difficult to mix in the natural colors reflected in the metal without flattening the metallic surface.

In today’s design lesson digital painting master Monika Zagrobelna will teach you how to paint metal that is richly detailed, reflective and never flat. Once you’ve mastered this technique you can apply the techniques to most reflective surfaces, across a range of works.

Ready to master a new skill? Let’s get started!

Final Image

As always, this is the final image that we’ll be creating:

Step 1

Most tutorials about metal teach you how to paint a metal ball. But who really paints metal balls? Full, complicated armor will be better example. You can read this tutorial only, or draw something yourself – the rules I’ll be explaining are quite universal.

So, let’s say you painted something (some background, the character) and suddenly you don’t know how to paint the armor. To make whole process easier you should use Clipping Mask. The base – borders of your armor – will be the mask, and everything above it will be clipped to it. How to do it? You just need to use Alt + Ctrl + G after creating a new layer above the base.

The best and the most universal painting brush ever is simple round hard brush with low Flow. It lets you mix the strokes in a very natural way, and also simmulates a real brush – the harder you press, the stronger color you get.

Step 2

Every surface (not only metal) depends on the light, so you need to find the light source first and check where eventual shadows will be placed. In my picture there’s a fire on the left, reflecting from something slightly purple on the right. As fire gives an yellowish-orange flow, I chose a low saturated yellow as a base color for my armor (it’s a kind of grey too for most eyes!). For the general shadows I used even low saturated and darker shade of the same color. Paint on a layer between the base and the sketch.

Add some lights too, just where the light had the best access. To find the right shade add some brighntess to the base color.

Now add more shadows. Remember, the body (and the armor on it) isn’t flat, it has “walls” – when the light hits one wall, it’s bright, but the rest of the walls is darker.

It’s this rare moment when you can use black. Mix it with the darkest parts of the armor, but never touch the lighter parts – don’t even come close to it.

Step 3

Now we’ll use a bit of color theory to give a depth to darker parts. Since our base color is yellowish grey, we need to find a contraryshade for it. First, copy the code for your base color.

Go to Color Scheme Designer and paste your color code in the field shown below.

Now select “complement” to see what color is a complement to our base color. You can just remember it or export full palette to Photoshop swatches.

Select “Load Swatches” from Swatches Menu to load your new set of colors. We’ll also need some darker shades that weren’t included on the list.

Step 4

Since we have our perfect dark shade (and it’s not black!), we can stress the sketch lines again. This time create a layer over the sketch and cover its lines. When it’s done, hide or delete the sketch’s layer.

Now use the same shade to draw darker parts again. If you’re curious why we cover what we painted before, here’s the answer – low Flow lets you mix the colors.

This is how it looks with these new shades:

Step 5

Time to define the shapes a bit. Use black to draw thin lines between the elements.

You should now have clear black lines, and they give an artificial effect. To fix this, you need to add a contrast between both sides of the lines. So, imagine where the light can’t reach and cover these areas with black. Remember, it cannot cross the lines!

Now blend these black areas with one side of the lines. Make the lines practically invisible, but only from one side.

Step 6

Pick a color from some lighter part and use soft brush (lower Hardness to 0%) to cover all the visible elements. One rule: don’t come close to the lines! Paint only a center of every element to give it a smooth look.

Come back to 100% hardness and choose your blending mode to Screen. This mode makes the strokes lighter. Using the same color as before, add some well defined lights – paint the edges next to dark lines and add a few light spots near.

This is the final effect of this phase. As you can see, combining black and white lines together makes really nice, sharp edges.

Step 7

As we noticed before, metal catches everything around it, including colors. Pick the colors that are the closest to every side of the armor and cover the elements slightly with them. Again, don’t cross the lines, but covering darker parts is allowed.

Use our dark shade of the complementar color again and paint some creative shades. Why “creative”? They’re going to pretend shapes reflected in the armor. Paint them thickly, it’s not the time to be smooth.

Now go into Screen mode again and use reflected light colors (here orange and purple again) to cover the dark you’ve just painted. While it seems pointless, it makes an interesting effect. The goal here is to cover it without hiding it at all.

Time to be creative again. Look at the shapes that came out when you were adding more and more layers. Can you see some more regular lines in the reflections? Define them even more! You can also pick colors from the skin and hair if the element is close to them enough.

And here’s the final effect again:

Step 8

Another element of every armor is a chainmail. As you probably know, it’s made of little metal links bound together. Yes, it’s metal element again, so it’s going to be quite reflective. Drawing them all one by one would be very time consuming, so we’re going to prepare a special brush for it. Create a new document and draw a single black link (use 100% Opacity and 100% Flow to prevent semi-transparent spots). Then go to Edit > Define Brush Preset.

Your new brush now appears on the list, but it has default options. Select Brush Tip Shape from brush options and move Spacing slider until single links are visible. They should slightly overlap each other.

Now create a new layer and double click it to get to Blending Options. Select Bevel & Emboss and change Higlight color to a bright shade from the rest for the armor. This way it’ll be more natural.

Now draw the chainmail on the layer with this style applied. I suggest to draw every row on a new layer (copying and pasting the style) – otherwise all the links will blend into each other. To avoid a mess, group (Ctrl + G) these layers.

Now merge the group and select Add Layer Mask in that little panel under the layers. Select the white rectangle that appeared next to your layer. Now you can use two colors to blend the chainmail into the picture – black will make it transparent, white – visible, and grey – semi transparent. Use black with low Flow to get various shades of grey.

You can now paint the surface under the chainmail to give it a right shape.

Since you know how to create a chainmail easily, you can add it to other places too. Put it wherever there’s some flexibility needed. At this moment I also fixed the rest of the picture to fit the armor that get’s more and more complicated with every step.

Step 9

The armor is almost ready, but we need to polish it yet. Use black brush to paint some sharp fake reflections. They look best when they touch some light line on one side.

That’s the effect I got:

Merge all the layers of the armor. If you still want to use Clipping Mask, just copy the resulting layer and clip the copy. Go into Screen blending mode, pick some light color from the right (purple here) and draw strong lights on that side. They should be sharp and rather rare, because they fake a reflected light, not a direct one.

Just like this:

Time for more colorful, direct light. Pick a color from the left and paint some reflections in Color Dodge mode.

Come back to Normal mode and paint some reflected light blobs. They should be smooth, quite light, but not lighter than the side reflecting direct light.

Polish the elements you’ve just covered with dull color in Screen Mode. We’re almost done now!

Step 10

Use Color Dodge mode and direct light color again to draw the edges of the element that are most lighted. Keep them sharp.

That’s how I did it:

Another characteristic of metal is it influences the environment by its reflections. Add some “light spots” near the strongest reflections (soft brush in Screen mode will work the best here).

It’s your rare chance now to use Smudge Tool. If you use it wisely, you may achieve very nice effect.

Here’s my result:

Step 11

Despite all the colors our armor still looks flat. Use Overlay mode to paint some darker areas (use black and very light pressure).

If you feel the armor needs more grey, you can just add a new layer in Saturation mode and paint black wherever you want to take the color off.

Time to add strong shining at the edges. Use soft brush (0% hardness), white, in Screen mode.

Now I added even more shadows…

…and some lights again.

Here I added some sharp, light lines, that fake reflections of the armor (yep, armor refletcs itself too!).

It’s almost done (probably your picture is done now), I just fixed one element that didn’t fit here:

And, to make it more interesting, I added third main color as a blue fog.

And We’re Done!

You can now use these tricks to paint every metal surface you need!

The Internet loves cats. The Internet loves zombies. What if we create a mix of them both? Well that’s exactly what you’ll be creating in today’s design lesson!

Today you’ll be learning the incredibly useful skill of digital painting using a photo reference. This is a fantastic method to learn the basics of digital painting, and can really improve your design skills.

By using the reference photo as a solid base you’re able to focus less on anatomy, and more on lighting, details, creativity and your painting technique.

Follow along with today’s lesson to learn some great new skills. Let’s get started shall we?

Final Image

As always, this is the final image that we’ll be creating:

Step 1

First place your reference (you can use this picture by KB-Fotowelt) inside a PSD file (or just open it in Photoshop and save as a new file). Lock the reference and create a new layer for every important change. Before we start painting, we need to define the colors of the scene. Dark blue and orange should play well together. So, grab a hard brush, lower Flow and cover the right half smoothly with dark blue.

Now do the same with the left half, using orange. We can imagine it’s a night (dark blue) and there’s a lantern (orange light) near.

Cover the ground too. Keep in mind that the cat’s casting the shadow to the right.

Change the file’s resolution (Ctrl + Alt + I) to as high level as you can. 10k width would be perfect, but 6k should be enough. The higher resolution, the more detail you’ll be able to put in your piece.

Step 2

Zoom into the eye. Use black and the same brush as before to draw the edge of the eye and the pupil.

Now cover the inside of the eye with different shades of green. Don’t be afraid of covering the pupil, it’s never really that black.

Play with brightness of the colors we’ve used before to draw some details of the iris.

Hide the reference for a moment to check if you didn’t rely on its colors too much. If the eye seem semi-transparent now, create a new layer under it and cover it with black.

Merge all the eye parts, copy the layer (Ctrl + J) and go to Edit > Transform > Flip Horizontal, to reflect the copy. Then move the other eye to its place.

Time for some fun. Use bright green in Linear Light brush mode to add some lights to the eyes. Remember – they shouldn’t be symmetrical! Paint directly on the eyes’ layers, or they won’t be affected. Be careful here, this effect is easy to overdo!

Change the color to darker green and the brush mode to Overlay. Now you can add some shadow under upper lid.

Our cat is a zombie, so its eyes shouldn’t be so bright and alive! Take a soft brush with some light blue in Screen mode and add some fog to the eyes. Don’t touch the edges!

Now, create a layer under the eyes and paint some dark around them. It shouldn’t work the same as with human zombies, but look how nice this effect is!

Step 3

Paint a rough shape of the nose with some brownish shade.

Use black to add more details to it. Look at the reference every time you need some help.

Add more details, lights and shadows, using the same color we’ve used for the general shape, but changing its brightness.

Again, turn off the reference layer and check if this part was really painted by you. Fill all the empty spots.

Step 4

Add some light to the left part of the head. Just sketch the lighted parts, precision isn’t important here.

The right part isn’t really lighted, but some of the reflected light will land there.

Add some blue shadows on the right…

…and some brownish orange ones on the left.

Hide the reference photo layer and fill in any gaps as needed:

Step 5

Time for the ears. The left ear is backlighted, so it should be painted with bright and warm colors.

The other ear can be ripped off. Erase the part we’ve drawn before and cover the inside of the ear with dark blue.

Now add some dried blood on the ear and lighten it a bit with red.

Step 6

Time to go crazy! Pick all the colors you see around, dark and light ones, and draw the hair with them. Don’t even try to be precise, just splash the colors around, defining all the shapes roughly.

Take an orange light and put it on the left as we did before.

And the right part again.

Now grab a soft brush and cover the messy spots between orange and blue lights, using colors you picked from these spots. Be subtle, don’t blur it all by accident.

Step 7

Create a layer under all the previous ones and draw the general shape of the rest of the body. Pick the colors from the head and use brighter, less saturated version of them.

Yes, it’s this step again.

Now cover the background completely, so that you could remove the reference and forget about it.

Step 8

We’re going to be more precise from now on. Let’s fix the jaw line to give the kitty more innocent look.

If you have a cat, you know sometimes they forget to hide their tongues after washing themselves. It’s looks pretty funny when they do it, doesn’t it? We can use it to make our illustration more surprising.

Add some light and shadow to the tongue, picking the colors form the head.

Add stronger light and draw some details using brush in Linear Light mode.

Add these little holes for the whiskers (do they have any name?), drawing them as a mix of hard and soft brush.

Now cover the holes with the colors around, so that they don’t stand out too much.

Step 9

Now we’ll add some depth to the picture. The part that we focus on mostly is the head, but the rest is less important for us. Select the layer with the body and go to Filter > Blur > Gaussian Blur. Change the radius to the level where the body becomes slightly blurred.

Get into Quick Mask Mode (Q) and use soft brush to select the parts of the body that are even further form us (in this mode you’re actually painting the selection).

Get out of the Quick Mask Mode (Q) to create the selection (click Ctrl + Shift + I to reverse the selection) and apply some more blur to this part.

Step 10

I’ve just noticed the nose is too straight for this cat (of course, it all depends on the kind of cat). Here, fixed!

Add dome veins inside the left ear. You can play with brush modes to get an interesting effect.

Draw all the hair, quickly and loosely. Set minimum diameter of your brush to 0% to make it sharper.

And again, some more lights. You can use Color Dodge or Linera Light Mode for more vibrant effect. Just be careful!

Darken the lower jaw a bit.

Let’s come back to the ripped ear. Add some fresh and dried blood here.

Step 11

Whiskers! Whiskers are very important for a cat. Use your sharp brush with 100% Flow to draw them.

Create another layer above this one and create a clipping mask (Ctrl + Alt + G). Now you can easily paint over the whisker’s tips.

Step 12

Time for another element of the illustration. Our cat was caught on eating a mouse’s brain. As a reference you can use this picture by mslissome. Place it inside your file.

You can skip these steps, if you already learnt how to paint something from the reference. If you stil need some hints, there they are: first you can draw some outlines.

Then draw the inside of the body (pick the colors from the reference).

Draw some rough details (for example, the part of the head where the brain will be visible).

Place the reference of a brain (you can use this one by absurdwordpreferredon the mouse’s head.

Sketch the surface of the brain using the reference.

Now add some lights. The mouse basically is lying in the cat’s shadow, so reflected light will be mostly visible on it. Add some more details too.

Draw the fur roughly, just to define its direction.

Cover the fur with more appropriate colors, and define all the parts of the body.

Use soft brush to add lights.

Define the brain surface, covering the sketch and adding some lights.

And the last touches.

Step 13

Now we’ll add some surface to the ground. You can download any texture from texturemate.com and paste it inside the file. Transform the texture to fix the perspective (Ctrl + T, then hold Ctrl to drag a single point).

Make the texture black and white (Image > Adjustments > Black & White), and set the texture’s blend mode to Overlay. It should now fit the image.

If the ground turned out to dark, you can always add some colors under the texture layer to fix it.

Now, when the ground is defined, we can blend the mouse’s body into it. Cover it with black until it stops standing out.

We need to define the background too. Use Rectangle Tooul (U) to draw some random shapes. Try to use matching colors.

Gaussian Blur will do the rest!

Step 14

Now we’re going to add some creepiness and start to think about the wider movement and actions inherent in this scene.

The cat was probably starting to eat the mouse before we caught him, and now it has just raised it’s head to look at us. Some blood could have stuck to its mouth. Use your imagination and draw it!

Add more details. Remember about lights, blood is shiny!

A zombie without its naked body visible under ripped skin isn’t a zombie! So, draw some part without any hair, covered with blood.

Cover it with dried and fresh blood, as if it was going to be a scab soon.

Add some light too.

Check if the ripped ear doesn’t need any more details.

A stylish wound on the nose.

Step 15

Our cat seems to have too clean fur for a zombie. Let’s paint it a bit with red. Use Overlay blend mode not to lose the details.

Add some more creative wounds. It’s all up to you! Just use dark red and then cover it with wet fur.

With so many wounds there must be some blood on the ground too. Use Multiply mode to get a dark shade of red.

Now let’s add a bit of atmosphere by creating a new layer, filling it with some dark color and going to Filter > Noise > Add Noise.

Resize the layer to get a bigger mess.

Change its mode to Overlay and lower the Opacity until it’s barely visible.

And We’re Done!

It’s done! Isn’t it a cute kitty? I’d love to know what you thought of the process by leaving a comment below:

Today we have an expert lesson for you in digital painting. It’s very important for an artist to be familiar with human anatomy. Even if you’re not a regular digital painter, digital painting and drawing techniques can come in handy for tweaking photo manipulation work, adding depth to illustrations and understanding light and shadow.

There are a lot of books that can help you in this topic, but they’re usually created for medical students and seem to be too complicated for the rest of us. I’ll show you how to paint an anatomically correct arm – one of hardest parts to learn – without any specialist knowledge.

Let’s get started!

Final Image

As always, this is the final image that we’ll be creating:

Step 1

This is the first and the most important step. Look at the template below. You don’t need to know the names of all these muscles – you’re an artist, not a doctor. Look at your right arm, touch it and try to locate all the muscles (muscle simullations, actually) you can see. Check how they interact with each other, how they change their positions when you turn your forearm. Take your time, you shouldn’t go further before you’ve fully understood it.

Step 2

Are you sure you understood it? Ok, now we can start drawing. Create a new file in big resolution and fill it with some dark background. Choose a pose you want to draw and build it with some simple shapes on a new layer. You can use any tool you want, but I suggest Pencil Tool – it’s great for defining the shapes.

It’s time to test your knowledge in practice. Quickly draw the muscles using the template and your own arm as references. You can use the colors if you find it helpful, just remember to create a black sketch afterwards. Forget the hand – it’s not what we’re learning now.

Here’s the sketch without colors. Messy, isn’t it? But it’s totally ok, we will need it just for a while.

Step 3

Create a new layer and draw the outline of the arm using general skin color. Make it quite solid.

Use Magic Wand Tool (W) to select everything outside of the arm, then go to Select > Modify > Contract and pick a few pixels. Now you can fill the inside of the arm with Paint Bucket Tool (G).

Move the sketch above the “body” layer and change its Opacity to 10%. Now, with this layer selected, use Ctrl + Alt + G shortcut (Clipping Mask) to fit the sketch into the base. You’ll use this shortcut after creating every new layer above (try to create a new layer for every sub-step, it may help you to fix something).

Step 4

Create a new layer (remember about Clipping Mask!) and define the edges of the muscles again. Pencil Tool still works great for it.

Now, draw basic shadows on the arm. They don’t need to be perfectly accurate, but try to guess them.

Use a lighter, more saturated color to blend the shadows into the skin. Still, rough effect is intentional.

Come back to darker color to define the edges again. Be precise now.

Step 5

Grab a fully soft Brush with low Flow (20-30%) and basic skin color. Now, use it carefully, filling the spaces between the dark edges. This way you’ll emboss the muscles.

Change color to darker shade and use the same Brush to cover the dark edges and blend it more.

Grab the basic color again to blend the skin even more. Be careful, leave as much roughness as possible. Draw lines rather than areas.

Now, back to darker color – add some shadows again.

Step 6

Change your Brush to hard one and lighten some parts with light color. Be subtle, paint the lights with quick clicks.

Use black to add some shadows in the opposite of lighted parts. Again, do it softly (even if the Brush is hard).

Look for the areas that need more skin and cover them with colors picked from around. Don’t cover them all at once with big color splashes, use thick lines again.

Step 7

Time to add even more lights. Use basic skin color (not the lightest one we’ve used!) and paint a thin stroke at the edge of the forearm. Then, paint some blobs of color next to it, leaving a border of darker color between them. Do the same with the arm, just don’t make the stroke so sharp anywhere else.

You can now draw some veins, picking the colors individually. Don’t make them too detailed, they’re just details themselves.

Step 8

This is very subtle trick (you may not even see the difference, but there is one, I swear!). Grab a soft Brush and paint very, very subtle blobs of colors in selected areas. Don’t go too far on this, or it will give unnatural effect.

Check if there are any areas still needing shadows. If you find them, you know what to do!

Create a new layer with Overlay as Blending Mode. Now you can use white to add some lights without losing colors or defined edges.

Step 9

Create a new layer, change the Brush Mode to Dissolve and paint some white spots with it. This will fake the skin pores.

Change the layer’s Blending Mode to Overlay and lower the Opacity until the pores are barely visible.

Step 10

If you think the arm is too pale, you can add some tan to it. Just create a new layer filled with orange…

…and change it’s Blending Mode to Overlay. Then move the Opacity slider to adjust the color’s strength.

And We’re Done!

Congratulations on making it this far! You now know how to digital paint an arm using anatomy basics and lighting/textures techniques.

If you enjoyed this tutorial we’d love to hear your feedback in the comments section below.

Have you ever needed a good notepad for your RPG, but without paying for stock images? Well, I can show you how to easily create your own from scratch!

In this tutorial you’ll learn a variety of drawing techniques, mixed with professional filter application, coloring, lighting and more.

Final Image

As always, this is the final image that we’ll be creating:

Step 1

First, create a new file. It shouldn’t be too small, don’t forget about good resolution too (300dpi at least). Fill the background with black.

Step 2

To draw the first sheet we need some irregular brush. Create a new file and draw some black blob with disorted edges, then go to Edit > Define Brush Preset.

Open Brush window and select Shape Dynamics option for your brush. Move the Angle Jitter slider, so that your line could be made of rotated “blobs” – it will make the brush even more rough.

Step 3

Select some glum color for your paper (it’s supposed to be old, saturated colors fade over time).

Create a new layer and use Rectangle Tool (U) to draw a template shape for your first sheet. You can use any size you need.

Change the layer’s opacity to 10% (you can do it simply by clicking “1″ with Move Tool on). It’s just a template, so it shouldn’t be too disturbing.

Create a new layer again and draw the borders of the sheet with your new, rough brush. Hold Shift to keep the lines straight.

Use Magic Wand Tool (W) to select the area outside of your sheet, then click Ctrl+Shift+I to inverse the selection.

Go to Select > Modify > Contract to contract to selection. Select 2 px for it. Now you can fill the inside by using Paint Bucket Tool (G) without fear it will fill your smooth edges too (you can remove the template now, it’s not needed anymore).

Your first sheet should look like this:

Step 4

Now it’s time to add some texture to the sheet. Of course, you could download some free paper texture, but I want to show you how to create your own using patterns built into Photoshop. First, duplicate the sheet layer clicking Ctrl + J. Then make it a clipping mask, selecting Create a Clipping Mask from Layer Menu (or simply with Ctrl+Alt+G shortcut).

With the clipped layer selected, go to Filter > Render > Clouds. Then select Overlay as blending mode and lower the opacity to achieve natural effect.

Let’s rumple this paper even more! Create a new layer above the clipped one, fill it with any color and create a Clipping Mask of it too. Now double click it to get into Blending options, and select Patter Overlay. Choose any pattern you think looks good on it (you may need to load some other texture packs like Erodible Textures or Rock Patterns – they’re not shown on the list by default). Then select Rasterize Layer Style from Right-Click menu of the layer.

Again, use Overlay as blending mode and lower the opacity. Looks better now, but it still resembles some kind of marble. That’s not what we were looking for.

Once more, create new layer, fill and clip it. There’s a nice white texture that’s perfect for paper…

…but because it’s white, it may not look so good. Rasterize it’s style, click Ctrl + I to inverse the colors and select Substract as blending mode. It should look good even with full opacity now (if you feel lost with all these blending modes, just click once on the list and use mouse roll to do a quick review of them all. Experiments are good!).

As the last texture we’ll use noise. Create a new layer, fill it with dark brown, clip it and go to Filter > Noise > Add Noise. Again, use Overlay and lower opacity to blend it into the sheet.

First sheet is done now! Just merge all the clipped layers with the base.

Step 5

It’s time to create other sheets. Duplicate the layer (Ctrl + J) and double click it for blending options. Select Drop Shadow and change its options as shown below.

Now move the duplicated layer a bit left and up using arrow keys with Move Tool on.

Repeat the step above as long as you need.

Step 6

Since it’s an old notepad, its sheets can’t be so steady. Select the layer on the top and put a layer mask on it (it’s this little circle-in-rectangle icon under layer list). A white rectangle should appear next to the layer – select it, grab black, rough brush and draw ragged edges with it. When you draw on the mask, black makes part of picture disappear, white makes it appear again.

Repeat the step above to all the layers. Don’t make them all the same, they should be naturally chaotic.

Step 7

Now we’re going to create the ripped sheets. Copy a full-lenght strip of one sheet…

…then move it to the left and apply the sheet’s style to it. To do it, just select the layer with style you need, right click it and select Copy Layer Style. Now come back to the layer you want it to be applied to, and right click it to select the Paste Layer Style option.

Step 8

Add Layer Mask to the strip and draw ragged edges with black, rough brush.

Then duplicate (Ctrl + J) the layer to create a few ripped sheets.

Use technique from Step 6 to rip the strips too.

Step 9

Now we’ll make holes to bind the notepad. Create new layer and draw something like this with your rough brush.

Select Drop Shadow from Blending Options and change the options as shown below.

Place the copies of the hole wherever you find it fit.

Step 10

Time for ribbon that will keep the sheets together. Use rough brush with some glum, dark color and draw a ribbon on a new layer.

Duplicate the ribbon and clip it to the original. Then put some pattern on it to simulate ragged surface.

You should know what to do now – rasterize, overlay, maybe some lower opacity.

Create a new clipped layer and put some shades around the edges. Use normal brush with low (~20%) Flow for it. Then draw the edges with the main color, and take some color of the sheet to reflect it to the ribbon. When you think it’s done, merge the ribbon with its clipped layers and duplicate it to the rest of the holes. You can use Free Transform (Ctrl + T) to change their shape a bit (and make them various).

That’s the final effect of this process:

Step 11

Now create a new layer and draw a knot on the middle ribbon. Use the techniques you just learnt to make it similar to the ribbons.

Some shadow will make it more natural:

Duplicate the it to simulate strong, tight knot.

Step 12

Create two new layers and draw two loose ribbons. Make them drop a shadow too.

Use our tricks again to simulate the same material as before. The ribbon beneath should be more shaded, so use Curves (Ctrl + M) to darken it.

Step 13

Create a new layer under all the ribbons and paint some shadow using black brush with low Flow. Then change this layer’s Blending Mode to Soft Light. You can also add some light on the ribbon, it’s all up to you.

Step 14

For the text I used free font Aquiline Two. You can find it in the resources section.

And We’re Done!

Doesn’t it look nice? It’s ready to be taken into fantasy world!

Do you love photo realistic digital art, but lack the time or skills to produce epic digital paintings?

If you answered yes, then don’t go anyway, this is the tutorial for you.

Simply avoiding learning digital painting is a real shame, as it can teach you a lot about design, art and Photoshop, and can really help you better your understanding of areas such as lighting and perspective.

In short, if you learn digital painting, other aspects of your day to day designing will benefit.

Luckily, there are certain short hand techniques that the masters use when it comes to digital painting.

This means that even if you don’t a whole lot of time, you can produce amazing works in minutes or hours, rather than days.

This tutorial will teach you how to draw realistic fur using Photoshop, without having to worry about drawing it hair by hair.

Think of this as a short hand guide.

You’ll be taken through the steps to create a realistic wolf using a photo reference and some creativity.

Let’s get into it!

Final Image

As always, this is the final image that we’ll be creating:

Step 1

First you need a good reference photo of your subject.

A good reference should be sharp and a large resolution (I found mine on one of deviantART’s stock site – see the resources section above).

Open the reference photo in Photoshop and save it as your new file. Choose Lasso Tool (L), make sure you’ve got “Add to selection” option turned on and use the tool to “draw” the general shape of the wolf’s body. It’s good to draw small parts at once, so that you don’t lose your work when something goes wrong.

Generally I prefer other selection methods, but for this example the lasso tool is perfect because it’s most similar to free-hand drawing and you’ll get natural hair tufts this way.

This is how it should look after finishing the selection.

Basically, we just set a border between wolf’s body and everything else.

Sometimes you’ll have to guess a selection for an area hidden in the source file (look at the paws).

Now create a new layer and use Paint Bucket Tool (G) to fill the selection with some basic color of fur (you can pick it from reference with Color Picker (I)). We’re going to call this layer ‘Base’.

Lower the ‘Base’ layer’s Opacity to 25% so that you can see what’s behind it. Create a new layer and grab your favourite brush to sketch basic lines. Don’t dive into details yet!

Change the Base’s Opacity back to 100%. From now the reference should be there just for looking – no more tracing, or you won’t learn anything.

Use Crop Tool (C) to make your canvas bigger and place the reference next to the Base and the sketch.

Step 2

Create a new layer between the Base and the Sketch, then open its menu and choose Create Clipping Mask. Everything you’ll draw on this layer will stay within the Base’s borders. Cool, huh? Now grab a Brush and choose options for it as shown below (low Flow is a key for good blending). Lower the Sketch’s Opacity so that it doesn’t disturb you, then put first colors on the clipped layer. Pick them from the reference for realistic effect. At this moment it’s important to stress the lights and shadows, not exactly colors.

Step 3

Have you ever seen a picture that looked great as a thumbnail, but not so good when enlarged? You can use this for your pictures – just make your image much bigger than you need. This way you’ll be able to put fine tiny details on it, and the final effect will be amazing. Go to Image > Image Size and change the Resolution to 300 (at least – if your computer is good enough, you can try more).

Step 4

Now look at the reference to see the flow of the fur. You need to see all the layers in your mind.

Draw some hair on the clipped layer according to the imagined arrows indicated below. Use the same brush as before and draw it fast, loosely, don’t really think about it too long. Pick new colors all the time.

When you want to draw some shorter hair that are cooped up, make a scattering brush. That’s easy, really. Check out the brush settings below.

And these are the places good for it.

Step 5

When the fur is thick and long, it doesn’t distribute evenly. There are places where it “breaks” in a specific way and the contours change. It’s very important to stress this, as many beginners forget about it, subsequently making their fur looking fake. Pick some darker color (glum green or blue should do) and draw these “cracks” wherever they are needed.

“Cracks” are always covered with single hairs. Use the base color for your covering hairs and cover the cracks.

Now pick lighter color of the fur and stress some lights. They should appear especially over the green borders of Step 4.

Step 6

Time to add some detail on the head. Draw the nose and the eye, using glum colors first.

Then add some light, using a hard brush, light blue and Linear Light Mode. It will make the eyes shine, but don’t overdo it. The nose will need some wetness too.

Step 7

Use black to draw the claws. It’s a wolf and its claws can break off easily, so don’t make them too sharp.

Step 8

Come back to the Base layer and use Smudge Tool to make the hair tufts even more natural and blending. You can draw some single hairs as well.

Step 9

Merge the Base with all the clipped layers, then duplicate it (Ctrl + J) and convert the copy to a Clipping Mask. This way you’ll be able to edit whole picture without going out of the body borders.

For now, the fur may look hand-drawn. There’s a quick way to give it a natural look. Go into Quick Mask Mode (this way you can select chosen parts with a brush). Choose a soft brush (0% hardness) and paint over all the parts where fur goes in the same direction.

Click again the Quick Mask Mode button to go out of it, then, if your selection is inverted (the outer parts are selected) click Ctrl+ Shift + I to change it. Now go to Filters > Blur > Motion Blur and choose the directon of the hair you selected. The strength of the blur is up to you – the more blur, the more “dreamy” style.

Now repeat these steps for every “direction group” you can find.

Step 10

The blur you added could’ve break some details of the fur. Add some new dark cracks between the “direction groups”…

…and this time cover it slightly with hair going into different direction. This way you’ll blend the “direction groups” you’ve blurred before.

Ear and head need more special treatment. Hair goes here in every direction it wants, really.

This is how it should look when finished.

Step 11

Time to add some environmental lights. According to the reference, we’ve got some sky’s reflection and grass reflection. Use very light versions of these colors to put the lights.

Step 12

To add a final polish choose a small, sharp brush (but leave the Flow amount low) and draw some single light hairs. Draw them loosely, in tufts, going in different directions.

And We’re Done!

And here is the final effect. It’s looking good and using this method we didn’t have to spend ages creating it. I hope you liked the effect.