Learning to Paint...Digitally.

I have some aptitude in a number of artistic mediums; pencils, ink, soft pastels, oil pastels and even charcoal (to a degree) but painting is not a skill I've acquired and in my own foolishness, have avoided for years and years. It's come back to bite me on the ass though as my BA Game Art degree at De Montfort University requires you to have skill in painting both traditionally and digitally. I've heard mutterings that often people can do one and not the other (at least not easily), so where does that leave me as I have skill in neither!

Well let me tell you: BONED. That's where.

I splashed out with as much money as I could afford and bought myself a Waccom Intuos4 with some student loan money and have immediately begun using it in an attempt to do what everyone who is an artist of any calibre tells you to do - Draw, Draw, Draw.

Unfortunately I don't have the time to solely dedicate to just digital painting, but I am attempting to do at least one a day, even if it's just something small. My first attempt was this rather shoddy excuse for a painting:-

I wasn't pleased with how this turned out, so I went in search of some tutorials and posted on DMUGA facebook for some crits, went away today, after watching a great video tutorial (which can be found here: http://vimeo.com/1715081) and painted this:-

I rather thought it was an improvement and rather pleased with my second ever digital painting. Inspired and pleased that I'm getting to grips with my tablet and Photoshop CS5 as a painting package and not just a photo manipulator and processing package I began my first landscape. Here is the final piece!

I was really very pleased with the result after struggling to decided what to do with the initial bare background . It was fun to work on and probably took about 5-6 hours altogether in the end. Upon completing that I decided to use this medium to complete some more final pieces for Visual Design in this way:-

My tutor thinks my work is coming along, I just need to work at getting faster and do "more, more, more!" I have over Christmas to prove myself. Drawings everyday, 2-3 still life's a week and a design project whereby we've to create a vehicle of our own imagination that can hold 2 people.  Bought the layout pad already, lets start referencing!