Digital painting has amazed me for a pretty long time now. I’ve seen people draw portraits that look so real that you can hardly see the difference between the painting and a photo. The same goes for concept art. Although a lot of it is unrealistic, the detail of the painting is so good that I would almost think that it’s real.

I don’t plan on reaching that level of digital painting, but maybe I can create some nice graphics by just using the basics. So I searched around on the internet for some tutorials and some help on digital painting. And this is what I found out:

There are two very different ways to digitally paint an object. At first you make a basic object, I use Adobe Photoshop for this but any similar software will do.

Then you decide where your light source is placed. So you decide where the light is coming from so you can think about the locations for the highlights and shadows. Once you’ve decided that, you can use two different methods to add highlights and shadows. The first one is the following:

In this method, you create a new layer and draw highlights and shadows with the brush tool. Once you’re done, you use a blur effect to smoothen the drawn highlights and shadows. You can do this a few more times if the desired effect isn’t good enough. I found this method to be easier, but it took me a long time to create the desired effect. I had to repeat the steps a few time in order to have some real effect on the basic shape.

The second method:

In this method, you use the brush tool to create highlights and shadows as well, but you do it a lot smoother. It’s often best to create a color palette first and then use the brush tool to add the shadows and highlights. You can easily choose a new color by pressing the Alt-key and clicking on the color you want to use. By holding the Ctrl-key and the Alt-key at the same time, you can change the size and the hardness of your brush by dragging the mouse horizontally and vertically.

I found this second method to be harder, but have better effect and therefor save time in the long run (when you’re more experienced with the method). After some practicing I managed to created the following characters:

The hardest part, for me, was to decide where the shadows and highlights should be placed. I used some reference material to copy these from, but it was still very hard for me to figure it out. I’ll probably have to practice for a few more months to be able to actually create nice graphics this way. Therefor I don’t think that I will be using digital painting in my game.