Getting Back Into Photoshop...
...is not an easy thing to do, especially if you haven't used it in four years or so. I had a few things to familiarize myself with certain aspects of the program again, and I still have a lot of exploring to do. I decided to do a nice drawing of Naomi, the protagonist of my comic, Cardinal Traits, for practice. Clip Studio Paint Pro is very intuitive for me, so I am going to continue to use it, but here is my process for the drawing of Naomi I did using Photoshop.
If you all have seen some of my other projects, you will know that I almost always begin with a traditional pencil sketch. I am, however, trying to get into some more digital sketching, but as right now and for the foreseeable future, I will be using a real pencil. I don't think there is a substitute for simply putting pencil to paper. Also, I am not ashamed to say that I used a reference photo to get the pose just right. I recommend that all artists use references whenever possible.
This is the stage where I begin to define and refine. I have become partial to using a textured brush, and I started to do that, but then decided that something more smooth would work. I did use a textured brush for the image she is drawing. I do admit that the line art line was very easy to get done. One quick swipe gave me a nice, sharp line. Clip Studio Paint Pro is not very good with line work in comparison. I have said that this is my favorite step in the drawing process before, but with Photoshop, it is even more fun. I added the Cardinal Traits logo at this stage as well. This drawing may act as a promotional poster or variant cover for the comic in the future.
Flat color took a while with this drawing because I had to make sure I was filling every pixel, and I also colored on multiple layers. I wanted to see if this would make it easier, and it was a little annoying to go from layer to layer constantly, but it would have been a lot quicker in Clip Studio. Photoshop runs slowly on my computer.
And here we are at the final product. I had a lot of fun with highlights. I might have gone a little too far, but I like it. I played with light a little. I pushed the nonobjective space a little further back, because I wanted the focus to be on Naomi. I think that decision is very effective in this drawing. I even used a bit of color dodge to top off the drawing. Ross Tran of YouTube taught be that every day is a color dodge day!
I don't think this is too bad for my first drawing in Photoshop in years, but I think it would have been much better in Clip Studio Paint Pro. I would have added more textures and it would have been more sculpted.
Thank You!
