Digital Painting in Grayscale

Digital Painting Fundamentals

Digital Painting Fundamentals(62 Lessons )
The Greyscale Painting Process

Digital Painting in Grayscale

125K
Mark as Completed
Course In Progress

Digital Painting in Grayscale

125K
Mark as Completed
Course In Progress

Now that you've seen me do it, it's your turn to practice working from a reference to understand how shapes and values work in real life! 

Start with a clean drawing, do a value block-in, and then build up your painting working from general to specific details.

You're more than welcome to find your own reference, but I've also provided three references that can be found in the downloads tab for this lesson. There is an easy reference, an intermediate reference for those who'd like to try clothing a figure and painting fabric, and a hard reference with lots of costume details and fun material challenges. 

Newest
Benjamin Roseman
Last little study I'll get on the assignments
Carlo Julian
My attempt for the first photo reference. After a while I started to lose a sense of how much contrast the image had and wasn't sure if I it was too contrasty or not enough. Same with the overall brightness. After viewing it on multiple devices, like my phone and computer monitor I got even more confused! I also think I overworked it and started looking at small details too much. Any feedback is appreciated. I'm looking forward to painting the other three references.
Siddharth Gupta
Any critics are welcomed
Benjamin Roseman
I've had an issue with getting the line drawing to disappear under the painting. I keep at light, dark, and halftone, however the pencil still shows through.
@morelock
16d
Hey Benjamin, Cool study! I think what would really help, at a core level, is having a strong separation between light and shadow, and simplifying your values in general. Everything in steps. Right now the shadow on the arm is the darkest point in the picture, darker than even your occlusion areas and similar/darker than the hair. Also some more subtlety in the midtones and especially in the highlights. Too much core shadow or bright highlights will produce a "silver surfer" or chrome body look. With digital, you should be able to just remove the pencil layer once your values are roughed in. All those lines are just values edging against each other. Keep it up!
Melanie Scearce
In my experience, using a watercolor brush pack or similar that's higher in transparency results in a lot of laying that ends up looking muddy, or the layin showing through -- which, is part of the appeal of watercolor I figure. I personally like using opaque brushes. This is a nice painting! I love her facial expression.
@john_rupert
Enjoyable lesson. I think I need to plan out the values a little better.
Karoliina Webster
Here's mine! Learnings: maybe I should pick the colors to a palette instead of constantly picking new colors so that the values would stay more consistent...? Also I blended a lot with the soft brush which tends to create too airbrushed look. Also the edge quality suffers in my mind since soft and hard edges mix too inconsistently. Anyway, I'm happy I completed it!
Benjamin Roseman
Here's my first attempt before using these reference photo's. I tried using multiple brushes and get an understanding of how they work. She's got an aura looks about her I know. I tinted the background after completing the figure should have done it beforehand. Let me know of anything improve the painting.
Rachel Dawn Owens
I wouldn’t change anything about the figure. She looks fantastic. And I love the aura. Maybe change the background value to pull her forward more.
@mwalker
24d
Here's my stab at the assignment. I have to admit that I cheated a bit to get the initial outline (and even then I didn't get it completely right) because I wanted to get to playing with laying in values and blending. I feel like I could spend forever tweaking this image and finishing more detail but I also want move on and learn more stuff.
Attila
1mo
Well, I have a lot to learn 😭
Melanie Scearce
It's a wonderful thing to have a lot to learn, and truthfully there's never a point where there ISN'T a lot to learn 😁 This is a great start. You could experiment by adding some lighter values in the head and upper body to make that a focal point.
Maiken Rudser
Okay. I did this quite a while ago , but seems i have a fear of sharing work im not sure of. Any advice and critique would be great!
Martha Muniz
Hey there! This looks amazing already, really nice work! I think a point to look at would be how contrast is created throughout the piece, especially through value and edges. There's already a great blending and use of softer edges as things get further from the focal point of the face, but reinforcing the contrast at the face, especially the eyes, could help make the final pop. This could be through more defined edges and a use of darker value for the eyelashes/irises, for example. I would also caution watching out for unintended areas of high contrast, for example the shadow area near the elbows or the decorative hem by her legs, as the high value contrast and sharp edges could lead the eye there more than needed. This is a great piece nonetheless, so these smaller points could help push it just a bit further -- hope this helps and keep up the great work! :D
Sokolowski Clément
My take on the first assignement. I would love some feedbacks. I feel like the values on the faces don't attract the eye enough, maybe it needs more contrast?
Melanie Scearce
I agree, I'm seeing the lightest lights in the legs and on the back. Decreasing the value range in those areas can help draw the eye to the areas that you want to be the focal point. I love the shapes in this, great work!
@lior
1mo
First assignment completed. Spent about 4 hours on it. I struggled with the metal textures on the belt buckle, I need to do some metal texture studies. Also the small stippling on the clothing like his cap.
@wilfred
2mo
Competed the First Exercise. Would love some feedback on how to improve this more.
Melanie Scearce
Great job here @wilfred. I like your choice to keep the lower body mainly in shadow. I think overall it's a bit dark, and I would add more light value to areas of interest like the face. My eye immediately goes to the ear area because it's the area of highest contrast -- adding more light value next to the dark side of the face I think would lessen the competition between those two areas.
Lindsey
2mo
First exercise complete. Dunno, how long I was supposed to spend on it, but I think I put about 4.5 hours to it. I used the square brush from the downloaded brush set and a textured blender in places.
Rachel Dawn Owens
This is really good! Nice range of values! You could add more depth if you constrained your darkest shadows for only certain areas of interest. Keep it up!
Walker
3mo
An exercise as i work through it!
Rachel Dawn Owens
Looks really nice! I like the subtlety of the value changes. I made a couple of adjustments to ground the figure to the environment more. I think that dark area of the chair draws too much attention, so I made it a bit lighter. Overall, this is a nice drawing. Keep it up!
Kalp Bhavsar
Done with a mouse so already working with one hand tied behind my back. still would appreciate any and all thoughts...
Le Parisien
Difficult exercise. I'll do better next time.
Kalp Bhavsar
Kalp Bhavsar
Chose my own reference and was working with a mouse did my best... Feedback??
Martha Muniz
Good value blocking! I do notice that your light half-tones tend to lean a bit darker, so brightening the area of light would help capture the setting and also bring in more value contrast to your painting.
Jonnathan Avelino
Really fun and interesting exercise, it helped me to make conscious decisions about what I could highlight with contrasts, and the small details that didn't need to be detailed.
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2D Art Lead at Hi-Rez Studios
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