Catra Joining The Best Friend Squad And Realizing That They’re Total Idiots That Have No Idea What

its Them. Wow.

so i just binged carmen sandiego and LET ME JUST SAY……………..really good. love the designs. love the characters. love it love it love it

Like or Reblog if you literally don’t give a fuck about who other people ship and just want everyone to be happy

Mother.

Some Photoshop Tips

I’ve been getting quite a few asks about the process for the patterns in my stylized artworks, so I decided to put together a couple of tips regarding them. 

Firstly, what you need are

—  CUSTOM BRUSHES  —

Most of the patterns I use are custom brushes I made, such as those:

For the longest time I was convinced making brushes must be super extra complicated. I was super extra wrong. All you need to start is a transparent canvas (2500px x 2500px max):

This will be your brush tip. When you’re satisfied how it looks, click Ctrl+A to select the whole canvas and go to ‘define brush preset’ under the edit menu

You will be asked to name your new glorious creation. Choose something that describes it well, so you can easily find it between all the ‘asfsfgdgd’ brushes you’ve created to be only used once

This is it. Look at it, you have just created a photoshop brush. First time i did I felt like I was cheated my whole life. IT’S SO EASY WHY HASN’T ANYONE TOLD ME 

Time to edit the Good Boi to be more random, so it can be used as a Cool Fancy Pattern. Go into brush settings and change whatever you’d like. Here’s a list of what I do for patterns:

- under Shape Dynamics, I increase Size Jitter and Angle jitter by 5%-15% 

- under Brush Tip Shape, I increase spacing by a shitload. Sometimes it’s like 150%, the point is to get the initial brush tip we painted to be visible.

- If I want it to look random and noisy, I enable the Dual Brush option, which acts like another brush was put on top of the one we’ve created. You can adjust all of the Dual Brush options (Size, Spacing, Scatter, Count) as you wish to get a very nice random brush to smear on your  backgrounds

The result is as above. You can follow the same steps to create whatever brush you need: evenly spaced dots that look like you painted them by hand, geometric pattern to fill the background, a line of perfectly drawn XDs and so on. 

BUT WAIT, THERE’S MORE

—  PATHS  —

But what if you want to get lots of circles made of tiny dots? Or you need rows of triangles for your cool background? Photoshop can do all of that for you, thanks to the magic of paths.

Typically, paths window can be found right next to Layers:

Draw whatever path you want, the Shape Tool has quite a bit of options. Remember, paths are completely different from brush strokes and they won’t show up in the navigator. To move a path around, click A to enable path selection tool. You can use Ctrl+T to transform it, and if you move a path while pressing Alt it will be duplicated.

Now, pick a brush you wish really was in place of that path you’ve drawn and go to layers, then choose the layer you want it to be drawn on. Then, click this tiny circle under the Paths window:

Then witness the magic of photoshop doing the drawing for you while you wonder how tf have you managed to forget about this option for the past 2 years 

You can combine special brushes and paths for all sorts of cool effects. I mostly use them in backgrounds for my cards, but you can do whatever you want with them.

I hope that answers the questions for all of the people who were sending me inquires about the patterns. If you have any questions regarding this or any other Photoshop matter feel free to message me, I’m always up for complaining about how great and terrible Photoshop is C’:

HEYO I worked on this show and we now have a TRAILER. I can’t wait for everyone to see it – I LOVE this show and the whole crew worked so hard.  JAN 18TH. NETFLIX. BE THERE.

the main boys.

golden guy

8 helpful guides for digital artists

There are artists who like videos and there are artists who love books. 

In the previous post (here) we gave you a list of helpful and inspiring YouTube channels, so today we are going to share the best books we know about digital art!

First thing we want you to know is about the existence of two great art magazines, ImagineFX and 2DArtist. These magazine focus both on digital and traditional art, sharing guides on programs like Photoshop, Painter, ZBrush and traditional tools. There are two other magazines about digital art, PainterMagazine and Photoshop Creative - though these two are a bit more expensive and much more focused on their software (Corel Painter and Photoshop), while the first two can give you general ideas about art and specific tips and tricks on digital programs as well!

Mind that this list doesn’t have an order of importance, and if we have pro and cons to share, those are written in each book’s description (:

1. Digital Painting Techniques

This is the third volume of the series created by 3dtotal Publishing - you can find all the volumes here.

This book features many illustrations and tutorials done by famous digital artists like Chee Ming Wong,  Robh Ruppel and Ignacio Bazan Lazcano. These artists will share their knowledge on concept art, matte painting and digital painting in general.

This book is presented for artists of all levels, from students to professionals. The tutorials are easy to follow, though the theme is quite specific: if you are into sci-fi, fantasy and concept art, well, then this book is for you!

2. Beginner’s Guide to Digital Painting in Photoshop: Characters

Another guide created by 3dtotal Publishing.

This guide is for all those artists interested in creating detailed characters. Two of the featured artists are Charlie Bowater and Derek Stenning.

Despite the title, though, this book isn’t for beginners at all - the artists share tips and tricks, but a basic understanding of digital painting is needed.

The main program used by the artists is Photoshop.

3.  The Digital Artist’s Survival Guide

Created by ImagineFX, this is a complete guide for digital artists, be them beginners of professionals, full of advice and inspiring tutorials to paint amazing environments, characters and creatures!

4. Digital Painting

Another great issue created by ImagineFX, Digital Painting is a guide for digital artists who want to learn a bit more of how to paint from life. The book features workshops and video lessons too.

5. Fantasy Art Essentials

If we can say it, this book is our favourite. Not only it contains 228 pages, so more workshops and advices (+ a DVD), but it features both digital and traditional tutorials about fantasy art. So, our blog is about digital art, but this is a hell of a volume with artists like Andrew Jones, Marta Dahlig and Adam Hughes!

6. d'artiste Digital Painting 2: Digital Artists Master Class

The second volume of d’artiste series created by Ballistic Publishing. This book is a must-have masterpiece for digital artists. It features workshops from top artists like Mélanie Delon, Don Seegmiller and Marta Dahling and tips on apps like Photoshop and Painter. The subjects of the book are character and creature design and environment painting.

7.  d'artiste Matte Painting 3

Another series from Ballistic Publishing, this time dedicated to matte painting. Have you ever seen those incredible landscapes featured in colossal movies or videogames? This book’s going to explain how top artists David Luong, Damien Mace and Milan Schere can paint such masterpieces.

With this guide you can learn about composition and how to start painting from concept to the final artwork. 

Be aware that the three masters of this books have worked for World of Warcraft, Game of Thrones, Avatar, Harry Potter, Sherlock Holmes and many other films!

8. d'artiste Fashion Design: Digital Artists Master Class

Let’s face it: if you are an artist and you need help, you can’t say that Ballistic Publishing is useless. On the contrary, we can say that it presents the most complete series of volumes for any digital artist in need (or any art lover who likes his collections thorough and perfect).

This volume is great for character designers and it features a lot of tips and different approaches to the artwork. That means the reader is able to compare different art styles and be inspired from them!

We hope this list will help you! Good luck!