(To skip my long, somewhat rambling rant about Photoshop, click here.)
I think that I realized what (one of) the problems that I’m having with this “painting in PhotoShop” thing. I tried to articulate it a few weeks ago, but I think that I have a better grasp of it now.
Again, this might be because of a number of contributing factors, but the problem that is bothering me the most is the fact that when I’m working with a pencil, I want to be able to suddenly press down and get a sharper or darker line, similar to how I created the textures and variations in the Dradolan sketch on Thursday. However, some form of technology is not understanding that that’s what I want to do, which is running widdershins to my not-quite-30 years of twitch memory built up over all the time I spent learning to draw.
Basically, I’m holding my stylus like a pencil, and in the most superficial ways, it acts like a pencil, but when I really need or want it to be like a pencil, it can’t or worse yet, won’t. Instead, it pretends that it’s a paintbrush, which really disrupts my workflow.
I feel better for having made that realization. I don’t know what I’m going to do about it now that I’ve realized that, but knowing what the problem is will hopefully be helpful in the future.
How is this relevant to anything? Well, I’ll tell you. Instead of throwing blots of color down after I realized that I didn’t know what I wanted to draw, like in last week’s painting session, I decided on what I wanted to do, then started trying to draw it.
Then my muscle memory started betraying me, and I wrote this. I tweaked all the settings I could get my grubby claws on, and it’s still not (and probably never really will) acting the way that I want it to; I probably ought to go do some (more) reading on the subject, because after all these years of working with PS, I’ve still as yet to make a brush that works he way that I want it to.
At any rate, now that I’ve spent a bunch of your time on that, here is what I ended up doing.
The darker lines, which I’ve historically used to delineate parts in overworked areas of drawings were made this time through actual different colors, almost the antithesis of the most common methods of painting technique, the gradual building up of colors and whatnot. Sometimes I wonder if I’ve the patience to actually do this sort of thing, let alone learn it.
I think that I’m overtired and rambling more than a bit now; so I will leave you with that. Goodnight, Internet.
