Earlier, we saw how to paint glowing objects by taking lightning as an example. That technique can be used for other things like sparkles, energy beams and flames – not just for lightning.

In this article, we will discuss how to further integrate these glowing objects with the rest of the painting. We might put in a lot of detail into painting them, but if we do not consider the effect they have on their surroundings, the glowing object will seem to stand out. It would seem like it was just pasted over after doing the rest of the painting.

Here is a quick concept sketch I made of a Fire Sorceress. Notice how I painted the fireball in her hand – I used the same principle as I did with the lightning in the earlier exercise. But it still seems a bit odd, in spite of having the fireball show through her fingers – it is sort of detached.

To fix this, we have to consider how the fireball would effect the rest of the scene. In this case, we need to consider the light hitting the form of her body.

I gave the rim lighting to her body, keeping in mind of the light source as the fireball in her hand. This light source is not the primary – which is on her left and above. I apply the effect of the fireball as if it were secondary lighting. The secondary lighting effect does give depth to this artwork, but along with that, it makes it seem like the fireball is in her hand.

Here I have not given any other secondary lighting, and took the glowing effect of the fireball to be the secondary lighting to keep it simple. We can as well apply another faint light source opposing the primary light source to make the artwork more dramatic.

Things you need to keep in mind while rendering the effect of a glowing object are:

• Color – The color of the glow obviouly will cast the secondary light of same hue
• Shape of the glowing object – This effects how the direction in which the light effects nearby objects. If it is roughly a spherical object, then it goes out radially from its center. If the object is an elongated cylinder, when rendering, it will linearly go out.
• Intensity – This decides how far you would go applying the secondary light.
• Shape of the object the secondary light hits – This will give depth, and the way you render it, will depict its form.

If we were to go back to the example of the lighting as the glowing object, and we want to depict it striking throuh thick clouds, depicting the effect is a bit different. Instead of painting crisp rim highlights, we would have to paint a diffusing light since clouds are not solid objects.

So next time you paint any glowing object, remember to render the effect it has on its environment.

This is a brief walkthrough on drawing a Phoenix. I will give the download links for XCF and PSD at the end.

Basic Structure

Though Phoenix is a mythical creature, it still pays to study a bit of bird anatomy and work on other birds like peacock. Examine the above concept – though it is a bit complex, it is a bit easy when you break it down to simple structures.

Sketching

If you are drawing on paper, make sure that you are still sketching lightly using the pencil. On software, at this point in time, you can actually think of increasing the resolution to get crisp lineart in the next step.

Lineart

In GIMP or Photoshop, it becomes quite easy to switch to another layer and start ‘inking’ to get he line art.

On paper, consider drawing the line art first in a darker (softer tip) pencil, and then going over it with a black inking pen.

Download the drawing in XCF (for GIMP) or PSD (for Photoshop), and examine the different layers. (I have only the lineart layer visible – so you will need to turn them on).

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See larger view at deviantART – Phoenix.

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• Software: GIMP (or Adobe Photoshop)
• Level: Advanced
• Subject: Mecha Dragon – Comic Style

Dragon Workshop: Chinese Dragon | Medieval Dragon | More…

This would be a walkthrough on doinig a comic style illustration and coloring of one of my favourite subjet, dragon. Mecha Dragon or armored dragon to be specific.

Brainstorming And Sketching

I do some brainstorming, directly into GIMP. I want a A4 size colored illustration at 300 dpi at the end of this. Hence, I create a new canvas (GIMP has a preset), and then scale it down by 25%. Then I start off by drawing compositional lines – a spiral composition with the eye at positioned at one of the one third point.

I actually do a couple of these and choose one of the designs that I liked and start detailing it a bit.

Once I am pretty confident with the sketch, I scale up by 400% to bring it back to A4 at 300dpi, and start with a lineart in a new layer.

I reduce the opacity of the sketch layer, and use the inking tool (new in GIMP 2.6) to create the lineart.

Coloring

Applying the background gradient and the flat colors on another layer is pretty easy.

Use the gradient tool for the background, and the selection and fill tool for the flat color layer.

Cut Edge and Gradients

For giving depth and detail, as opposed to digital painting, I opt to go for Cut Edge + Grads to get a comic book feel.

Using the selection tool and the gradient tool at low opacity, I markout the different segments of the dragon’s armor and detail them.

Again with the selection tool (lasso tool) and gradient tool, I bring out the stark highlight and the deep shadows to finish up the colored illustration.

Check the deviantART entry – Mecha Dragon – for a larger view.

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This tutorial is a short one, but would be explaining an intermediate level of digital painting technique. It is a walkthrough of painting a lightning against a moderately dark plain sky. Once you understand the technique, you should be able to apply the same technique for painting variations in the subject – sparkles, energy beams, or light sabers.

When painting a glowing energy streak – remember to choose a color palette that is contrasting in terms of value. You may want to choose contrasting color too to help in composition of the piece but may not be always possible (it would be weird to draw a blue colored flame).

For this example, I used a moderately dark blue for the sky. It is just not possible to get the right effect of a lightning against a white background.

This step might seem a bit counter-intutive. Use a soft edged round brush, take a color even darker than the background and paint over the area roughly where you would be painting the lightning. Even it the lighting seems to glow, to achieve a bright effect, putting an even darker background helps achieve the contrast.

The next few steps are just about taking smaller brushes each time and taking a step towards the bright lighting color through the palette. (You can even create another small image and mix up the sky and the lightning color to get the different shades).

You can see here I have started painting with a yet smaller brush. The screenshot is when I finished doing it only partially so you can see the difference.

Since it is lightning you are painting, you do not need to draw steady lines. You do not even need to keep the subsequent lines exactly in the middle of the earlier lines you have drawn. A different subject, say a engergy beam might require more steady hand.

Here, I have painted, what one would call the ‘white hot’ areas. Do not choose white, but some thing really pale should do the trick.

As I mentioned before, you can use this technique to paint any variations of this subject. You can even translate the technique to different styles of digital painting. For example, I did the same subject, but using ‘cut-edge style shading‘.

Do post the results of your works that you did using this technique in the comments below.

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• Software: Inkscape (or Adobe Illustrator)
• Level: Advanced
• Subject: Peacock

In this tutorial, we would do a walkthrough of illustrating a vector artwork of a peacock. Much of the techniques mentioned in the other peacock tutorials here would be used.

Drawing

I used GIMP to do a rough work, but you can use any other tool that you find comfortable sketching. See Drawing A Standing Peacock for a detailed tutorial.

After we get the form of the peacock, a little work on the details is done to get the idea of how much detail we want to put into the vector artwork in the end.

Basic Form

At this point in time, I import the PNG file into Inkscape and get the rough outline form of the peacock. If you had done the sketch/lineart on paper, you can scan it in using a scanner and import into Inkscpae.

Make further shapes, to block out the different areas and depth using the lineart as a guide. Take extra care to layer them from back to front. A little bit of planning goes a long way when the amount of detailing is going to be quite complex.

The blue outlines are at the same level. The green outlines, three of them are layered one over the other.

Plumage

After giving some basic flat color and gradient to the whole body, zoom in towards the center and use the pen tool to draw details of the plumage.

Further apply gradients to these detail shapes. If the form feels flat, create shapes of lighter blue color and change opacity to 10% or 20%.

Head and Beak

Apply gradients to the blue outlines with a pale yellow-brown color and you get the head detailed.

There is no need to give a lot of attention to this part, as the area is quite small. In full view, much of the details would be lost.

He looks a bald due to lack of the crown feathers – we will be adding that later.

Feathers

Now we get to the identifying feature of a peacock – his exhuberent feathers. Have a look at Peacock Feather Vector Art post that has a detailed walkthrough on creating vector art of a single feather – we will not be going to that amount of detail, but it helps to know.

As mentioned above in the basic form, this particular angle has three layers of the feathers. Start with the lowest layer.

Get the basic shape fo the feathers end that looks like an exotic eye. Concentric blob like shapes, with colors ochre (yellow), orange, cyan and deep blue will be the template.

Reduce the opacity of this to around 20%. Since it is the lowest layer of feather, we make it dull by reducity the opacity (increasing the transparency). You do not need to draw them all, just make copies of them, rotate and scale to get them in the required positions.

Its feathers have sparkling highlights. Even on the lowest layer, they would be visible. Use the pen tool to mark out couple of these in each section.

You can even put in some stray strands of the feathers and merge them with the main shape, to give volume to each layer of feather.  Thsi makes it look less flat.

Cut (not copy) and paste in place the remaining green outlines and start detailing the same way as you did the earlier layer. Make those eye like shapes 40% opaque this time.

Take a little more time when doing the upper layer. Add darker shadows to make the highlights standout more than the other. Increase the opacity of the circular patter to around 60%.

Finishing Details

Draw a couple of the crown plumage. Make copies to create the full set.

For the rest of the body, add some stark highlight shapes.

You can download this artwork as a desktop background over at ClipArtLog.com – Peacock Wallpaper.

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• Software: Inkscape (or Adobe Illustrator)
• Level: Intermediate
• Subject: Genie Lamp

By the end of this tutorial, you would be able to create a vector artwork of a Genie Lamp. You should be familiar with the tools of Inkscape or any of the other vector editor you use (like Adobe Illustrator or Corel Draw).

Base Shape

Use the ellipse drawing tool and create two of them one below the other and overlapping. Align them so that their centers are exactly above each other. The blue ellipse is the base shape of the main lamp body. The red one would become the stand of the lamp. Create two more ellipses (green) on either side of the red one. Use the subtract operation to chop of this area from the red ellipse to get the base shape.

Use the pen tool to create a roughly trianglular shape on the left (or right – your choice). Note that the tip of the triangle pointing outside has been chopped off and it is actually a four sided polygon (green). Use the node edit tool to curve them as shown above.

Create two more smaller, concentric ellipses and tilt them a bit. Subtract the inner ellipse from the outer.

Position it to the right (or left), opposite to the curved triangular shape.

Base Color

Make a copy of all the shapes you created and paste it exactly over the original. With the new set of shapes still selected, perform the union operation. This creates a single shape. Layer it to the back of all the original shapes (use Page Down or End in Inkscape) and give it a very dark brown fill and stroke color. A dark brown has a good harmony with the yellow metal color we will be using.

Increase the stroke width to around 3 to 5, so that it bleeds around the original shapes. This will give it a nice thick outline when we are done.

Now start filling all the four original shapes with the yellow color. Before turning the outline/stroke off, you should be ordering the shapes as shown above. Once you are done, give it a basic shading.

Ensure that you have turned off the outline before proceeding with the shading. Once you start shading, it can be a bit of paint to turn them off later. The process of giving the basic shading is something as follows.

1. Make a copy of the basic shape
2. Paste it exactly over the original. Use [Ctrl]+[Alt]+[v] in Inkscape.
3. Give the copy a darker brown color
4. Use the gradient tool (or format color option) to give it a gradient

Details

Once the base shape, color and shading is done, you can start detailing. Let the creativity take over – I went for a minimal approach to make it easy to explain.

Take the pen tool and out line the intricate pattern as a contour of the shadow area. Use the pen tool to create the shape and adjust using the node edit tool.

Switch off the stroke/outline of this shape and give it the outline color. Reduce the opacity to around 50%.

You can go over this process any number of times adding details. Draw the new shape and then apply a union operation with the other to give it a uniform coloring/opacity.

I added some glossy highlights by creating some blob like shapes, and giving it a whitish-yellow color.

As I said, let the detailing be guided by your creativity. Do post links to your works that you did with the help of this tutorial below.

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This tutorial should get you going on drawing horses – the head specifically.

You should be able to reproduce the results either digitally or using pencil, pen, paper and a good eraser. If you would like to study the results, you can download it at the end of this tutorial.

Basic Shape

First, try to imagine and breakdown the seemingly complicated head of the horse. You will notice that it is sphere for the head, a cylindrical protruding to the muzzle and another much smaller sphere for that area. On the profile view, it becomes circles and a cylinder. The neck too is a cylindar and on profile, it would become a rectangle – but to make it interesting, I twisted it a bit.

With the guide in your minds eye, draw these rough shapes to gain confidence before moving on to actual sketching.

When you are drawing this on paper, try to make the rough lines as light as possible. If you are doing this in a graphics editor – and it provides layers (like GIMP and Photoshop do), do not worry about the intensity/darkness of the lines. For the next step, start in a layer over this and reduce the opacity of the rough layer.

Sketch

Before proceeding with the sketchcing, observe some of the details that make up the feature of the hourse. The muzzle has a hemi-sperical shape and when it opens its mouth, there is a distict profile silhoutte. The forehead has a bump and the strong jaw muscle causes a bulge on the underside of the head near the neck joint. Do not forget the mane that runs down the back of the neck from behind its ears.

With the above details in mind, start sketching the outline and the details. Try to keep the flow of your strokes along the form of the horse’s head.

If you are doing this on pencil, you can do it a little darker than the rough, or you could switch to a softer (and hence darker) pencil like 2B or 4B.

Lineart

On paper, lightly erase the pencil lines and start drawing with a black pen.

If you are doing this digitally, switch to a new layer, and reduce opacity of the sketch layer. (You can turn off or delete the rough layer).

It may be difficult to give varying thickness to the lineart when done on paper, but going parallel to the already drawn lines and filling it up would do – be very careful when you are doing this. Like in the digital medium, you do not have an undo feature while using a pen.

In the digital medium, using the pressure sensitivity and a inking tool makes it real easy to create the lineart with varying thickness.

You can download the finished artwork and open it to see the different layers to see the progression.

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If you found this tutorial helpful, pass on the link to your friends or whoever you think might be intrested.

And do subscribe to KalaaLog.com feeds (or use the email subscription form) if you have not done already. I plan to write more such tutorials aimed at both beginner and intermediate levels.

This tutorial, would be on a similar technique as the earlier tutoril on drawing a fish. The subject is a little bit complicated – that is the difference. But inspite of that, you will notice that even this subject can be approached with the ’simply and build over’ method of sketching and drawing.

You can either work on pencil, eraser, pen and paper, or on digital medium using GIMP or Photoshop. You will be able to download the digital file either as XCF or as PSD for your study. The different steps are in different layers.

Rough

The tortoise basically consists of the carapace, the limbs and the head. The tail too, but it is not visible from the angle I will be drawing it. You will see that my ’simple’ shapes are not that simple as compared to the earlier fish tutorial. But if you squint your eyes, you will notice that they are all still the basic shapes. The carapase is an oval, the head is a rounded rectangle, the limbs are triangles. After a while of sketching you can actually imagine these guides as you draw.

If you feel uncomfortable with the slightly complex shapes, you can start from the basics of simpler shapes and build to this point.

If you are doing this on paper, rember to use a HB or lighter pencil. Put in the strokes lightly. On the computer, do the rough lines on a layer called ‘Rough’.

Sketch

Over the rough, you will be sketching. Again, imagine the below guides. The red and browns are marking the eyes, and creases of mouth and neck.

The blues are the nails/claws. The green is the segmentation of the shell/carapace. If you feel you are uncomfortable imagining the squished brick like structure, draw it out lightly over the rough.

Start sketching over the rough with darker pencil like 2B or 3B, trying to hold true to your rough work.

In GIMP or Photoshop, create a new layer called ‘Sketch’ above, and reduce the opacity of ‘Rough’ layer to 30% or 50%. Take a pressure sensitive brush and start drawing on the ‘Sketch’ layer.

Do not worry if the lines are not clean, that is what we will be doing in the next step. The focus here would be to make the form solid.

Lineart

If you are working on paper, run the eraser over the drawing lightly, to make your sketch light. Your rough work should have disappeared. Take a pen and draw the lineart over the sketch. Once you are done, erase all the pencil markings.

On the digital end, turn off the ‘Rough’ layer, bring down the opacity of the ‘Sketch’ layer, and create a new layer called ‘Lineart’ or ‘Basic Lineart’. Use a simple brush/inking brush, with pressure sensitivity turned off for opacity, and turned on for size.

Once the basic lineart is done, on the paper, go in and thicken some of the lines. On the digital medium, you can either create a new layer, or work on the ‘Lineart’ layer itself, and using a thicker brush than the previous, thicken some of the form defining lines – like the carapace/shell, the head and neck, and the limbs.

Do not thicken each and every line, that defeats the purpose of keeping variation.

Download: Draw A Tortoise – XCF | PSD

Download XCF version if you use GIMP and PSD for Photoshop. All the steps along with the guides are placed as different layers. You will need to switch the visibility on and off on those layers.

Drop in a comment below if you would like some drawing tutorials on specific subjects (or you can contact me).

If you liked this tutorial, please subscribe to KalaaLog.com feeds (or use the email subscription form above), and pass this link to your friends.

This would be a beginner level tutorial on drawing a fish. You can walk along the tutorial either using a pen, pencils, eraser and paper, or you could use any graphics software that has layer handling feature like GIMP or Adobe Photoshop along with a graphics tablet like Wacom products.

I create this using GIMP. At the end of the tutorial, you will find the XCF and PSD downloads that shows the progression in different layers.

Rough

You need to not draw the above – but basically, as I have explained in the You Too Can Sketch book, simplify the subject to simple shapes. Here it reduces to three triangles. With the above shapes in mind, do some rough markings. If you are doing it on paper, do the following marking very lightly (ignore the colored shapes).

If you are doing it on the computer, start of with a layer named ‘Rough’ and you need not worry about the darkness of the lines. You will be able to switch the layer visibility or even reduce its opacity to any percentage.

Sketch

Now we would get to some sketching over this rough work. Note that even the different details can be reduced to simple shapes. The lip/mouth area and the fins become are triangles and the eye is simply an ellipse.

If you are doing this on paper, sketch with darker lines. You can either increase the pressure you put, or as an alternative, use a pencil with softer tip (if you had used HB for rough work, use a 2B for shading).

On the computer it is easier. Create a new layer above ‘Rough’ and name it ‘Sketch’. Reduce the opacity of the ‘Rough’ layer.

Lineart

On paper, at this point, run your eraser lightly over what you have done to this point so that your sketch marks are lightly visible and the rough work is cleared up. Take a pen and start going over the sketch you have done, with clean and confident strokes. Once you are done, and you are sure that the ink has dried, use the eraser again to remove any pencil markings. Go over the basic lineart again, adding details and varying the line width to make it more interesting.

On the computer, create another layer over all the other layers and name it as ‘Line’ or ‘Lineart’. You can now turn off the visibility of the ‘Rough’ layer, and bring down the opacity of the ‘Sketch’ layer. Use a solid brush, or use a inking tool to do a basic line art. Once you are done, swith off all other layers (except background). Use a smaller tool size to add details, and a larger one to add line weight.

Download Link: Draw A Fish – XCF | PSD

You can use either of the two files to study the different layers. Download XCF if you use GIMP or PSD if you own Photoshop. Each step and guides have been provided as a layer.

When you follow this tutorial, and try to draw a fish, chances are that if you have not been drawing earlier, the resulting artwork would look a bit stiff. Do not worry about it. Keep practicing and you would start to learn intutively on how to make the subject flow and look alive.

I have been writing tutorials here for different styles of digital artwork – digital painting and vector illustration. But being able to draw is a prerequisite for both of them. Drop in a comment below if you would like some drawing tutorials on specific subjects (or you can contact me).

If you liked this tutorial, please subscribe to KalaaLog.com feeds (or use the email subscription form above), and pass this link to your friends.

• Software: Inkscape
• Level: Beginner
• Subject: Spider silhouette

Here is a video tutorial – it should be pretty self explanatory. I have tried to use the menu commands as far as possible, even though I use the keyboard shortcuts usually to increase my workflow speed.

Check out more vector tutorials using tags, or the tutorial index page for the rest of them.

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