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.

The digital painting is done using GIMP and Wacom Intuos3.

See a larger view, and print,  see Phoenix - Painting at devaintART.

For those interested, I had take a couple of intermediate screenshots. Head over to CGPainting.com thread to read through it - Phoenix - Painting thread.

For a wide screen wallpaper version, download it from ClipArtLog.com.

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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I have learned, dabbling with visual art that constraints can actually be a good tool towards bringing out your creativity.

To illustrate, consider a blank canvas, or a white paper. You want to draw anything that fancies your mind. I used to get myself into such a situation, and in the end would get quite frustrated with myself. It is when I put myself against challenges (like the Monster A Day challenge) that learned that I can be more creative. I get more subjects to study, more avenues to pursue.

Owing to this realization, I have been putting constraints within which I would work. Consider the field of digital art. It is a sub-category within visual arts, but it definitely cannot be called a niche. So as I worked on it, I though of focusing only on digital paiting and vector illustration. As I was working on different works on those styles (or mediums), certain subjects and underlying techniques seemed to appear.

Some of the subject studies I worked on, grew quite extensive. For example, check out the Dragon Workshop and the Peacock Workshop pages. Considering the subject matter, I have been able to study them in both the styles/mediums of my choice. I know there is quite more I can do, and in pursuit of that, I have realized the underlying principle that would be key to both digital painting and vector illustrations - that is drawing or depiction of forms using lines.

Effectively, by using constraints I have been able to expand to other techniques and styles strategically.

Though I was doing this subconsciously, it was not until recently as I have been discussing these techniques with others, that I realized this.

So, do not think of constraints as hindrance to your creativity. Leverage them effectively and you can use them as a tool to learn more.

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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Dedicated to the lives lost, those of the civilians and the public service personnel like policemen, firemen and armed forces of India, in the Mumbai attacks of 26 November.

An A4 size painting at 300 dpi in portrait layout, done using GIMP and Wacom Intuos3. Check out the deviantART entry - Mumbai Firemen - for a larger view.

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

Peacock Workshop: Standing Peacock | Dancing Peacock | Painting Peacock | Vector Peacock | More …

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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It can be quite daunting and for those of us who are modest, it may see feel narcissistic. But trust me - I just tried it out. It is a challenging task yet a good creative exercise. As an artist, when you are trying to portray realism to the faintest extent, you would want to be able to capture what is called familiarity. Even when the ‘portraits’ of people (or even things) are distorted like in caricatures (see Tom Richmond’s works for example), the key is to capture the familiarity.

We have been observing ourselves from the day we became self aware. There will be very few who have not noticed some of the features of themselves in the mirror. A Self Portrait is just an attempt to capture the familiarity of oneself.

Here is my first attempt at a self portrait. I believe I have caught some of my features - I can see a lot of changes required, but I am going to let this one slide. I would do more attempts in future.

This was done in GIMP, using Wacom Intuos3, over a span of roughly 15 mintues. Before attempting this, I just peeked at myself on mirror, and tried to take a mental note of the features. After that, I opened up an new canvas in portrait layout and started with a new dull brown layer. This seems to be a better approach than face a blank white canvas. Then, I started out with rough form and kept refining it on new layers - going through with a smaller brush each time.

• 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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