What opacity setting I use in digital painting? This is one of the most asked questions on this blog and my Youtube channel.
Many of the same question such as How much opacity do you use for the first but, and do you use one layer or variouse layers? or Im completely new to doing digital painting. Do you do your base sketch and and the do value and shading on one layer? or how many layers do you work with? and how do you work with them? Dude how many layers did you put on this painting?? are you using layers each shading? and many more. So this post I hope will clear some of that up.
MS: Believe me, i’ve watched all of your videos, and i got really inspired.
I bought my graphic tablet about a few weeks ago and i’ve been experimenting, checking youtube for more tutorials.
I found yours to be most helpful.
1) What kind of opacity setting you use when you paint in Photoshop?
Or Or what brush settings (opacity, shape dynamics etc.) do you use when rough shading? i can’t seem to be able to get the same ‘smoothness’ of shade like you do in the video.
Xia: First, I use low opacity (30-50%) to find values and move shapes/shadow around. It’s kind of similar process when you sketch with pencil, you have to get a rough draft or construction lines and rough values (shading, lighting)
After I get what seems to be underpainting (close to corrected values) then I use only (70-100%) and be precise of where you put your paint and strokes using 100% help keep your color clean and not muddy. Then just use logic and intuition where to fix and use opacity according to the local values and decide whether you want soft of hard edge on that area.
Go read Color and value compare for artists to get the better understanding on value.
You can also do exercise here how to shade and render drawing and painting
For tablet setting, I use default setting most of the time. Don’t worry so much about that, very minor stuff. Just make sure your pen is pressure sensitive, that is all there is to it. And for brush settings, I would recommend master the default round then you can play around with your setting once you understand how the default actually works.
painting landscape foggy mountain
MS: 2) But what confused me is, after your sketch you started on the shadows. From what i was taught i should create a new layer and set the sketch as an outline. From what i can can tell, you used the same layer and changed opacity of the brush to make the shadows.. same for the actual painting. i need heavy tips 
Xia: I don’t use many layers in my work. I merge them once I have what I am looking for. What I usually personally do is create another layer on top or under the outlines layer to paint values (shading or lighting) in the beginning. Then as it progress in to form that I want then I will forget lines, think shapes, values, and edge. If you want to add line art, add it after the painting process is done. (Unless you have scanned in inking lines as separate layer, you should put it on top of everything at all time and painting under. In that case, it shouldn’t take you long to paint, just get the basic values and colors or you can push it more toward painting if you like because you want to show off the line work. if that make sense.) then again i’m still learning when it comes to digital painting or painting in general.
But here is a useful articles on general rules, 3 important rules for painting.
Hope this is helpful.
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