Painting Pansy's the Photoshop Way

While I am waiting for PSPU to reopen I have to have something to do so I decided to try a tutorial over at Eagles Rest Graphics. This is a tut on alpha channels and painting that Susi has provided. Click here that will take you to the tutorial if you want to have a go at it.

So what is an alpha channel? That I don't know concerning this but it was fun! That's me putting the donkey before the cart, I am sure that will be covered in class somewhere down the road. As far as I can see it is explained as a file within a file. Masks, settings and info can be stored in this Alpha Channel. As long as you save as a .pspimage or .psd that alpha channel remains there, with the items within out of sight until you load/recall (in the case of a mask) from that Alpha Channel. In this case someone else saved the image as such for people like me to play with. One day I will make some for others to play with.

I found this a lot of fun, and a bit of a challenge. Everything I know about painting had to be temporarily shoved aside because this is nothing like the real thing but has similar, possibly better results. In my head I am thinking OK now paint one with your paint and brushes on an actual canvas and compare. I may try that if I have the right colors of paint in my stash without having to go buy some. This also took me longer to do, 2 days - only because I really screwed up yesterday an just deleted the whole thing and started over today.

I learned a few things from this tutorial, I learned how people get the shading so perfect (well as perfect as the artist's eye) and patience! I used my Wacom tablet for some of it but I am still having trouble coordinating my eye and hand movements, and I grip the pen too tight thus click goes the little buttons at the most inconvenient times! there is the fact that my brain still thinks the harder I press the darker or blendyer (new word) it will be. Got to stop doing that before I wear out the tablet and the pen from heavy usage.

Well hope you enjoyed this little bit, I am sure there will be more soon!