Photoshop Painting

Part 1: Basic Blending

Welcome to my first tutorial, how to do basic blending when painting in Photoshop! This tutorial will cover the basic steps to painting a gradient, which is a smooth transition from one color to another.

Please note that I only work with a mouse because I do not own a tablet. Therefore, this tutorial will not fully apply to tablet users, but I believe that the basic process is somewhat similar. Hopefully, you will still learn something useful from this tutorial.

Open a new canvas by going to File – New. Set the width and height as well as choosing the color mode and background color. To practice for this tutorial a 220 x 200 pixel size with a white background and rgb color mode works fine.

To start off, the tool that I boxed in red is the Brush tool. Boxed in purple is the Eraser tool. If you click and hold down on either of these buttons, there will be other options available to you. Just make sure they’re set on Brush Tool and Eraser Tool.

Click the brush tool on the toolbar, right click on the canvas and set the brush size to about 30. Also set the hardness to 100%. Moving down the toolbar you will see two boxes, one set a bit in front of the other. If you have never touched them before the are set to black and white by default. Click on the frontmost one and a window will pop up, allowing you to choose your color, in this case we will choose orange. Click OK and you will be immediately ready to paint on the canvas. When you want to change color go back to that same box and repeat the process. You can change your brush’s opacity or flow by first selecting the brush tool and then adjusting the Opacity and Flow options, as shown.

So, how does changing the opacity and flow affect your brush? Well, think of opacity as being how visible the color your brush paints. The lower your opacity, the more transparent the color you’re painting. The flow option affects how much paint you’re applying at a time. If you have a low flow, it takes more strokes over one area to reach the color’s maximum saturation. All this seems confusing at first, but it’s quite simple when you visualize it.

I placed a black bar behind all three green blobs so you can easily compare how opacity and flow affects them. Notice how at 50% opacity, the green is half transparent compared to 100% opacity. However, see how at 25% flow, the green sort of starts out at 25% visibility and becomes more saturated where the brush strokes overlap? You can combine these two to create different effects, like having 40% opacity and 20% flow for a brush. For this tutorial, we’ll keep simple and only work with changing the flow a bit.

Now, this is where many artists differ when digitally painting. This tutorial shows how I personally paint, and in no way is this method considered the correct way. And, really, there is no correct way to paint. I think it’s all about personal preference, and this tutorial explains how I like to paint.

Because we’re going to do some blending with colors, I like to set my brush to 100% opacity and 10% flow. In my real paintings, I range anywhere from 5% to 15% flow, moving closer to 5% when working on details.

So, are we ready to go and tackle the real painting part at long last? No! No we aren’t! Once again, there’s another issue about customizing your brush. For brush size, I’m going for a diameter of about 20 pixels just because my blending area is somewhat large in this tutorial. Use whatever size you want to blend the colors with, but remember that a too small brush will take too much time, and too large of a brush will make the final product somewhat clumsy and messy.

As for the brush hardness, I’m going for 100%. I know the soft brush is very tempting, as it makes sense that a softer brush would make painting gradients a breeze, right? Actually... that’s correct, but in the long run, it can possibly hurt you. If you want to digitally paint and only use soft brushes, your shading and textures will be so soft and smooth that your picture will look as if it was shaded by gradient fills! You want some texture, you want some feeling, and you want some real motion and complete control of your brush! Or, at least I do, and for that, a hard brush is the way to go. This may not make much sense, but if you really get into the world of digital painting, I hope you’ll understand this a bit more. Okay! Now we are finally at the actual painting part of this tutorial! Let’s say you want to blend these two colors together, orange and red.

Now, make sure your flow is at 10% for your brush, or somewhere close to that percentage, and use the eyedropper tool (boxed in blue) to select one of the two colors. I’m starting with orange simply because I prefer that color to red. After selecting a color, go back to the brush and brush a bit of orange onto the red side. Not all the way, though, and try to concentrate more orange where the orange and red meet in the middle.

Looks like a real beauty now, doesn’t it? Okay, maybe not, but do not worry, we’re only getting started!

The Dropper tool allows you to pick any color on your canvas. When you click it, you have an option near the top of your screen to either take the exact color you click on, take a 3x3 average of the colors around where you clicked, or a 5x5 average of the colors around where you clicked. Use the eyedropper tool and choose the red this time, and try not to choose the areas of red that have a bit of orange painted on it. With the red, go and paint back over the orange and towards the other side. The red will somewhat blend with the orange you just painted, which is good. Remember now to paint over one area too much or else you’ll end up with a really heavy blob of red, and we’re aiming for a smooth blend here.

If you mess up, hold down control and hit z to undo. Or, go to Edit in the toolbar at top and click Undo.

Go back and forth across these colors a couple times, evening out the clumpy parts, and try to maintain a somewhat even transition from orange to red. Use the eyedropper tool to select colors that are in between and the brush tool, start painting with those colors to help even out the gradient. And although it is tempting, DO NOT SMUDGE! This is not a smudging tutorial; it’s a painting one! Creating gradients like this is a very important skill that you’ll use constantly if you’re going to dive into digital painting. Some people smudge, but I prefer to paint because I can personally choose which colors I want and apply them exactly how I want them.

Eventually you should end up with something like this! And if you don’t, don’t worry! Keep trying and have patience! Creating a perfectly even gradient for the first time is tough to do, so if you even get close, that’s a really nice job already! And since everything looks smoother and nice when trimmed and shrunken down... there’s our end product!

This technique is probably the most important and basic technique of all digital painting. It will allow you to blend colors to achieve smooth transitions. Here's my Jack Skellington I did as a quick painting practice a while ago.

If you look at the skull, you can see that there are many transitions from light to dark all over the place. I achieved this effect by first making his skull a dull whitish-tan color, then brushing in with lighter and darker colors on top. To make sure that you get a smooth transition of light to dark, you need to know how to blend them using the technique in this tutorial.

Remember to practice this a couple times over. You’ll be choppy at first, but you’ll gain experience, and that’s one thing a tutorial can’t give you alone. Good luck, and get practicing!

 

Credit:
This tutorial was written exclusively for NeoLodge.com by Kev.
Edited by Georgie.

09/2006