Over the last couple of days, I have added a couple of new videos and a new title called Digital Painting. This new title is intended to be a great resource for beginning digital painters or those interested in getting started with digital painting. I am going to do my best to cover every aspect of digital painting as I know it from A to Z.

Now, for the two of you that actually read this blog, I am going to give you the secret to becoming a master digital painter. I hope you are not disappointed when I say PRACTICE! When you see the work that is done by all of these master painters out there, you are only seeing the end result. You are not seeing the thousands of hours that go on behind the scenes. I am not saying that the pros spend a thousand hours on each painting, but I am saying that there are thousands (probably more like around 5,000) hours that are necessary to become a professional.

Before you become discouraged from hearing that it could take up to 5,000 hours to become a professional, think about professional sports players and the amount of practice that they have to put in before getting selected to play for a professional team. How many times do you think Tiger Woods has hit a golf ball? How many times has Michael Jordan shot a basket ball? There are no shortcuts! You need to be working in your sketchbook day after day after day.

If you want to get 5,000 hours in, you are going to need to work extremely hard. It might take some people more time than others depending on your schedule. If you can work for 12 hours a day, you can be a pro in just over a year. Now - I understand that we all do not have 12 hours a day, but how about putting in 2 hours a day? It would take longer to become a pro, but you would still be heading in that direction.

Why not challenge yourself to sit down and draw for 2 hours a day every day. Keep everything you draw and sketch! It is very important that you keep your work. Throw nothing away no matter how bad you think it is. The reason you are going to keep your work is because you are going to draw for 2 hours every day for a month, then after the first month, you are going to evaluate your progress. Then after you have drawn for 3 months, evaluate again. Then evaluate at 6 months, then a year.

I guarantee you, that if you draw for 2 hours a day, YOU WILL MAKE SUBSTANTIAL PROGRESS! I believe with all of my heart and soul that each and every one of you can be a professional artist without having an ounce of natural talent from the beginning.

It is my goal here at Learn Digital Design, to show you that road map to success so that you can realize your dream of becoming a pro artist!

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Well everyone. I wanted to let you all know that even though there has not been a bunch of noticeable movement here on the site, I am working very hard behind the scenes to bring you more video tutorials and some new titles as well. I have a bunch of stuff planned and want to do it all in one day, but these things certainly take time. I really struggled and pushed myself to the absolute limit just to get the site to where it is today. Then fell off the boat and forgot everything! I am relearning things like CSS, and PHP. I hope that someday this site can do well enough that I can have someone do all of the coding and junk for me. I am an artist not a programmer; however, the two occupations are more similar than you think!

Give me a shout in forums!

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(Read to the bottom for a list of recommended tablets)

It seems that I am constantly asked about graphics tablets. There could be an important reason for this of course. The reason being that drawing with a mouse is much similar to drawing with a bar of soap. Ever since I purchased my first graphics tablet I could not dream of possibly going back to the mouse. What was I thinking ever thinking that using a mouse to paint or draw on a computer was even close to okay. You might get away with using a mouse if you are using a vector or 3D program. In those instances, there is not much important on wrist work or the stroke you create with your drawing tool.

I have explored several options for graphics tablets and I must say that I was very disappointed with the first ones I used. I am even more disappointed with them now that I have what I have now!

I spend a lot of time on various forums and sites that have to do with digital painting and graphic design. I have noticed one thing amongst professional graphic designers, concept artists, and digital painters. That is that they do not talk about their “Graphics Tablets.” I never hear them say “Graphics Tablet.” Wouldn’t you consider that weird? Isn’t a graphics tablet sort of important to what they do and worthy of discussion. I found out that the answer to that question is absolutely not. They realize that A graphics tablet is not important, what is important is THE graphics tablet. THE only graphics tablet worth mentioning is A WACOM. That is why you will not hear a graphics tablet being discussed. All professionals I have come in contact with do not talk about their graphics tablet. They talk about their Wacom.

“As if it is the only one out there… Sheesh!”, I thought. So, after purchasing and receiving my Wacom, I realized what the buzz was all about. First of all, it comes in a startlingly high quality package. The first time you open your Wacom will make you feel like you are opening a box of the very finest and most exquisite chocolates. When you handle it for the first time, you will realize how thin, yet substantial it feels in your hands. The pen is perfectly weighted and the grip feels so good between your fingers. Then, if your like me you will not be able to help but drag the pen tip across the surface of the Wacom and get a feel for it before even hooking it up to your computer. You will be surprised at how much it feels that you are writing on a piece of paper.

There are several Wacoms available. I use a medium Intuos 4. There are also economy models in the bamboo line. I will link to them below. The models below go from the least expensive on the left to the most expensive on the right.

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I must say that Digital Painting Techniques turned out to be exactly the book I was looking for. Every page of this book is just about worth its price in gold to anyone who might be starting out or learning their way as a digital painter.

Most of these books are like little step by step manuals on how to make certain effects, but teach you little that can be applied in other circumstances. Digital Painting Techniques gives just what it says “Techniques” these techniques are very robust and can be used in all kinds of applications.

Another great thing about this book is: even though almost every lesson in the book uses Photoshop, the book does not overly hinge on the exclusive use of Photoshop. The same techniques could be used with other painting programs and the same results obtained.

I am looking forward to hearing what you all have to say about this book, please comment here on the blog or come over to the forums to discuss it.

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I am pretty interested in taking my digital painting to the next level.  I have put in a lot of work lately on anatomy and figure drawing.  If you are interested in improving your figure drawing skills there is one place where I have really been helped.  That is posemaniacs. There you can look at 3D models of people in all kinds of different poses and work on drawing them in set amounts of time.  The more time I spend on Posemaniacs the better I seem to get at figure drawing.  I am thinking of adding a sketchbook area in the forums so that we can all post our sketchbooks and keep up with each others progress and encourage one another.

Also, I have ordered a book that got held up due to weather (Digital Painting Techniques: Practical Techniques of Digital Art Masters (Masters Collection)) I absolutely can’t wait to get it!  After I get my hands on it and go through it I will let all of you know what I think and how much it has helped.

See you around.

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Hello everyone,

I am glad to say that I should have more time now to keep up with the site here.  I am planning a few changes also, even though they may take a while to implement.

I want this site to forever be a place where people can come and learn to create without having to pay for expensive software.  However, with that said, I have realized in the past year that there is such a thing as an “Industry Standard.”  I know that those of you who are hard core open source people will feel like I have deserted the cause, but that is not the case, I simply want to broaden the cause.

Without adding any additional anticipation here, I am going to announce that I want to also provide information to users about how to use non open source software such as Photoshop and Adobe Illustrator.  Inkscape, Gimp and the like will still be covered here, but I have realized now that if one of the users here wants to make money with their designs, it would be wrong of me to tell them that the open source software route is the best to take.

Clients expect users to use software that will coorespond with systems that they already have in place.  I guarantee that if you are working for a client who is going to take what you are creating and use it in some sort of collaborative project that a .SVG file will not suffice.

Something else I would like to cover that will be important is for users who started the open source route but now want to transition over to the Adobe route.  This way, users will still have the confidence to go ahead and learn Inkscape and Gimp and know that LDD will be here for them when they are ready to take the next step to do commercial work.

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No, Blender 2.5 has not been officially released yet. But you can download the latest build, which I must say works pretty well. On my last post about Blender 2.5 everything looked nice, but I could not find many things that I was looking for. In this new version of 2.5 it seems that they have at least added all of the functionality of 2.49.

From what I understand this is what they are already using for the development of Durian. One of their major goals in creating the open movie is to use Blender 2.5 to do it. So you can be assured that bugs are being fixed constantly and 2.5 should be on the fast track at this point.

I personally am going to start using 2.5 and hope to have it all figured out by the time it is released so I can get some tutorials posted as quickly as possible.

Get the October 11, 2009 build here

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Download Alchemy here: http://al.chemy.org/download// (Windows, Linux, Mac)
Download mypaint here: http://http://mypaint.intilinux.com/ (Windows, Linux)

I have found something that I think you all will really enjoy.  This video not only shows the creative process for coming up with some really awesome work, but it also highlights two new pieces of totally open source software to do it with.

I am going to see what I can come up with on this chaos effect and would be very interested to see what the other Learn Digital Design members come up with.  It will be nice to be loose for once and not have to be so up tight about getting every little line just how I want it.

After all, part of art is enjoyment right?  Sometimes I forsake enjoyment and take on stress by just trying to get everything perfect from the beginning.  If you watch what David Revoy does in this video you will see that you can get started with Alchemy without being so exact in the beginning.

I must say that I love this software!  Check out this next video that is just about Alchemy.  Enjoy!  (after watching this video you may be a bit confused though so I will clarify: You do not have to have a guitar hooked up to your computer to get this effect, haha.)

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Today, I spent the day trying out the most recent build for Blender 2.5.  I must say that I am highly impressed.  It looks awesome.  The new user interface is much more organized and easy to navigate.  There is no doubt though that it will take some time to get used to though.  2.5 seems to be almost an entirely new program.

Here is some great news:  Blender 2.5 will be released in October at the 2009 SIGGRAPH festival.  Thats less than a month away!  Wow!  I can’t wait to get it.

This brings us to a dillema.  Do I start making tutorials for 2.49?  Or should I start working on 2.5?  Considering the fact that 2.5 is coming out in such a short time, I think that we would be much better off if I would just start gearing up for 2.5.

I hate to leave users hanging who are chomping at the bit for tutorials, but the 2.49 tutorials would be obsolete very soon.

Obsolete = Bad

Cutting edge/Shiny/New = Good

What do y’all think?  Let drop me a line and let me know your thoughts on the subject.

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For the last month or so, I have slaved over producing a new line of video tutorials about Blender, and today I can finally say after hitting snag after snag after snag that the first video is finally ready for your viewing enjoyment.

I have stopped trying to mass produce tutorials.  I would now rather take the time and invest in some truly quality tutorials.

It took me two weeks to create the introduction sequence for the videos and about two weeks to create the first tutorial.  Every day or so I would hit a new stumbling block that I had to get past.  Hopefully now, the learning curve has flattened and I can start producing a new tutorial every week or so instead of every two weeks.

I sincerely hope you enjoy the look of the video.  I like to take great pride in my work, and I as an artist view the videos as my own works of art.

Also note, that we now have the capability of hosting exclusive videos that are not found on Youtube.  This in itself took me several days to figure out, because, you know me, I gotta go open source.  I found a nice little player called OSFLV to play the tutorials right here on LDD with absolutely no dependancy on Youtube.

For those of you who only watch on Youtube (you probrally wont read this) I hope that I have succeded in creating a circumstance that will cause you to visit us directly right here at www.learndigitaldesign.com!

Thank you so much for your patience during this time inbetween tutorials!  I gotta update the homepage too so that folks don’t continue to expect a new one every day.

Cheers!

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