Spaceship!

Ever since I gained a better understanding about light and shadows I've been looking for a way to apply it when coloring digitally. I want to move away from just flat colors (though maybe not entirely) and towards more rendered work. Unfortunately it's been a bit hard to adjust my way of coloring to do this. For those two creature designs I did back in November I used a hard brush to lay down the different tones and then attempted to blend them together with the blur and smudge tools. While that method ultimately worked (kinda), it wasn't a very practical or efficient way to work.

After messing around with my twirl drawing for Illustration Friday I got sick of experimenting blindly and decided to check out the painting tutorials on [ctrl+Paint]. I had bookmarked this site a while ago because it looked useful, but for some reason didn't get around to using it until just yesterday. After watching the [Digital Painting 101] set, this spaceship came about and now I'm much happier. The main idea is to use a large, soft brush to achieve the gradations in value, no blurring or smudging involved. Definitely a more practical way to work and it'll be fun practicing and getting used to this different approach. I have to say, it's really great how [Matt Kohr], the guy behind ctrl+Paint, is taking the time to put up so much useful information for free! Kudos to that guy.

And if the spaceship looks a little familiar it's because it's the same from water drenched drawing I posted earlier, I just traced it onto a new sheet of paper to have something fun to practice coloring. :)