Starting off is the blocking in, just understanding where everything is generally supposed to go. Brush used was Chalk 60 with flow jitter turned on.
From there, a quick lighting refinement over the block, another assist to figuring out the general direction of this hair tussle. At this point I used a custom strand-making brush - the brush head is just a bunch of dots randomly placed. The strand effect is made due to the brush's spacing - its set to 3%. Size Jitter is set to pen pressure, 0%, Angle Jitter set to rotation, 0%, with Flow and Opacity Jitter turned on at 0%.
From there its refining what's already in place. The curve of the hair was a bit too unnatural, so I just made a few brush strokes to the side to figure out how to angle the curl. Once I got that, I started going over curve with a thick Chalk 60 brush, Flow Jitter off and Opacity Jitter on, alternating between black and white and establishing the clump of strands.
From there it's refinement, going back to the custom strand-making brush. When I'm making dark strands to figure where shades are going, flow is at 24%. For getting highlights, white is on at 12%. Its ok to be dirty at this point as the strand brush kind of goes everywhere. A round eraser can clear the mess up without problem later.
To be honest, I have no idea where the clumps are really going or which one is at top or bottom, it just pops out during refinement and I just go with the flow. When you do see what clumps are showing themselves to be on top, the desire is to establish thickness and separation. I start with applying a thick black line...
...and then go over that black line with white...
...this might be more personal since this is working with blocks rather than lines. In any case, if this method is used along with the amount of flow changing I do to get that pencil feel, putting down black first then adding white over it is a way to get a thin dark line without repeatedly drawing lines until you get the perfect curve. Its another method, anyway. From here it's cleanup and re-establishment of what clumped strands go on top and what goes on bottom, using the Chalk 60 brush, opacity jitter on, and again just working with what the process is giving me and just expanding on it...
...Then re-refining with the strands brush, and going back and forth between putting down low brush flow (1-2%) strokes with chalk 60, then going back to the strands brush set to 6-12% brush flow...
...then to get that final shade, I make another layer on top and with the same old chalk 60, opacity jitter on brush, set the brush flow to 1-2% and add darks and whites. Since the brush's flow is so low, it builds off the shading established in the layer below.
Finally, its time to stick the strand back behind her shoulder. I don't want to erase what's there, so I just stick a Layer Mask (that button in the Layers window that's a big white dot in a gray square) on the entire hair folder. Applying black on the layer masks means 'hide' the area, so just brush around the shoulder.
And that's that, Watashi's curl (until I start refining it some more tomorrow) and general method to how the hair was done.
lol the strands brush is something you can make on your own in CS1 by placing a bunch of dots down and then on the menu bar, hit
ReplyDelete-> 'Edit', then
-->'Define Brush Preset,'
It'll take your dots and turn it into a brush. From there, just click F5 to open the brush menu, mess around with the sliders and setting things to pen pressure or direction, then save the brush again by clicking on the button with the arrow pointing down next to a block of horizontal lines - this second save is for Photoshop to remember what options you've turned on or off in the F5 menu for your brush. I can do a quick tutorial tomorrow if this block of text is confusing. There's also just grabbing brushes online, but I'm not familiar with the best sites for that.
As useful as the strands brush is, I really only used 5 brushes for the entire pic, and 3 of them are just variations of the Chalk 60 brush (one with Opacity jitter on, the other with Flow Jitter on, and the last one with faded edges). The other 2 brushes are the strands brush and a custom brush that's just a round brush with a bit of edge fade. 90% of this image is chalk 60 brush.
Personally just did the jump from CS2 to CS5 earlier this year - didn't realize cs6 was around the corner but its a jump enough. They've changed something about the way brush falloff and opacity is applied - can't say concretely, but there's tonal ranges and general feel that I had to work at to reach what I was able to get on CS2. Otherwise, the 2 additions I do use after the jump are Warp and Rotate.
The major difference really is just under the hood. Later CS makes use of your graphics card to run more efficiently and finally takes advantage of OS speed that's more recent than Windows XP. Otherwise, I'm having a hard time trying to find much of a difference - even with its speed up, its hard to tell considering the program gets more and more bloated each iteration, and never reaches the smoothness of something like Sai.
From personal experience and what others say around school and various forums, the only major Photoshop jump that's considered a requirement is a jump to PS 7 as that's the version when they implemented brush creation. CS1 and up are generally viewed as preferential updates - artists like enliighten are still using CS2, and older versions have the advantage of being less bloated. The other major addition I know of is from CS 4 and up with the inclusion of 3D model manipulation and coloring, which is something beyond what I've played with, and also a feature only included in the special versions of the CS series. You're missing a few updates that do make certain things a hell of a lot easier depending on what you want to do, but everything I did here is doable on PS 7.