Photoshop Mega list from Fossfor's laboratory

Tutorials:
http://psd.tutsplus.com/category/tutorials/
http://www.emagzin.com/featured/photoshop-101-beginning-photoshop/
http://www.edesignerz.net/tutorials/photoshop
http://speckyboy.com/2010/02/22/a-round-up-of-50-fresh-photoshop-tutorials-and-techniques/
http://www.photoshopsupport.com/
http://www.psdvault.com/
http://www.smashingmagazine.com/tag/photoshop/
http://www.tipsquirrel.com/
http://www.photoshoproadmap.com/
http://www.tutorial9.net/category/photoshop/
http://tinyurl.com/33vpmjz
http://machoarts.com/17-best-photoshop-cs5-video-tutorials


Brushes:
http://www.brushking.eu/
http://dzineblog.com/2008/10/45-sites-to-download-photoshop-brushes.html
http://www.blendfu.com/
http://www.noupe.com/freebie/ultimate-collection-of-photoshop-brushes-actions-and-styles.html
http://josweb.co.uk/blog/2010/10/latest-free-high-res-photoshop-brushes-collection/
http://acrisdesign.com/2010/11/750-free-watercolor-photoshop-brushes/
http://www.photoshopsupport.com/tools/brushes.html
http://www.photoshopbrushes.com/
http://www.brushdirectory.com/


Patterns:
http://www.1stwebdesigner.com/resources/photoshop-patterns/
http://www.brushdirectory.com/patterns/

Shapes:
http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2008/12/11/the-ultimate-collection-of-photoshop-custom-shapes/

Gigantic list of tips from users:
http://blogs.adobe.com/photoshopdotcom/2010/10/photoshop-tips-from-photoshop-fans.html


An enormous list of Photoshop sites:
http://www.noupe.com/photoshop/the-ultimate-photoshop-toolbox.html


Or if you hate Photoshop and think it costs the earth try one of these instead!

Francis Vallejo - Ink Techniques video

Silhouettes and Tangents

These two articles talk about a couple of important things to remember when you are designing characters or setting up enviroments and scenes.

Silhouettes:
'The reason silhouette value is important is because it's a great aid to "foolproofing" the clarity in your drawings - it helps make sure that everyone can tell exactly what your character is doing at all times.' This article is from a series titled ' a Kick in the head' on Mark Kennedy's wonderful blog Temple of the seven Golden Camels which is about drawing, storyboarding and animation.

Tangents:
'If silhouette is desirable, tangents are not. Tangents occur when lines or shapes begin to collide hap-hazardly, usually right on the contours they are describing.' Will Finn is a colleague of Mark's and writes about tangents and why to avoid them in this article on the Small Room. This is something most pro artists do instinctively but sometimes it gets overlooked.

Mark McDonnell's sketchbook

This video is related to my last post on watching people work: Mark McDonnell has a nice Youtube channel with videos of him sketching. I like this one where he shows one of his sketchbooks, with great animals and characters.



He says this sketchbook is a Cachet, earthbound recycled sketchbook , ISBN # 1-56152-416-6, and it's great paper that can take a bit of punishment with wet media. He draws with Prismacolor markers and pencils. The black is a Gelly-Roll pen.

Process: seeing how other people work

Work In Progress: is a great place for processes. They are also quite large so you can get a good look at how they are done.

Slam Blogsma: this blog by Sam Bosma has loads of thumbnails and sketches and shows how he goes from these to digital colour and texturing in Photoshop.

The Unreachable Itch is a blog by illustrator Jonathan Burton. He also posts character sketches, sketches to line work and colour finals.

Wheel of Time - Lord of Chaos Painting by Greg Manchess

The Art Center: get some advice from the experts

'The Art Center is a brand new place where Artists will share Ideas, Tips, and Tutorials. It will quickly grow both in content and artists from all the different art mediums. The Art Center will be a sister site to the Character Design blog'
This is a relatively new site but already has many fascinating posts full of advice about drawing and design written by pro artists. You can follow this blog on Twitter to be sure not to miss any great tidbits.

WE book illustration: Process

I had the basic idea for the composition in my head and then made some thumbnails in Photoshop to see what it could look like and chose the image on the left as it has better balance.



then I drew a large detailed sketch on paper with a blue col erase pencil and scanned it. It also got flipped along the way. I put the line art on the top layer set to Multiply, this allows you to preserve your line art and paint on a white layer underneath.


I often start off painting with the gradient tool set to Radial and use it to paint. This is a really fast way to get some colour down. For this piece I made selections of the cosmonaut, mountains, planet and sky and then made alphas or masks of each one on other layers for easier selecting and painting later on


Then I lay down the basics with a large round brush set at 75% opacity, when I'm more or less sure of my values I take the brush opacity down to 50% . I used to paint a lot with watercolors and use the same sort of technique here. I gradually use a smaller and smaller brush to do details


As a rule I'm not keen on using special brushes, here I just used a stippled brush shape for the stars and the airbrush for some texture on the planet. I also used various layers set to Screen and Overlay modes to get the halo around the planet.


For the visor on the helmet I made an alpha layer to use as a texture with the 'Lighting effects' filter to make the relection look more spherical as it was too flat. Then I flattened all the layers and noodled around a bit to get a more unified look.

Imagine FX new issue out now

The latest Imagine FX mag has some good stuff this month.There's an article on how to make up a good portfolio, some interesting workshops including 'paint smarter, not harder' and another of their series of development sheets for game concept art.

An article titled' Photoshop vs Painter' takes on this endless argument, which I think is a futile one since they are both useful for different purposes. Anyway the contest ends in a draw here which makes sense. It is worth reading this article though if you are not familiar with one or either of the big P's, as they use 10 good examples to show how and when to choose Photoshop over Painter or vice versa.

3 Art podcasts not to miss

I am a podcast addict and recently came across some really good art pods via Twitter:
Escape from Illustration island podcast
Chris Oatley artcast
Art and story podcast

the guys who do these podcasts also have super sites so have a look at them while you listen to their pods.

Imagine FX magazine #50

The 50th issue of ImagineFX magazine is a real smasher. On the DVD you get a demo of Manga Studio EX 4 that has no time limit, this alone is worth the cover price. There is also an article on Craig Mullins, just about the best digital painter ever, a sci-fi workshop with James Gurney and a list of the 50 best living artists. This is an interesting list but I don't agree with a lot of it, and why did they leave out Alan Lee??
I'm really chuffed because my beloved sweetheart has got me a subscription to this mag, so I shall be reviewing it a bit more often on this blog!

Mike Dutton One Swoop Fell video

One Swoop Fell is a fantastic webcomic made by Mike Dutton. It is one of the best webcomics out there by far, really well drawn with beautiful backgrounds. The story is poetic and sometimes dreamy but also funny and exciting. Something about it reminds of Miyazaki so I was not really surprised to read that he took part in the Totorro Forest Project
There is a film on Vimeo of Mike drawing an episode, I especially loved the inking part of this.

Drawing with a brush in Flash MX

Bob Flynn is a cartoonist with a great blog called Drip. He writes about using Flash MX to paint and draw. His line work looks very clean but also really natural and hand drawn.
He starts by sketching in a lighter color and then inks making use of the onion skin feature. Flash is quite a fun app to draw with and using the same techniques in this post and quite a bit of patience you can achieve quite a natural line even though drawing with vectors. Read the articles here and here.

Comic tools blog

Comic tools is a great blog. This guy is very generous with his time and knowledge. Although the title is aimed at comickers this blog has loads of useful info for anyone who draws. I really like his anatomy tutorials, he has some really good tips and tricks for inventing characters and getting them to look right.

Nic Klein Takes Us Inside His Process

Nic Klein shows his process for painting Viking, a new series for Image comics in this interesting little article. He must work really fast to do two of these a month. I really like the mixture of an acrylic monotone base and digital colours.
I wrote about Nic a while ago on this blog.

Sketch magazine

Blue Line Pro art supplies have a magazine called Sketch about all things comics, they have some good articles on drawing amongst other things, although I think they have too many adverts.
There is also a very good forum with sections on pencilling , inking, colouring and Tips & tricks.

Kevin Chen demos on ConceptArt

There is a quite an old thread on the Conceptart.org forums chock full of demo drawings by Kevin Chen. These sketches are amazing, you can learn alot about drawing the figure just by looking through this series. There are 3 pages: Page 1, page 2, and page 3
Kevin Chen is a top figurative teacher and concept artist, there is some of his other work here. I wish I had a teacher like this!

New hub page

I have written a new article on Hubpages called 3 Essential things to do if you want to learn to draw well

Hobbit paintings by Justin Gerard

Justin Gerard is an illustrator I had not heard of before I came across his blog where he has some fantastic paintings illustrating the Hobbit. He works on paper with watercolours and then continues the pieces digitally. I think he manages to get the best of both techniques this way when you see the great results.
He has posted the process of the Battle of the Five armies and explains why this scene is so exciting to paint. If you are a Tolkien fan like me you must see these paintings and even if you're not they're still stunning.
There is also an interview on the excellent Tor Sf and fantasy site.

Work process by Alon

Alon's Art Work blog has a very interesting process of how he painted this fantastic Waterfall castle. He shows how he to use photocomposition, 3D models and matte painting to bring all it all together.