One of the tricky things to painting digitally is trying to create that “illusion of depth”; not “visual depth”, but that physical depth you get with physical media—how paint layered upon paint has a physicality to it, a “texture” or “height” vs. digital painting where, no matter how many layers upon layers of pixels you have, it will always appear flat. Many people may not know what the difference is between a digital painting and a traditional one, but they can “see” or sense the difference. Well, this technique demonstrates how you can achieve an “illusion of depth”, making it more akin to physical media.
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Recently a friend of mine asked me about a special technique that can be used in Photoshop to paint fur. The technique was originally shown to us by an artist at Dreamworks, Richard Daskas. Mr. Daskas used this technique to paint the fur for a concept painting of “Monkey” from Dreamwork’s Kung Fu Panda, to [...]

The “Background Eraser” trick for line-drawings in Photoshop Some months ago, I learned a nifty little trick in Photoshop which allows you to take a scanned drawing and remove all of the background while keeping the drawing. This method is done without any use of the magic wand tool, the background erase tool, or any [...]