Beginner's Guide to Digital Painting in Photoshop

by Nykolai Aleksander, Richard Tilbury, 3DTotal Team (Editor)

Beginner’s Guide to Digital Painting in Photoshop is a new series dedicated to providing a comprehensive guide to the basics of digital painting in this versatile program. Whether you’re new to this artistic medium or simply looking to improve existing skills, this book offers up a wealth of suggestions and advice to get you started, improve workflows, perfect techniques, and produce stunning images. The step-by-step tutorials within this book don’t just describe techniques, but actively demonstrate how these techniques can be applied to an artwork. Industry veterans including Nykolai Aleksander and Richard Tilbury share the benefits of their years of experience in a clear and methodical fashion. They examine the various basic Photoshop tools on offer, shedding light on these features and establishing ways of successfully integrating them into an artistic workflow. Fundamental art theory is also covered, including classic topics such as composition, story-telling, portraying emotion, lighting, and color, leading to a thorough understanding of the components that make up a successful image. Instructive and inspirational, Beginner’s Guide to Digital Painting in Photoshop is an ideal resource for anyone taking their first steps into the digital painting world. Nykolai Aleksander is a UK-based freelance character illustrator and portrait painter, who has been working in the CG field for the past eight years. Richard Tilbury is a freelance artist from the United Kingdom who works in both 2D and 3D and has been featured in a number of popular publications.

Genres: Art, Reference, Nonfiction, Drawing, Design

224 pages, Paperback

First published January 10, 2012

Reviews

[J.M. (Joe) · Rating 2 out of 5]

Not a true beginner's guide. This is more for an intermediate-level digital artist who wants a refresher or wants to pick up some new techniques. The articles within are fairly hit and miss and could have done with a little more detail overall. I give it two stars instead of three because of these significant drawbacks. If you already have the basics down, it's still a worthy addition to your studio library. Beginners like myself, who need a little hand-holding from the onset, should look elsewhere.

[Sarah Alirezaee · Rating 3 out of 5]

It didn't have that much information and it wasn't exactly for beginners, but it was ok.

[Kanrei No Fushichou · Rating 4 out of 5]

For me that book was a nice read and I learnt many new things. I felt that because of just drawing and just partially picking up foundations, that I need to go through the basics again and properly picking them up.

Especially the first part of the book I liked, where it goes roughly over stuff like colour theory, perspective etc. I did check some informations more online, since the book really shortly goes into this thing, but it gave me the right direction about this things.
The book showed also how different artists work and techniques used. This certainly gave some nice ideas to on what things one might do with digital art. I also found it helpful to go see how different artists build up their art and how they develop their pictures.
Last part also shows how to draw different things. I didn't really test out those things. It seemed to be ok information. It were rather short tutorials.

I guess it's not really a beginner's book. It does deliver the foundations, but I imagine someone starting digitally, would like to have more information on what tools there all exist in photoshop and how to use them. The book felt more like being many different tutorials to different topics which are relevant for a beginner.
I learn many new things and found the book useful.

[Vybol Seng · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was an extremely understandable and simple to use guide on photoshop from an large number of very incredibly talented artists. Even though I do not yet use photoshop for my digital art this book had easily translated instructions on how to execute many techniques. I have rented out this book from the library numerous times and each time I learn something new. Highly recommended for aspiring digital artists.

[Matt McLean · Rating 2 out of 5]

Honestly, it's an okay book, and I do like going through it. I just think I'll learn better by watching videos or directly interacting with other artists, in this case.

[Parka · Rating 5 out of 5]

(More pictures on my blog)

Beginner's Guide to Digital Painting in Photoshop is one of the better books for learning digital painting with Photoshop.

It's published by 3DTotal and follows a somewhat similar style to their Digital Art Masters series of books. It's filled with tutorials that teach the various aspect of digital painting. There are 224-pages and it comes with a pretty plastic slipcase.

The book benefits those already with some basic experience in creating art. You should be able to draw first. The book's goal is to help you make the transition over to digital painting by showing you how you can replicate your traditional techniques digitally. Through the illustrated examples, you can also learn how the techniques required to create them. Intermediate and advanced digital painters should be able to find useful tips in the book too.

Here's the full list of contents:

A Beginner's Guide

Introducing Photoshop's Workspace
Canvas Settings, Scanning, Colors and Brushes
Composition, Perspective and Blocking In
Grayscale, Blending and Using Photographs
Masks and the Wand Tool
Final Touches and Filters


Art Fundamentals

Lighting and Color
Composition
Portraying Emotion
Perspective and Depth
Storytelling


Complete Project - Area 51

From concepts through to the final image


Painting Styles and Approaches

Speed Painting Sci-fi Characters
Speed Painting Sci-fi Landscapes
Painting Over Grayscale
Digital Painting Using Photographs
Fantasy Landscapes


Project Overviews

The Trials of Devotion
Closet Monster
Soul Hunting


Quick Tips

Learn tricks of the trade from industry professionals


Breakdown Gallery

Image analysis – see how artists create their digital paintings


The first section covers the setting up of Photoshop and understanding the interface with regards to digital painting. The author uses Photoshop CS so some of the software features might differ from newer released. But essentially, the basic features should still be around, somewhere.

The second second covers the art fundamentals. That would be things like lighting, composition, etc. The insightful commentary reinforces what makes a good painting.

The next section is on painting styles and covers painting of fantasy and sci-fi scenes, which is type of subject the book focuses on.

There's also a useful section on creating effects and textures, things like clouds, smoke, explosions, trees, skin, fur, metal, etc.

All the tutorials are created by professional artists, such as Nykolai Aleksander, Richard Tilbury, Eric Spray, Weiye Yin and more. They have lots of experience and their commentaries show.

This is a good book on digital painting. Beginners to advanced users should be able to learn a lot.

[Deepak Chauhan]

Its a great book.

[Maarten Lemmens · Rating 5 out of 5]

<3 loved it

[H.S. Rivney · Rating 4 out of 5]

Was very excited to find this book on using Photoshop to paint. I was always under the impression Photoshop was for altering and enhancing photos, not a paint from scratch kind of power house program, and I enjoyed seeing what is possible.
The introduction is encouraging for us beginner users, but there's a small disconnect after that and it jumps into the methodology for painting, which left me a little out in the dark as I am still a beginner. But the instructions are clear and detailed, and offer many suggestions on how to make a "fill in the blank" kind of painting, such as a star field, an eye, a landscape, etc. And small details, like rust, reflections, metal, trees.
This is an amazingly robust program and the possibilities are truly astounding. If you have some design education behind you you will do better. The variations just in brushes will take a month to sample them all.
I think the title is precise - Beginner's Guide to DIGITAL PAINTING in Photoshop. I need to back up another step or two before I can conquer this skill.