I've been chopping for about a year and a half, mostly just editing pics and playing with them. Until, well.....about 2 hours ago, I had never approached the topic of digital painting, where you're actually creating everything from scratch in Photoshop. I had a lot of fun making this, and I'm fairly pleased with the result, so I figured I'd show my new PSC "friends" (even though I don't really know any of you ).

Soooooo....I guess this is my debut. Constructive criticism welcome.

Why won't it let me post a link? I have 5 posts........

Ah, here we are: http://www.flickr.com/photos/23287390@N07/3407109197/

I actually quite like that.
Its a great start, keep it up

Very good.

Why, thank you.

verygood, keep it going

Don't use the filters. It's the first thing I see. If you do use them, make sure you work them so that people don't look at it and say "they used clouds/difference clouds". It's not really a digital painting. That would suggest that you drew something and then airbrushed or painted. This is mostly filters and bevel effects. Don't cheat yourself with shortcuts. You seem to have a creative mind and can create nice images. Don't cheapen it with short-cuts. Take your time and do it right. (We are all guilty at one point or another. I'm just trying to set you on the right path)
Saying "great job" won't help. It's nice to hear, but if you really want to improve you need some negative with the positive.

I agree with 2rey here, (yeah I know ) try to obtain the same effect with out using the filter, I find that you learn more about the program and you find some new style/effect/method in the process. Learn to create different brushes if you want to get right into the digital art side of PS, I find I create more brushes now days to achieve some good if not funky results.

Stick around here and ask lots a questions and never ever stop playing with PS its got so many secrets to teach us.

yeah the basic filters that come with our beloved photoshop are indeed on the whole, a crock of ass. Only the more interim practical ones in the blur and noise categories are useful really.

My standpoint has always been do it the hard way, using filters teaches you how to move little gray sliders around, and hardly anything else, use brushes, make textures and scan them in, get really creative and ya hands dirty as it were.

This way trail and error will eventually get some fantastic individual results, and you will create your own style too. Anyone can slap a few filters around.

If you really want to amaze people, and learn while doing it, you need to put many hours in, and do more than the necessary to get the results.

I think its a really nice first try, keep going at it, the more you pratice, the better you will get

Rey,Marco, Blue have all given sound advice which I will take on board as well.

Thanks for the advice, guys. My only problem is that I have nothing but a mouse to use (no tablets, etc.), which makes painting by hand extremely difficult and not very precise. I plan on buying a Wacom in the next year or so, but until then, I'm stuck with the little rodent.

Up until this point, I've only known how to play around with filters, etc. to get what I wanted. This whole concept of painting by hand is entirely new to me, so I greatly appreciate all of your help.

I only use a mouse.
No tablet, no filters, old photoshop (#7)
It can be done.

Use paths and/or selections to outline the areas you want to paint or mask off. After I bought my Wacom Intous3 I found lots of pros and cons to it. It's loads of fun to play with brush sensitivities but really anything's possible with a mouse. Remember, after all, that they came before the tablet/brush set.

True dat, true dat....



I've just started a new painting using (hopefully) all original material (no filters, bevels, gradients...everything hand-painted), so hopefully it turns out. It may take a while to figure it out to my liking, but I'll post the result as soon as I'm done (if I don't die of old age first ).