News and Updates:

Silkenray has returned from her venture, and will once again be handling Fan Art as of next week. Keep the fabulous additions to our gallery coming.

MerripShards

I was a little worried that nobody would have any questions to ask of me, and that I would end up entirely fabricating this part, like the Q&A hosts do every... er... nevermind. It turns out I got several very good questions. While I couldn't post all of them, here are three I thought I could best answer.

The thing to keep in mind is the reason for which you are drawing. If you are producing art you intend to include in a portfolio, or use for a job in any way, you really shouldn't be copying the work of others. The majority of character art is owned by someone else, and can't be used without their permission. As far as portfolio work, employers are almost always more interested and impressed in original work than with artist copies.

However, if you are creating art simply to create art, then go for it! Draw everything and anything that interests you, and don't give a second thought to copying the work of another. The only way to learn is to do it yourself, and as long as you don't use the work for your own gains (particularly financial or employment), there's nothing wrong with it at all. As you work, however, try to consciously consider what you like and don't like about the original work, and begin to change your version around somewhat. Eventually, aim to apply what you learn through copying these pieces of art to your own original work. You said, "I usually have fun drawing" - that's probably the most important part. Draw what you enjoy, create what you find beautiful, and don't forget that the greatest artists in the world all began their artistic vision in the work of others.

Hopefully I am understanding your question correctly - it sounds as though you are referring to Photoshop's ability to separate RGB images into their distinct red, green and blue channels. This can be a great tool, and has many uses. Among them is one of the program's ways to convert a color image to black and white. In most cases, one of the three channels will be of a higher contrast, and that is the one you should use. It depends on your image.

In your case, the channels may not be the best method, however. If you have black and white line art that you've created in Photoshop itself, it will already be on its own layer, but if this is something you've scanned or done in another program, it can be tricky to remove the background color and preserve the line art.

The process is eased considerably if you are truly using black and white art, and don't have to worry about color. Under the "Select" menu is an option called "Color Range." Choose this, which lets you choose a certain range of colors or shades over the entire image. Go ahead and select a clear white spot in your image (not the small image in the Color Range window, but the real image), and then adjust the slider until it looks like you've got a good selection. In this case, you will be selecting everything EXCEPT the line art, but depending on your image, the opposite might be easier. Following this, you may want to feather the selection a pixel or two, but not too much. Once you've got your selection all set, go ahead and delete all that space (or, if you've got the line work selected, copy it to a new layer). You should have all the line art on its own layer, with the background totally transparent. You'll probably have to go in and clean up little smudges and inconsistencies, but practice will reduce these as well. Consider adjusting the Image Levels beforehand to make the entire process even smoother.

Update: A reader has emailed me and brought up an even better way to do this. You can get a better look witout selecting anything at all, and leave it so that you will always be able to go back and change what you've done. Her message is as follows:

"Another way to do this that I think you almost were going to explain, without actually deleting the white space, is to set the black and white image as its own layer. Then go into the layer properties (in PS6 you can just 2x click - the layer menu also has the "Blending Options" item) and select "Multiply" for the blending mode. What this does is cast a shadow over any layers beneath the multiplier layer, depending on how dark the specific area of that layer is. By using this method, you can keep the really sharp or soft lines that are part of the original drawing without having to worry about pixelization."

"To add color, make sure that the color layers are /beneath/ the multiplier, or they will cover it. An additional step that can sometimes aid quick colors is to basically do what you said to do, and fill in the white areas, then have another copy of the original B&W image as a seperate multiplier layer. What I like best about this method is that you can get some /very/ soft images with it by combining a light pencil drawning with pale colors."

Thanks goes to Alia for this tip.

Adobe Photoshop is an excellent graphics program, and is probably the most popular and powerful imaging tool available to artists today. However, it has two major weaknesses. First, it's expensive. Expect to pay close to $600 if you aren't upgrading. And second, as the program's name might imply, it is heavily oriented towards photographic imaging. That's perfect for some types of work, and doesn't mean that it can't be a vital tool in nearly every aspect of the artistic process, but artists who are used to mediums like paint and ink, or even simple charcoal, may find it lacking. There is another program called Painter, made by MetaCreations. This is another very powerful tool, and should be familiar to artists of any medium. Between these two and a nice digital camera or scanner, there's not much you can't do.

There are many other tools available, however, and lots of them are free. Definitely worth checking out is The Gimp, a continually evolving graphics program that is currently free and looks to be growing into something at least as powerful as Photoshop, and possibly even better. There are lots of small imaging programs available on the web and sometimes packaged with hardware or other software (I got a copy of Photoshop LE with a modem once... explain that one to me). Try out everything you can, and see what works best for you.

As far as my own work, I tend to be more oriented towards the digital aspect or art than traditional drawing. I have attended an art academy for four years now, so I have had a lot of experience in various ways of approaching artwork. What seems to work best for me is sketching out basic concepts, scanning those preliminary sketches in, and then using them as backdrop layers in photoshop. Much of my work is with textures, so I try to always carry around a camera to capture random wall textures and materials I see around me every day. I've compiled quite a library of those textures, and tend to integrate them into projects as well.

I hope I answered those sufficiently, and that they might give you some ideas of new ways to work. Silkenray will return next week, but feel free to email me at merripen@rpgamer.com with any further inquiries.

I thank you for having me as your host these last few weeks. Perhaps I will come this way again, and hopefully I will get to submit my own work sometime soon. Keep up the gorgeous art, and continue to dream by day.

- merripen