Keetee

If you’re a tablet user interested in learning digital painting in Adobe Photoshop, this post is for you! I’ll be using my Wacom tablet for this tutorial, which will show you core settings for painting.

What is Digital Painting?

Digital painting is when a pressure-sensitive drawing tablet and stylus are used to mimic traditional painting techniques. What’s great about this technique is the added flexibility—in the digital realm, you can paint with virtually any color, cut and paste at will, and just hit undo when you make a mistake. And don’t forget about all the adjustment options in Photoshop!

Getting Started: Settings

Before you begin painting, you’ll need to ensure you have the right settings on. Brush Dynamics are used to set how pressure on your tablet affects your brush strokes. To look at all the available brush Dynamics:

1. Select the Brush Tool from the Tools menu.
2. Open Window in the menu bar and select Brushes to open the Brushes panel.
3. On the left-hand side of the Brushes panel, you’ll see a series of checkboxes and the available dynamics.

Two main Dynamics are of interest to us: Shape and Other. The Shape Dynamics sub-menu contains the Size Jitter, and the Other Dynamics sub-menu contains the Opacity Jitter.

Here is an example of each in use:

Size Jitter

The more pressure you apply, the thicker the line. The maximum thickness is the size of your brush. Here’s how to get started using it:

1. Go to File in the menu bar and select New. In the dialog box, specify a width and height of 600px and 600px. Leave other settings at default; click OK.
2. Select the Brush Tool from the Tools menu. Right-click your blank canvas and input 20px in the Master Diameter textbox.
3. Open Window in the menu bar and select Brushes to open the Brushes panel.
4. Select the Shape Dynamics menu item and check the checkbox. In the Shape Dynamics sub-menu, click the dropdown box below Size Jitter (next to Control) and select Pen Pressure.
5. Use your stylus to apply varying levels of pressure to your tablet.

Opacity Jitter

The more pressure you apply, the less opaque the line. Here’s how to get started using it:

1. Follow steps 1-3 above for Size Jitter.
2. Select the Other Dynamics menu item and check the checkbox. In the Other Dynamics sub-menu, click the dropdown box below Opacity Jitter (next to Control) and select Pen Pressure.
3. Use your stylus to apply varying levels of pressure to your tablet.

Next Time

Using the above simple techniques, you can achieve complex results! As an example, here’s one of my paintings, Self-Portrait (Peach), that uses only the forementioned jitters without additional processing.

That’s it for this tutorial! In my next post, I’ll explain how to develop a technique with these tools.

This post is part of a series on digital painting:

1. Introduction and Settings
2. Developing Technique
3. Showcase: How Paintings Progress