Join Renee at the Autodesk Booth at 10AM and 2PM each day for a one hour live drawing session using SketchBook Pro.
Renee will be creating creature concepts on the new Wacom Cintiq 13HD. Anyone who wishes to participate is encouraged to bring along their digital or analog sketchbooks.
There will be giveaways throughout the session, including the Wacom Bamboo Stylus. Special thanks to Wacom.
There's a billion different ways to customize a brush. Kyle covers it really well in this post. But what about the default tools? The default tools are locked down in some ways, and you can only change basic attributes. Why would you want to use the airbrush? The felt pen?
BKAB is a series of quick simple tutorials on the default brushes in your tool palette. It's meant to help you understand each tool individually, and inspire you to think about how use them, and how to customize brushes.
THE AIRBRUSH TOOL
1) STROKE ATTRIBUTES
In order to properly simulate an airbrush, the tool has a fuzzy quality to it. The larger the stroke, the fuzzier the edges, even at 100% opacity. This is just like a real airbrush!
2) SHADING
Shading with the airbrush is like a dream! Like I said last time, I'm kind of a shading nut- I want everything smooth and blended. The airbush and I get along really well. Here's how I like to work:
First, I lay down huge patches of value to block in my shading. I don't mind being sloppy- we're going to clean it up.Then I take the airbrush tool at a very low opacity and a medium size, maybe 25 radius and .01 opacity. I select one color of value- like the super dark color on my cube.
I take my brush and run it along the edge of the dark color and the lighter color. Because the brush is a low opacity, this creates an inbetween color that is half the lighter color and half the darker color. That's perfect- it's what I wanted. I then select this new inbetween color, and run it over the edge of where it meets the dark.
I keep going this over and over again- select, lay down light opacity color, select, lay down light opacity color, and eventually things start looking pretty smooth!
3) FINAL IMAGE
I wanted to make something fluffy for my final image. I have a story idea I've been kicking around about Moon Sheep. They have buoyant wool that floats down to earth to create our clouds. The dark size of the moon is covered in grass- and that's how they're able to sustain living on the moon!
There's several different textures I'll need to simulate for the image- fluffy wool, spikey grass, and bumpy moon texture. I use the size quality of the brush to help me describe the textures- sharp at small sizes and blurry at larger ones.
Grass: This is where the small sharp brush comes in handy. First I lay down big patches of color using a big brush, but then I go down to 5.0 to describe the spikey grass.
Moon: Same idea, different kind of stroke! I use the big fat brush for large areas, and then I scale it down to make little bumps, holes, and pits.
Wool: I sketched my Moon Sheep out first, and then used the big fat brush to give him fluffy volume. I used the thin stroke at 5.0 to make little stringy bits of fluff.
Last Saturday was Free Comic Book Day, the annual event where participating comic shops across North America and the around the world give away comic books for free.
In Toronto, we once again teamed up with the Silver Snail to add live digital sketching to the day's festivities. This year, Skottie Young and Kalman Andrasofszky were featured guests.
Skottie Young created the original artwork for this year's Silver Snail poster.
Kalman Andrasofszky, comic artist and designer of the new Captain Canuck revamp, creating an original piece live on a Wacom Cintiq 24HD
Check out the timelapse YouTube video of Skottie's 60 minute live in-store creation, created in SketchBook Pro.
Special thanks to Silver Snail and Wacom for their support.
Lena Le is a multi-media designer/artist from the SketchBook team. Here, she shares a walkthrough of some of her techniques in SketchBook Ink.
Ever since I started using SketchBook Ink, I’ve fallen in love with its sophisticated pen tool and its amazing ability to export up to a whopping 101.5 MP image file. Below, I’ve shown examples of the unique qualities each pen has. In the first image, I’ve demonstrated starting each line slowly then transitioning into a quick flick. In the second image, there are strokes of varying speed and curvature.
I recommend experimenting with different brush sizes, speeds of pen strokes and curves. In addition to adjusting brush size, depending on the execution, you can manipulate the pen strokes for a variety of different effects and styles.
My two favorite pens to use for inking sketches are the third and fourth brushes from the top. They both taper. The third brush has a nice fade at the beginning and end of each stroke, an effect I like taking advantage of in both inking and painting. Both pens make it very easy sketch loosely, as well as get in close and produce some very fine lines. I like to do a rough sketch and then lower the opacity of the layer. Afterwards, I create a layer on top of the sketch and begin to ink before zooming in closely to refine and sharpen them. After that, I create layers under the inked layer, hide the sketch, and then shade the shirt with solid colors. I also use the handy background fill in the Layer menu.
While SketchBook Ink is excellent for inking, I also like to create fully painted illustrations in the app.
For this piece I start off again with a rough sketch and then adjust it to a lowered opacity.
Next, I fill in the background with a light beige and create new layers on top of the sketch. I work on several layers simultaneously, striving for a unified look, while keeping each element separate. On the top layer, I ink parts of the image where I’d like some separation and contrast in black.
On another layer, I block out the hair solidly using the third and sixth brush. I decided to keep my color palette limited. Most of my coloring is done with a pen size of medium to large, done in large sweeping stroke, later zooming in to add small details to the eyelid, nose and lips. The fifth pen tool is great for covering large areas with a solid color, due to the large and opaque line width.
When it comes to hair, I have a lot of fun using the sixth brush tool in the panel. The ink starts and ends off thick with a consistently thin line quality in between. This is especially great for zooming in and creating strands of wispy hair.
Lastly, I add the highlights of the hair, eyes, and lips with the third pen tool due to its taper and translucent fade. This is to blend and soften the image, as well as to contrast against the opaque and solid shapes.
The ability to be able to achieve crisp inking and line work on the go with SketchBook Ink is invaluable to me. I hope this gives you some ideas on ways you can experiment and grasp the different pens in SketchBook Ink!
I'm Spencer Nugent and I teach students, professionals and anyone really how to draw and sketch through online examples and videos. I also host live workshops where I teach sketching through live demos.
Using Autodesk Sketchbook Pro 6, I'm able to quickly generate, create and tone a sketch in no time.
adsk.renee 
;)
;)
;)
;)
;)
;)
;)
;)
;)
;)
;)
