I am total newbie to this field and am looking for advice. You people do some really great work :bowdown:

I love drawing and photography (not very good at it ;) ) and have no formal training of any kind. I am an engineer so I can draw block diagrams fairly well :D :D but I have doodles on all my notes !! I do some basic work in Photoshop and Premiere.

Getting to the point,
1. Where can I learn more about drawing, art (books?)
2. How to use Photoshop to draw or do cool stuff like you
3. Photography and post processing tricks. I take good shots but know nothing about "adjust the saturation"
4. What kind of Graphics tablet to get.

Please pardon my ignorance.
Regards,
Sreeni

Welcome to the board. :)

I will answer your questions briefly - perhaps others will go more into detail onthe points. :)

1. Art books are good, but nothing beats drawing from life. If you have a local community college or art gallery they may have art class or drawing calsses for ushc things.

2. With practice and a tablet...and read answer #1 ;)

3. Read some books on photoshop tricks, Like the New Masters of Photoshop series or similar type books that deal with the art you like. You can also search for tutorials on the subject.

4. Wacom Intuos. Size depends on the available space you have and art style. As an engineer you may want a larger one, but I find that my 6x8 Intuos works just fine for me.

I hope this helps...sorry for the short answers.

The Wacom brand is amazing. The produce the best tablets I've ever used. It's basically the same as draing on paper. As far as books go, I'd rather go with classes. Check your local art museum for computer classes. I've taken a couple of ours. That's how I learned the basics of Flash and Animation Shop. ;p

Mostly what people do to enhance photography is adjust the level of colors and whatnot. The "Saturation" is just how much hue is in the photograph you're enhancing. If your saturation is set really high, and the hue is blue, then you're going to have a very very blue photograph.

You can get more in depth than this, of course. The level of colors is also a pretty important function in enhancing photography. The level of Colors has the three basics, (Red, Green and blue) and you can adjust the levels of how much of each color is in the photgraph. Pretty useful, and fun to mess around with as well. ;p

Another important thing as far as digital photography goes are filters. Filters play a very important role if you're going to make a piece of 'artwork' out of the piece. There are a million and one filters in photoshop. It's all about how you use em. :-)

Hope I helped a little bit;
-CC.

But I think its always good to have some great books to reference when a live model or class isn't availiable.

http://www.saveloomis.org

That website has most if not all of Loomis's great anatomy and drawing books, I reference them often. Loomis was cited in "Mythology" as Alex Ross's main infulence in his art. Great stuff.

Also, pretty much any book by Burne Hogarth is worth ten times it's weight in gold. He's got a bunch, including "Dynamic Figure Drawing," "Dynamic Anatomy," and "Dynamic Wrinkles and Drapery," all of which sit next to my drawing desk.

Have fun, we look forward to seeing your stuff posted here!

Cartoonimator
Playing With Crayons

Thank you very much for the advice.
I will look at my local community college for classes. I might come back for some advice on what classes to take (once I get a list). :)

I have a question on the Graphics tablet. They have multiple and I was wondering if someone has some feedback.

Graphire 3 - ~160
Intuos 2 - ~260
Intuos 3 - ~270


I wanted some expert opinion before I spend between 160 and 300 on a tablet.

Cartoonanimator: I have also looked the website (saveloomis) it has some good material. I am looking forward to reading it in detail. I am also looking at the books you suggested. THANK YOU !!! :grinning:

Thank you very much.
Sreeni

Kriegs used to have a table for sale and it was ridiculously huge.
Like 1x3 miles or something :p

But seriuosly he did.

Intuos 3 - Once you buy a tablet you should have to buy another one (for many years) so you may as well buy a current model so you can get replacement pen tips and stuff when you need them 2-3 years down the road.

I have logged well over 8,000 hours on my tablet over the last 4 years and it is still going strong.


The Real World Photoshop book is good and so is Photoshop Colour Correction.

:)