How to paint rocks

[Anonymous No.2743964]

I'm learning how to speedpaint landscapes with mountains/rocks.

I use that 4 "rock" brushes that are in nearly each concept art brush set.
I try to imagine the rocks as 3-dimensional objects, imagine where the shadows should be, but still i got something like this and the felling I'm missing something.

Can anyone suggest good tutorial for painting mountains, maybe better brush or anything that would help me?

[Anonymous No.2743967]

Another try

[Anonymous No.2743973]

Your values suck ass.
Also dont rely on texture brushes so much, build the values on the faces of the rocks then use the texture brushes. Now you paintings just look like concept-art-wannabe-turd

[Anonymous No.2743979]

>>2743973
Well right now Im nothing more than concept-art-wannabe.

About those values, what should be changed (other than desaturation), how can you learn to pick good one (I try to not use eydropper tool and only look at reference pictures)

[Anonymous No.2743981]

>>2743964
Forget about texture brushes, use a simple, no pen pressure brush and start thinking about the planes where the light hits the forms. Not just which area is in light and which is in shadow, but also which planes are directly perpendicular to the light source, thus the lightest, which are still in the light, but slightly turned away, which are parallel to the light source etc. Rocks are a great subject to exercise that sort of thing because you don't have to worry about rendering and softening the edges very much and you can use one solid value for each plane.

[Anonymous No.2743992]

>>2743981
Holy shit, that painting is amazing. It reminds me old game Another World.

I will try to use simple brush (square should be better for thit subject than round one) with my next exercises.

I have a feeling though, that I should go out and paint them plain air not from ref photos.

[Anonymous No.2744028]

You can't paint rocks, because you're not trying to paint rocks. You're trying to avoid painting rocks. Using a rock brush to make rocks for you, is not how rocks work. If you want to be effective with a texture brush, you have to know how to paint with a normal brush first. If you can render a rock with a normal brush, then flip to the rock brush after that and do the same thing you did with the normal brush with the rock brush, and you'll immediately realize the texture brush is only to assist in how you would normally paint a rock and is not a replacement for painting rocks.

In other words, study rocks. Madness, I know. Just keep in mind that texture brushes aren't to avoid painting something, they're to give a different texture to how you would normally paint. They're not shortcuts, they just add texture. Be very mindful of how you use texture brushes. They're to enhance your image, not to skip steps.

[Anonymous No.2744106]

>>2744028
You might be right. I tried painting this rock study and it was really tough, harder than I imagined. Anyways, now I will focus on painting rock studies with simple tools

[Anonymous No.2744116]

>>2744106
Use a harder, sharper brush.

[Anonymous No.2744123]

>>2744106
For fuck's sake stop using those goddamn brushes. Everyone here already told you to start off with simple brushes, yet you did a "study" with those soft shitty brushes.

[Anonymous No.2744126]

>>2744106

I think you're being distracted by all the texture. Focus more on getting a solid block-in. Try first to imagine the rock as being a 3d object in a single grey tone, as if it was painted. Paint the shadows using one value only, like a black and white comic book illustration. Ignore all the shifting streaks of light and dark in the stone material for starters.

[Anonymous No.2744205]

>>2744116
>>2744123
>>2744126

I'm afraid this is too simple right now but this is all I can do with this subject at the moment.

[VC No.2744237]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eTqY6pbQH5U

[Anonymous No.2744240]

>>2744205
You're getting there, now just do a lot of these

[Anonymous No.2744559]

>>2744205
This looks ten times better. Still looks shit but you'll get there.

[Anonymous No.2744566]

>>2743964
>I'm learning how to speedpaint

[Anonymous No.2744570]

>>2743981
What direction is the light even coming from in this painting?

[Anonymous No.2744589]

>>2744570

What parts are confusing to you?

[Anonymous No.2744590]

>>2744570
almost directly above, though slightly in front of us, you can see all the top planes are lit and the cast shadows are not really visible except very small slivers in a couple spots

[Anonymous No.2744839]

>>2744205

You need better rock photos to study from. You're trying to start out by drawing a very complex form, just look at how many bumps and planes and irregularities there are on that stone.

Use pictures of rocks that have naturally broken into blocks, like pic related. Build your understanding of overall form before you attempt to study texture and really complicated details, you're biting off way more than you can chew.

Again, for now just completely ignore the surface textures. Focus on getting the general outline of the rocks into place first, simplify things at first then once you've blocked in the basic planes and so forth with flat color you can go back and start adding layers of finer details on top. DO NOT skip ahead, you can't build a nice house before you have a good foundation, you can't paint a nice picture if you don't have a solid buildup of forms.

[Anonymous No.2744840]

>>2744566
It's like regular painting but worse.

OP is making the right choice.

[Anonymous No.2744859]

>>2744839
>

Is that a before and after pic? Did it crumble for natural reasons or is ther some kind of construction job going on?

[Anonymous No.2744882]

>>2743964
nigga you fucked up

you first learn to paint by doing long studies, and just then, learn where you can do shortcuts and do speedpaints

[Anonymous No.2744887]

>>2744882
>

Yeah, "learning speedpainting" is just as retarded as saying that you're learning speed anatomy. Doing something competent quickly is the application of skill, not the means to practice it.

[Anonymous No.2744957]

>>2744859

It crumbled because of natural erosion in spring of this year.

[Anonymous No.2744980]

>>2744839
Anyone wanna actually try painting this ?

PS anyone here use Krita ? I'm poor and cannot afford Photoshop

[Anonymous No.2744987]

>>2744980
>I'm poor and cannot afford Photoshop
It's pretty cheap with the subscription stuff they do now, like 10$ a month or so. Or you can torrent it.

[Anonymous No.2744998]

>>2744987
That seems very reasonable. In the past I found the lack of stabilization on the brush to be really difficult to paint with on PS, I might have to have another try.

[Anon No.2745006]

>>2743967
Whoa.
You drew that?
Nice.

[Anonymous No.2745012]

>>2744980
here's a quick study in krita.
really, don't bother with photoshop. if you have money to throw, give it to krita devs seriously.

[Anonymous No.2745014]

>>2745012
That looks pretty good man. but you need a sharper brush it seems. Clear it up a little.

[Anonymous No.2745018]

>>2745014
speedpainting is all about half-assing and giving up partway through. it's all the difference with regular painting.

[Anonymous No.2745021]

>>2745018
Would Bob Ross be considered Speedpainting?

[Anonymous No.2745022]

>>2745021
why?

[Anonymous No.2745024]

>>2745022
He painted beautiful works of art that look like it took someone a long time to make, when he did it in as little half an hour.

[Anonymous No.2745026]

>>2745024
that's just being efficient. But the style is more 'refined' than rough. Whereas the idea behind speedpainting is more in line with the impressionists aesthetic ideals, put back the human touch first, and realism behind.
In general, there's always a pendulum between mastery/simplicity and realism/style. When technology or ideology pushes one to its extreme (like computer pushed photorealism) there's a counterwave not much later.

Bob Ross is completely out of the picture there, his view of painting is more as a healing (therapeutical) tool than anything else.

[Anonymous No.2745027]

>>2745012
Nice!!

[Anonymous No.2745033]

>>2745026
Oh, I getcha now, somewhat.
I guess it just takes practice to commit to such an extreme form of art. Something I could never do, at least not with speed painting.

[Anonymous No.2745040]

>>2745033
Just one more thought about the impressionist/speedpaint analogy: one difference is that with traditional medium, you quite easily get a naturally appealing brushstroke that you don't get in digital. Because of the inherent complexity of nature. Our brain is wired to find appealing things that have approximately the same fractal dimension as landscapes. Not going to go into details, but such neuro-biases are why we find random blots of ink visually appealing, and not gaussian noise. Obviously, this does not happen with digital -at least not currently- because it's computationally too expensive to do, or nobody found a great way yet.

[Anonymous No.2745100]

>>2744839
OP here,
thanks for that photo, I did the study with all that simplicity in mind, then added some details with lasso tool. (good idea from >>2744237 vid).

>>2745006 Thanks, even though most of that was brush work, not my skill.


Anyways, I think that I'm finally profiting something with those sketches, as when I was doing them my brain felt really exhausted, as if I had been doing somehow hard math excercises.

[Anonymous No.2745322]

>>2744839
are we posting rock studies in this thread

[Anonymous No.2745394]

>>2744839
Thank you, this is the most I have enjoyed drawing an enviroment. I will definitely do more now

[Anonymous No.2745430]

>>2743967
Game of Thrones?

[Anonymous No.2745439]

>>2744839
Thanks anon for the advice!

I mostly draw people but from now on I will draw more enviroments.

I will polish this one more too

[Anonymous No.2747433]

>>2745322
That's fucking A

[Anonymous No.2747444]

>>2745100
Your values are off. The blue shadows on the original picture aren't "blacker" than the shadows you see from the front block underneath