PROCESS VIDEO // mushrooms - screen capture

I put together a process video for my mushrooms painting! Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to film the full process from beginning to end, but this is a large chunk of it - from prepping the initial scanned sketch to doing the majority of the paint work. The reason why I wanted to share this process it’s because I’m using a new technique where I combine the lasso tool with a grainy soft airbrush. It allows me to build up color and texture in a gradual way and I feel like the end result looks a lot like traditional painting, which is why I like it!

This is a screen recording of the process, but I also filmed a large portion of it with my phone. I’ll be uploading that version in a minute!

Some resources that could help explain this process:

• Turning scanned lines into a transparent layer 
• Using the lasso tool to paint 

Some things to keep in mind while watching this video:

• I used a pre-existing image as a reference for the color scheme. It’s a gouache painting of mine that I edited in Photoshop to turn into a thumbnail for Instagram. The edited version is way more vibrant than the original painting that I made because of how I edited it. I really liked how those colors turned out and I knew that I wanted to use that same color scheme in a digital work. I had it open to the side as a visual reference for the painting process. Here's that image: 

• The reason I use both the lasso tool and the airbrush is because the lasso tool gives concise edge control, while the airbrush gives me texture and smooth gradients. I feel like this gives me the best of both worlds: I’m able to add softness, while also maintaining the crispness of my shapes.
• When using this technique, the main tip I can give is to keep a good eye on how the colors blend together. If you layer a really dark color on top of a light base, you can get really muddy midtones and it’s easy to lose sight of that if you’re using a textured brush to blend. This was very much trial and error for me during this process, and I definitely had to backtrack on my color choices a couple of times when I found that they were resulting in some muddy hues! For more information about avoiding muddy colors, especially when it comes to skintones, check out my tutorial on creating vibrant skintones.

I hope you enjoy this process video! And keep an eye out for the phone version that’s coming up in a minute!