December 25, 2017

Hey everyone! I hope you are having a great Christmas and soon enough a great New Year's eve.

For this season I decided to paint Tracer, one of my favorite characters from Heroes of the Storm, in a Christmas attire. It's quite a simple concept but I had a lot of fun with this one. Especially playing around with the foggyness from the outside and the lighting.

Next week I'll be posting a compilation of my art progress throughout 2017 and sort of reflect on it. Kind of like a self-roast, haha.

See you then and in the meantime, I hope you enjoy this video (please subscribe to my channel by the way)!

Happy Holidays!

December 13, 2017

This speedpaint took me about 3h30 which I was quite happy about. I wanted to be a bit more carefree when it comes to lighting and coloring. 

This concept was inspired by a really cool detail from one of Happy D. Artist's painting - a butterfly holding a piece of hair. Her painting is called "Stories for a Ghost". 

I really liked that idea so I came up with this. 

You can see the full image here :)

Hope you like it :) 


December 10, 2017


Hello once again! As I mentioned on my previous post, I'll be posting the step by step process of my recent digital painting "Prairie". It all started when I was practicing anatomy from a reference picture I found on Pinterest. Sometimes when I see a pose I start to visualize a whole other setting and context to it. And that can be used as a trick for when we lack inspiration.




When I settled on the theme and scenario, I went on Pinterest again to find inspiration for her clothes (dress and shoulder piece). I think it's great to have something to look at that relates to what you are painting so you can get your ideas flowing. Just try to not get stuck on what you see too much. Make experiments and transform - make it yours.

PAINTING

I: On this first stage I place the base colours. Make sure there is enough contrast between these. You should check the values throughout your work progress. Just use the Black and White adjustment layer and tick on and off this layer as you go.

II: Shadows are now added. I like to go with a darker shade from the base color but with a different hue. For example, the base colour is a very light peach, but the darker shades are variations of dark pinks. There are many ways to paint skin and to choose its shades, it all comes down to preferences and other factors.

III: The background idea remained the same from my first attempt at painting this sketch. A prairie with a few flowers during daytime. I started to refine the dress and accentuate the folds of the fabric. Here I also did some variations with the colours. Instead of just using light and dark blues, I picked shades of purple.
IV: At this point I start by going over the linework. Little by little I start to refine the edges that are represented by the sketch lines. The skin colours that were already placed are now blended and her face features are more proeminent. After some playing around with the dragon scales from the reference picture for the shoulders, I decided to go on a different route.

V: Here I coloured the shoulder piece and gave it a metallic look - same as her waist accessory. As for the background, I used Selective Colour to fine tune the colours. The trunk was also rendered by adding greys and browns - as it wasn't a very important element I kept it simple enough to look like a trunk and to not be distracting.

VI: The whole image was adjusted with the Brightness/Contrast adjustment layer and the hair was taken care of by being painted with a darker colour and given some hair strands illusion.
VII: With an overlay layer and with a soft brush I go over the landscape and start to add the sunny atmosphere. I make sure her hair also has some of that light. Then I selected all of the background layers and merged them all together to apply a Gaussian blur filter.

VIII: After my boyfriend pointed out that her leg was looking a bit off - Sometimes we are so eager to finally finish or we are looking at the same painting for so long, that it is very easy to overlook details like these. Ask someone you trust to help you point out any mistakes. - I fixed it by taking a look once again at the reference picture. I also added some fabric from her dress on her right side to give it more dimension. With a cool sun ray looking brush I have on my brushes folder, I tried to represent the sun rays and it gave the picture a more striking look.

IX: On this final stage I applied a Multiply layer to darken her right side and "behind" her leg so there could be more depth. Some sparkles were added on her dress to make it a bit more fun. With a Color Dodge layer I add some highlights to her skin. When it comes to adjustment layers I used once again Brightness/Contrast and went with Vibrance to make the colours pop.

Afterwards I painted her ear and softened up her face a litte bit and I was finished!
You can check the full finished picture on my DevianArt here. :)

PAINTING PROCESS OVERLAY - GIF 

To briefly timelapse all of the steps until the final result, here's a gif for you!

If you like to watch timelapsed painting videos, I also recorded this process. You can watch it here! :)

I hope you enjoyed this post! I always have fun writing these.

See you next week!

December 6, 2017

Hello! ❄

Phew, this is my second try repainting a sketch I did few days ago. I've already spent around 6h hours on the first try, so starting all over again from scratch wasn't an easy decision. However, I'm very happy I did!

I used Paint Tool SAI to sketch and thanks to the stroke stabilizer it was so much smoother to draw than Photoshop.

I also made a skin color pallete to help me not side track too much on the skin colour. I wanna do more for other skin tones in the future. It's a good exercise.
After i finished recording I did some tweaks on the leg, ear, lighting and highlights.
_____________________________________
I'll be posting a step by step process with commentary still this week of this piece!
Hope you enjoy the video :)

November 27, 2017




Hello! ❄

I've been experimenting a lot with smudge brushes. I found a really nice set of brushes on DevianArt for this purpose that work really well.

I love how when we find something new to use on whatever we are working on, it gives us such a breath of fresh air.

Regarding this digital painting timelapse, I wanted to practice rendering fabric and work the anatomy as well. At first I was going for a prairie landscape as background, but then i went for something simpler so the character could be even more of focus.

Brushes by JohnSilva: https://johnsilva.deviantart.com/art/...

Software: Photoshop CC 2017
Tablet:Wacom Intuos Draw S

Hope you enjoy!

November 9, 2017



Hi! ❄ Thanks for watching. Please like and subscribe :)

After much doodling around one of these days, I came up with this. It was my first time painting armor/metal and I loved doing it. It's really fun to play around with the color reflections and highlights.

The background was highly inspired by Grimes music video of her song "Go". At first I was going for a medieval town setting, but after some time that music video came to mind.

I hope you enjoy! :)

November 4, 2017

Hi!! :)

I haven't posted anything in a good while! I figured I would take my time making this piece while I am still trying to learn Blender and figure out/discover what I could do to make interesting content. I've been watching some 3d tutorials and types of animation that I would really like to be able to do in the future.

But for now - on this digital timelapse I wanted to portray a semi realistic mystical looking girl who is connected to the earth and nature. I tried to achieve that with a dress made out of leaves and flowers (which now I am not entirely happy about), a background set outside and a fantasy touch with that shiny butterfly.

I hope you enjoy! :) Please subscribe!

October 23, 2017

Hi! I've been wanting to paint Tyrande for some months now. I frequently play Heroes of the Storm and even thought she isn't one of my favorite characters to play, she is certainly one of the most stylish. I really like this Love Goddess skin she has in game, so I chose this one for her outfit.

Hope you enjoy!

Please like this video and subscribe to my channel! :)

October 19, 2017

Hi! On this digital painting timelapse I chose to paint a lonely looking female elf that is sitting in a tall tree up in the sky observing the world from the above. Yup, very specific description!

I wanted to convey a really mellow and lonely feeling that I tried to achieve with the colours and atmosphere.

I had a blast working on this one. I hope you like it!

Please like the video and subscribe to my channel! :)

October 18, 2017


Hello! Today I thought I should share what I've been learning to do - how to animate in Photoshop!

On this sort of mini guide, I will be animating a crying face which is quite a simple concept. I've been watching so many cute short story animations on Youtube that have really inspired me to do something similar in the future.

But I'll start simple on this one. Step by step until I am able to do something more substantial.

                                                                                                                                                    
For this case in particular - an expression - we have to keep a few things in mind:

1 - Think of the first and last expression (neutral face - crying face)
2 - Think of the slow motion movements between the start and finish (in betweens)
3 - Be mindful of what moves (eyebrows, cheeks, muscles... ) along with the main expression. The more you tweak those details, the more believable the animation will be.

                                                                                                                                                  

It really helped me to sketch just the initial and final expression and then work my in betweens from there. Also, although it can sound silly, you could photograph your face for reference by making all of those micro expressions contained in one expression. Or just film it and then make it slow motion.

This quick crying face animation I did has 5 steps that I'll be explaining below.


I - Initial expression: neutral eyes/eyebrows;
II - Watery waterline by adding a very light grey shade;
III - Eyes starting to close down with some indication of tears and the inner side of the eyebrow starts to raise;
IV - Eyes starting to close down even more with actual tears on her face and eyebrow slightly raised again;
V - Final expression: tears running down on the face.

                                                                                                                                                   
Now onto the fun part where it will all come together!

In Photoshop click Window<Timeline. A pop up window will open, so click Create Video Timeline. Here all of your layers will appear And now it's up to us to arrange them the way we want.

From left to right and from the bottom to our way up in the timeline is the order of our animation.


I think this is quite self explanatory as a way to understand how the layers should be placed. Keep in mind that the layer's duration should be the same. 

To export just click on that arrow at the bottom of the left side next to those 3 squares.

And here is the final result!


This was my first try at animating so it's quite far from perfect, haha. Over time with more practice the imperfections will be more polished.

Still, I hope you enjoyed! :)

October 15, 2017

Hello :) ❄

On this digital painting timelapse I bring you a cute witch based on the concept that she can only activate her powers under moonlight.

This will mark the beginning of my Halloween themed videos for this month. So I'm pretty excited about that!

Please like this video and subscribe to my channel :) 

October 12, 2017

On today's digital painting timelapse I bring you a wall of vase flowers being sold by this lovely girl character. I loved painting her silky clothes by adding all of those lights and shadows.

The initial pose was from a previous sketch I did months ago that I never got to take it further. I decided to take it and transform into a different idea.

There really was no previous planning on this digital painting. Just went with the flow and this is what i got out of my momentary inspiration. I hope you enjoy! ❄

You can check the full painting here: https://starlingsnow5.deviantart.com/art/Flower-Alley-Girl-709273210

Please subscribe to my YT channel :)

October 8, 2017

Hello ❄

On this digital painting timelapse I am posting my take on Lapis Lazuli from Steven Universe on a semi realistic perspective. I went back and forth with so many backgrounds before this final version that I almost gave up haha. From a giant wave behind her to a very starry sky, I settled with these bubbles around her.

Hope you enjoy and please subscribe! :)

October 4, 2017

Hello! :)

On this digital painting timelapse I decided to go the grayscale to color route. I love how clearly mistakes are easy to spot this way and how fun it is to see the gray base finally colored. It took me a while to sort of understand this "method", but I'm slowly getting there. 

Also, I was recently commissioned to do artwork for a music cover and I plan on writing a blog post of the step by step process. So if you enjoy that type of content, look forward to it next week!

Hope you enjoy this timelapse video! And while you're at it... please subscribe!! :)

September 27, 2017

September 23, 2017

Hi! :)  I recorded this painting short hair hairstyles type of thing and I'm releasing for free the PSD file with all the layers of the process on my Gumroad page!

Here's the link if you're interested: https://gumroad.com/starlingsnow#

And of course, you have the video timelapse available to watch!

Hope you enjoy!

September 20, 2017

Hello! With this digital painting timelapse I was first going to paint a themed character with cupcakes as inspiration. However, it progressed to a bigger idea - a cupcake store with a bit of an unsettling feel given by the cashier. It was super fun to make this one and it took way more time than it should :p 

Hope you like it :)

September 13, 2017

September 10, 2017


Hi everyone! :) If you liked this video please subscribe to my Youtube channel!

For this week's digital painting timelapse, I worked on drawing a body instead of sticking to just a portrait structure size (head to chest). I've been getting more into anatomy because I want my pieces to feel more dynamic in their poses.

I also made an extra step in this painting - the parallax effect on my digital artwork. I learned it this week and it's so easy and looks so cool! It's like the painting comes alive.

My inspiration this week was the going back to school theme which hits home to millions of people right now. Thankfully I'm already done with school and I finally have my degree, so I'm free now school wise!

I hope you enjoy this video and that you stay around for more in the future!

September 6, 2017



Hey everyone! What have you been up to lately?

I personally have been inspired a lot by other artists on DevianArt. Lately I've been drooling over the digital drawing and painting techniques and polished pieces by Sakimichan. I've known her work for many years, but only lately I've been looking at it in a different way - as in aspiring to look forward to achieve  the same results one day.

And as a consequence of being inspired I started to doodle some things and experimenting with tools that I usually don't use. I ended up so caught up in it that I spent hours and hours on it. As it was supposed to be an experiment I didn't record the process, so I thought I could share step by steps of it along with some comments and thoughts!


1. Sketch

My sketches are usually really rough. I usually like to go straight to color blocking and work my way from there, but it's always useful to have some guiding lines. Also, I sometimes refrain from sketching because I don't have a clear idea of what I want to paint - and even when I do, it's common for me to alter the initial concept due to new ideas coming up.
Here I was initially going with a princess-like character with flowers around her and nature as a background. But soon what I had pictured in mind took off into another direction!


2. Color Blocking

At this point I start to lay out the colors I want to see on this piece as well as some shy shading colours and lights. For some reason I always fall into the purple/pink/blue color combo trap! These colors are my favorite to put together, so I often use them as my main colors.



3. Initial Refinements

Here I start to paint on top of my sketch layer. I try to give the tree trunk a wooden feel and appearance to it by alternating the light and dark brown lines and color dodging on the side to give the sensation of the end of the day approaching. 
The dress has already some deep shadows on and the face features are refined.



4. First Drastic Changes

Making changes can be a hard decision when you've already put effort into something. It can be worth it if you go through it though! I was unhappy with her expression and a simple smile/lips alteration in shape and color was all it took to give a friendlier and warmer look to her face.
The dress I painted her on before didn't feel too princess-like so I changed it into more of a fantasy-ish style.
When it comes to her hair, you can see that I changed it from its initial shape and I start to add hair strands to give the illusion of actual hair.


5. Starting to Look Put Together

Here is when things finally start to look put together! Starting with the dress, I changed the colors to a blue-ish grey muted tone by using color and overlay blending layers and then gave it a voluptuous shape at the bottom.
Volume was also added to the hair along with different blonde tones. This romantic hairstyle gave her a very mellow look which I really liked.
The anatomy was also fixed (shoulders, waist, chin and nose). Now her face features also have some highlights and the skin colour looks more realistic by shifting her midtones to a rosy hue - this was achieved by using the color balance option.

Fun fact: at this point I was painting this giant tall tree behind her and I was thinking that it would be  really cool to have this long vertical painting. But then it looked a bit off having the tree take so much attention from the character when zoomed away. So I erased it and augmented her size instead. One day I will explore that option again in another piece!


 

6. Working on the Background

I decided that this painting would be set at sunset so i painted the background's sky accordingly. With a layer set on multiply I put a shadowy area at the bottom of her dress and around it to give the image more depth.
I was experimenting with some things coming down from the tree and this is what I came up with - some little flowers that lighten up which are a great excuse to use some reflected light on the character thus making her belong even more to the scene.


7. Effects and Final Results

At this point all I did was enhancing what was already there. I used color balance, layer blending modes set to overlay, soft light and multiply for shadows, lights and atmosphere, chromatic aberration and gaussian blur around the character. And 4 hours later or so I am done!
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It's been a little bit more over a year since I started digital painting (at first with a mouse!) and it's seriously one of the best things I could have gotten myself into. It's so freeing and fun to explore options and your imaginary to translate it into an image. I'm still just a beginner and I know that there is still a long way to go. 

If you want to keep updated for more things to come, please stay around!
__________________________________________________________________________

See you sunday with my newest digital painting timelapse video! :)

In the meantime, you can find me on Youtube | DevianArt | Instagram | Tumblr 

- starlingsnow

September 3, 2017

Hey! For this week's digital painting timelapse video I went with the concept of holding on to those we love in times of despair. I really liked how it turned out and I feel like I should think about a good story that could be built around this character :)

I'm thinking of making some voiceovers in future videos and tutorials on what I've learned so far. If you're interested, stay around! 

August 6, 2017


It randomly came to my head this awesome anime series that I've watched some time ago. I love Nana so much and her badass attitude!

Software: Photoshop CC 2017
Digital Tablet: Wacom Intuos Draw S

Current Inspirations:
Apterus: http://apterus.deviantart.com/
Guweiz: http://guweiz.deviantart.com/
Ilya Kuvshinov: http://kuvshinov-ilya.deviantart.com/
Serafleur: http://serafleur.deviantart.com/

A special thanks to the lovely Gabriel Simão for making this track for me to use!
His Youtube channel: https://www.youtube.com/user/Gbriel1234567890
His Bandcamp page: https://itsgabrielsimao.bandcamp.com/

You can find me on:
DEVIANART: http://starlingsnow5.deviantart.com/
INSTAGRAM: www.instagram.com/starlingsnow/
BLOG: itsstarlingsnow.blogspot.pt/
TUMBLR: lightupmyspirit.tumblr.com

July 31, 2017

Hi! I was supposed to post this video yesterday but life got in the  way.
I wanted to make something very pastel and peaceful looking, so here it is!

Hope you enjoy!

Software: Photoshop CC 2017
Digital Tablet: Wacom Intuos Draw S

A special thanks to the lovely Gabriel Simão for making this track for me to use!
His Youtube channel: https://www.youtube.com/user/Gbriel1234567890
His Bandcamp page: https://itsgabrielsimao.bandcamp.com/

You can find me on:
YOUTUBE: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCJ8vc4kbhF9DGP73wRwK6hw
DEVIANART: http://starlingsnow5.deviantart.com/
INSTAGRAM: www.instagram.com/starlingsnow/
TUMBLR: http://lightupmyspirit.tumblr.com/

July 25, 2017


It's only natural to feel the need to customize our brushes to fulfill our needs. Or even make our own from scratch! And that's what I've been doing lately. By doing so I came up with two brushes: one to blend the skin and another one to texturize it.

Here's another example of the brushes I made in action on my painting for this weekend's video.


I used the SkinBlend brush for the skin tones and the SkinTexture brush to mimic skin pores and for the glitter on the eyelid.

I've been really happy with them and if you wish to try them out you can download them from this DevianArt post.

Now for the tutorial!


How to Make Your Own Brushes in Photoshop

Step 1 
Find a texture for your brush. Here I chose actual skin as my main purpose was to make some skin brushes. However, don't feel limited. You can pretty much make anything and turn it into a brush - drops of paint, scan some leaves, flowers... you name it - and load it into Photoshop and select the desired area with the Selection tool.


Step 2
Go to the Edit>Define Brush Preset and click Ok.



Step 3
Open your Brushes folder and there you will find the brush you've just made! You can stop here BUT- I highly suggest you move on to step 4.


Step 4
If you click on that little folder the arrow is pointing at, you will then be able to customize the brush you've just made (and others you may have). Explore along with the sliders and all the variables and try it along. When you feel happy with it, click on Create New Brush (third icon on the lower part of the opened window).



Step 5
In case you want to make a bundle out of all of the brushes you made or you simply would like to group your favorite brushes, you can go to your Brush folder's Preset Manager and select them by CTRL'ing them and save the set.



Hope this was somehow useful to you!

If you can, please visit my:
YOUTUBE: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCJ8vc4kbhF9DGP73wRwK6hw
DEVIANART: http://starlingsnow5.deviantart.com/
INSTAGRAM: www.instagram.com/starlingsnow/
TUMBLR: http://lightupmyspirit.tumblr.com/

July 23, 2017

After some sketching around I finally found a direction for it. Hope you like it! :)
---------------------------------------
Software: Photoshop CC 2017
Digital Tablet: Wacom Intuos Draw S

Current Inspirations:
Apterus: http://apterus.deviantart.com/
Guweiz: http://guweiz.deviantart.com/
Ilya Kuvshinov: http://kuvshinov-ilya.deviantart.com/
Serafleur: http://serafleur.deviantart.com/

A special thanks to the lovely Gabriel Simão for making this track for me to use!
His Youtube channel: https://www.youtube.com/user/Gbriel1234567890
His Bandcamp page: https://itsgabrielsimao.bandcamp.com/

You can find me on:
DEVIANART: http://starlingsnow5.deviantart.com/
INSTAGRAM: www.instagram.com/starlingsnow/
TUMBLR: http://lightupmyspirit.tumblr.com/

July 16, 2017

July 9, 2017

Hey guys!

For this week I decided to experiment on a new approach with painting
skin and to play around more with Photoshop effects! Hope you enjoy *

Software: Photoshop CC 2017
Digital Tablet: Wacom Intuos Draw S

Current Inspirations:
Apterus: http://apterus.deviantart.com/
Guweiz: http://guweiz.deviantart.com/
Ilya Kuvshinov: http://kuvshinov-ilya.deviantart.com/
Serafleur: http://serafleur.deviantart.com/

A special thanks to the lovely Gabriel Simão for making this track for me to use!
His Youtube channel: https://www.youtube.com/user/Gbriel12...

You can find me on:
DEVIANART: http://starlingsnow5.deviantart.com/
INSTAGRAM: www.instagram.com/starlingsnow/
BLOG: itsstarlingsnow.blogspot.pt/

June 10, 2017


Yay! With college almost done I feel the freedom to be able to write on this quite abbandoned blog once again. My bad! It was never forgotten, but I just couldn't find the energy to commit to posting. Instead I began to digital paint.

This last summer I made a goal to myself to learn how to use Photoshop. I wanted to have another skillset that could be of use in my future whether it would be professionally or just for me for fun. I started to watch a bunch of tutorials and would do some fun things along with them. For example, here is Oli being a carrot gangster!


You can find more about my guinea pigs here. Unfortunately these furry babies of mine passed away some months ago which has also taken a toll on me. I plan on writing about it some time in the future and also introduce you to my new pets.

While watching the tutorials some digital paintings videos would appear on my recommended videos and I became fascinated with what you could create with such apparent ease. And my love for art came alive once again. I used to draw once in a while throughout all of my life, but never with the intention of being actually good at it. It was just for fun. And although it is also for fun nowadays I actually want to become good and, who knows, maybe do something useful with it.

At first I would draw with my mouse because I didn't have my digital tablet yet. And the results of a beginner drawing with a mouse... Well, you can imagine the results. However I wasn't discouraged. So in September, with the money I have earned throughout summer by doing some translation work, I went ahead and ordered a digital tablet.

I was so pumped to actually start to draw the way I wanted without having to breath in while using my mouse so I was able to make a simple straight line.

I started to watch even more in depth tutorial videos and would be doing my own experiments. My favorite digital painting artists that I would, and still do, watch were Ilya Kuvshinov, Kienan Lafferty and webang111 on Youtube.

I also started to upload on Youtube! It will be fun to every year revisit my oldest art and watch my growth - or lack of! - in technique, etc.

Feel free to check it out: https://www.youtube.com/user/danielavasc/ 
and also my Devianart: http://starlingsnow5.deviantart.com/

Here's my latest video!



Have fun! See you on my next post *

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