3 Simple Steps to Canvas Painting

At least it won't take you 15 years to figure this out these paint hacks!

You don't have to be an art natural to adopt these quick and easy tricks into your next work of art!

Whether you've been painting for 15 years or 5 minutes, follow these three steps to make your next piece pop:

Step 1 - the outline

The most fundamental aspect to giving the painting 99% more structure, by planning it out with light pencil shapes.

Many abstract or impressionist art will often skip this step - but it is simply needed for any still-life, landscape or portrait paintings.

It's a little difficult to do this with watercolour paintings without having lead bleed through, in which case I recommend using a blue pencil (which you can find at an arts/crafts store - alternatively, a light blue pencil will do the trick.)

With a pencil, sketch (not too dark you can't erase, but not too light you can't see it) the outer lines of the big parts of your subject(s), in a way that resembles a colouring book for you to fill in nicely with some paint after.

Don't add too much shading or detail though! Remember, the paint is going over it - this is just to give you some perspective; also feel free to add guidelines with a ruler, for keeping things perfectly true-to-size.

Step 2 - the underpainting

Now for the fun part.

Start by adding a wash - by taking a bit of paint and mixing it in the palette with a lot of water until it becomes liquid (about 70% water) - to the background and larger areas of your painting first, then let it dry. Next add wash colors to the more detailed area, as a foundation - and keep the brush very wet!

Step 3 - the coating

This one is lengthy, but oh so rewarding.

Now that you have the basic shapes and colors of your painting, it's time to add texture, depth, highlights and shadows. This time use thicker paint (especially with acrylics), so about 80% paint here.

If you have tubes of many shades of colors, feel free to use them - but if you're using a reference picture, remember that no one area is the exact same color. You'll need to mix in light, dark, cool and warm variations to get that true-to-life feel.

To darken a color, add its complementary color (e.g. red/green, blue/orange, yellow/purple); to lighten a color, just add white.

Add shades of reds and blues to warm or cool a color.

Experiment with different brushes and stroke patters to really get the textures you want - for example in a landscape, thicker brushes would be better for water, medium brush sizes for the sky and thinner brushes for the trees, grass, flowers, etc.

Most of all, have tons of fun with it!

Mind you, I only started painting again a few months ago, and believe me I had to-relearn the whole thing.

Breaking the painting process down to three essential parts, shaves what would be hours of painting things over - or worse scrapping the whole thing - down to some much-needed therapeutic and relaxing quiet time.

Level Design in God of War (Part 1)

Becoming the God of War God of War is one of the most-critically acclaimed franchises to ever hit the Playstation market. In this pipeline deconstruction, I will refer to elements of the series as a whole. Dominus the main character in concept, needed to be summed up in a single word -- wrath . Covered in the ash of his wife and child, the character is a demigod who seeks revenge on the gods who betrayed him. Once the artists stripped away his armor and shield, the character’s true raw, animalistic side was exposed. Tall with upper-body musculature, covered in ashes and hunched over with his signature Blades of Chaos, Dominus was a force to be reckoned with. Dominus set the stage for the today’s Playstation mascot -- Kratos. Level Design Mood and exploration is a staple part of level design in God of War . Areas that are more open are also relatively barren; while many objects are placed around smaller areas like rooms. I think this encourages the player’s sense o...

Time Manipulation in Game Design

Time Manipulation in Games Introduction The gameplay mechanic that I wish I had come up with first, is Time Manipulation. This is includes the concept of time dilation and the reversal of time in games. Implementing the Manipulation of Time Time manipulation is a robust mechanic. It involves non-exploitable time manipulation, with the goal of being fast and smooth, while not computationally-taxing on memory or hardware resources. The best way to implement this mechanic can be seen in Braid - an indie platform and puzzle game, developed by Number None, Inc. In this game, the world state is recorded for every frame, where the data is stored and compressed. With the recorded frames, any changing entities are extracted and mixed into the final state, which can be manipulated or rewound by the player. The player’s position is recorded and other properties such as color and rotation are stored as an integer that can be reconstructed, along with time information taken fro...

Most Difficult Parts in Heavy Rain

Under Pressure In my experience, the most difficult button combination sequence in the game is when Norman Jayden must bring in a suspect for questioning, who goes by the name of Mad Jack. Jackson is said to have sold a used car to the Origami Killer and presumably has information on the killer identity or alias. When Jayden finds traces of human blood and orchid pollen, he tries to arrest Jack on the spot. He resists the arrest and goes to Kill Jayden — which he can if the player is not quick enough during the intense fight sequence. If Jayden survives the attack and beats Mad Jack, he concedes and Jayden proceeds with the arrest. It’s then Jayden’s nose begins to bleed, his eyes begin twitching and his hands start shaking uncontrollably in the middle of the arrest. To resist feeding his addiction to a drug called triptocaine, the player must hold down a series of buttons to stop his hands from shaking and the weakness from his symptoms of withdrawal. If the playe...

Prissy Little Chloe

Search This Blog