How to blend in photoshop?

Snoopyloop 2017-03-29 09:52:57 UTC #1

Hi, I am very new to photoshop and I can't seem to figure out why I can't blend smoothly enough in photoshop. If you guys have any tips or advice to share I will be very grateful.
Here's an example of how I shade...I took about 2 hrs on this

pixelgrotte 2017-03-29 15:22:24 UTC #2

Well at first I recomend you to make a ground color for every color part. For the skin, the hair the clouthes. Then you put a darker color (p.e. for the skin) and draw with your brush. for a smoothie blend, you can use a soft brush and you can work with a lower transparency. For the lighter parts you can use an other color and at the end for hart lights you use a hart brush.
or you look this video:

I hope it helps you.

hermidraws 2017-03-30 01:52:14 UTC #3

Other method for blending is simply alt click. You can check more of it here
https://www.ctrlpaint.com/digital-painting-101/blending-paint

In fact, if you stuck give Ctrlpaint a check. It should get you up and running with most of the fundamentals of digital painting in general. Ahmed is good as well, although not as structured as Ctrl Paint site

Snoopyloop 2017-03-30 04:10:30 UTC #4

Thanks for the recommendations @pixelgrotte , I think I got check out his videos before he is really great. Later, I will go rewatch him again to refresh my lousy memory (TuT ).

Snoopyloop 2017-03-30 04:13:31 UTC #5

Okay I will thanks
Looks pretty neat

pixelgrotte 2017-03-30 13:54:02 UTC #6

You are welcome!

ragecandy 2017-04-01 10:39:39 UTC #7

To be honest if you're just starting, stick with the alt click method, it will give you a lot more control, it's a bit more tedious, but if you start spamming smudge tools right off the bat, your art will probably get too muddy and too soft really fast.

Snoopyloop 2017-04-04 04:12:04 UTC #8

Hi @ragecandy may I ask if the alt-click method you mentioned is using the eyedropper tool and brush tool to blend back and forth? or is it something else? For the most part in my painting, I used the soft round brush and just kept on blending different colours, in the end, it usually turned out super muddy and bad. So is the soft brush smudging? or am I not using it correctly...

ragecandy 2017-04-04 20:29:57 UTC #9

Yeah on the video that pixelgrotte posted, at 4:55 ahmed explains it pretty well, if you get used to it, it becomes like muscular memory and you'll do it without really thinking.

And if you're just using the regular brush(in photoshop), and not the mixer brush there's no way it's smudging, soft brushes do make it easier to blend but you can actually do it with a harder brush and have a bit more control so maybe try with a 50% hard brush.

And then there's the thing about complementary colors, it means the ones that are opposite on the color wheel,(ahmed actually uploaded a video on that recently, I haven't watched it but I guess he'll explain it in there).
So yeah the point is this:

So just be careful about not mixing those too much, sorry for my english I hope it helps

Snoopyloop 2017-04-05 08:19:50 UTC #10

Nah it's alright your english is great! Thanks for taking the time to explain, I understand it a lot
better now