The Problem(s) with Digital Painting

I've recently began working in acrylics after nearly 10 years away from them.  I am having a great time re-discovering the medium and feel like I'm learning a lot in the process.  However what really had caught my attention are the differences between this medium and digital painting.  Below are three of the biggest differences and how I plan to take what I've learned in acrylic back into my digital work.

Please keep in mind these are just my opinions, and things that I don't like or want to 'improve' may be the exact thing others are striving for in their work, that's the great thing about art, you are striving toward your own vision!

Inspired Leadership for Legend of the Five Rings

14 x 11 Digital Painting

Over-Detailing/Wasting Time
A problem I frequently have in digital painting is over rendering.  When I am working in Photoshop I can zoom in to an unrealistic extent and really noodle away at details that are only moderately observable in large scale prints, and completely invisible in web formats.  In short I find myself wasting a lot of time because the digital medium itself enables my bad work habit of over-detailing.  The above image was bound for a trading card and the final print size was around 2 x 1.5 inches.  I can only lean in so far on a physical painting, and I am also limited by the physical size of my brushes.

I am going to try and keep myself backed further out in future digital pieces to emulate this.  I am also re-wondering if I might benefit form using a Cintiq or similar device instead of separate monitor and tablet as I have been...  Who wants to buy one for me?

Uniformity
When working digitally sometimes things just feel too uniform in color or tone.  The medium makes it to easy to reproduce the exact same color over and over.  Yes, you could just mix a big batch of paint and then you can easily have the same color over and over in acrylics, but I've found that even when it's the exact same color, when I'm using acrylics the thickness of the paint can lend to some rather striking variations in what would have been an otherwise uniform patch.

To this point when working digitally I typically have my brushes at 100% opacity, I think moving forward I may set it to 85% or something there abouts to get emulate that effect.

Honey

5 x 7 Acrylic on Board

Smoothness
In a similar vein to the problem of uniformity in my digital work there is the issue of smoothness.  edges can bee too smooth, colors can be too smooth, gradients can be too smooth.  It all adds up to a stylized look that isn't exactly where I'd like my work to be.  The wonderful thing about physical mediums is that textures seem to just spontaneously appear based on the materials used themselves.  Visible brush strokes, thickly built up paint, the underling texture of canvas or some other substrate.  They all add up to a 'painterly' look.

Things that just naturally happen in physical mediums must be worked for digitally.  I already do a bit of this, but I'm going to try and continue to make good use of not only overlaying textured photos into my work as well as using more textured brushes.  Neither of these steps are cheating!  I know some people feel like it is, but it is really just taking advantage of the properties of the medium.  I think if you aren't doing everything you can to get your work where you want it, your cheating yourself, which is even worse.  I make all of my textured brushes in Photoshop myself and only use texture photographs that I have taken myself as well.

I look forward to learning more from all of the mediums I work in and using that knowledge to improve all of my work no matter what medium it is in.

Graphite Process Step 2 - Shading

So not only did I disappear for almost an entire year (!!!), I lied to you about what the next post would be about!  Instead of highlights I'll be talking about shading.

The reason I've changed the order of the steps in my process since I last posted has a lot to do with the materials I use.  My darks are graphite and can easily be erased or adjusted.  My whites on the other hand are (as of this post) still being done in white colored pencil, which is not easily edited or adjusted.  Because of this I have moved the highlights to the last step in my process to allow for more control of the end product as well as to be able to avoid those weird gray areas caused by trying to shade or adjust areas where I had already put the white.

For shading I use a mechanical pencil, a wood-less graphite pencil, a blending stump, a white stick eraser and a kneaded eraser.

Shading Tips:

1. Take your time and observe your subject well.  Don't guess around and then compare what you've done to your subject, look at it carefully before you start making marks.  
2. Start light.  Yes we have two kinds of erasers to use, but it is easier to slowly build up to the dark you want than it is to erase it down and then smooth it out. Even the kneaded eraser will leave kind of blotchy marks when you use it that you have to smooth back out with the blending stump.  
3. Wipe your blending stump on a piece of scrap paper before each use, you don't want a nice dark smudgy line appearing when you just wanted to subtly blend some very light shading.  
4. Having said that, some times I just use whatever graphite is already on the stump to do smoother or fuzzy shaded areas and skip the initial laying of graphite from the pencils.  For many medium or light areas, this is more than enough 'pigment'.

If anyone ever leaves a question or comment I'd be happy to answer it, but for now, those were just the things that jumped out at me while I was working this time.