Digital painting - using one brush

I have yet to watch the video (Enliighten blog by Daarken), but I saw the basic premise of doing a digital painting with only one brush and knew I had to try it. The idea is to use a brush that you wouldn't necessarily gravitate to (i.e. not a round or chalk brush). I chose a 'cross' brush, shown in red next to the painting, next time I'll try something a bit more out there :). This was a speed paint, so only about 20 mins in Photoshop CS5. Also to note, I used the same brush setting for my eraser... actually I just changed the colour to white to remove parts that didn't work.

Art Exercise - drawing with white media

Ok, so this was not on my list of things to try, but it's an exercise I haven't done since art college days. It's not hugely exciting, or all that revolutionary, but it's dipping my toes back into the traditional media.Normally when I do pencil sketches I draw on white paper, yet when I work digitally I generally start with a grey or midtone background. Even then, I tend to start with a dark 'brush' and add highlights at the end.

So the goal of the exercise was to use white media exclusively on a dark surface. Lines weren't important, nor was shading, the idea was to just break out of the habit of going directly to a dark drawing medium. This was my end result (I wanted to use pen.... but it decided to dry up about 5 lines in *sigh* ... next time!)

Nicole Cadet's foray into art improvements

Hi, I'm Nicole Cadet (sometimes known as nixjim13) and I'm a part-time fantasy artist (the rest of the time I'm a computer programmer). I mostly work in the private commissions arena, doing RPG character portraits, and the occasional book cover, but I love painting fantasy, goddesses, fairies, mermaids, sci-fi, myths and legends, and elves (I got hooked on painting more 'manly' elves, if that is possible, a few years ago as a laugh :) )

Anyway, I'd like to push my skills towards more RPG game card art and cover art, but also take a step back and pull out my watercolours and acrylic paints (as I've mostly been doing digital paintings for the last few years)

My goals are relatively fluid at the moment

• improving narratives/ storytelling through character and composition
• improving my composition skills (in general, might look at Loomis as a starting point)
• trying to get more dynamics into my paintings (dynamic poses, interesting POV)
• improving my values (so they aren't so flat, stuff like chiaroscuro and the likes)
• simplify my colour palettes

Exercises (this is going to sound like a menagerie as I want to push my subject matters)

• participate in sketchfest regularly (to keep the traditional drawing skills fresh & try new things)
• learn to draw horses (so I can go to unicorns and pegasus)
• gryphons
• dragons ... of all kinds, and more than just a head!
• paint a cartoon character in the style of a realistic painter (like the Disney princesses exercises that happened a few years ago)
• sci-fi ships/ concept art / character concepts - like you see in game art concept books
• more character concepts - different types of ethnicities, races, roles etc

Likely I'll be inspired by other people's posts ... I like joining in on the fun :) But Sketchfest tomorrow!