Photoshop continued...

Here's another photoshop speed painting, I'm currently experimenting with custom brushes and researching the techniques of a range of different artists (I'm trying not to stick to any particular style). I've decided that I'm going to spend the next term focussing on pre-production art as it's the area I feel I'm most suited towards. I've been looking at a lot of digital art online to try and workout what works visually and I'm trying to make sure my work doesn't look like the typical vectorized, solid line stuff you find all over the net. I think photoshop is essentially a (brilliant) tool but if you don't already have an understanding of drawing principles (which I only picked up recently) its not going to improve your work.

I wanted the drawing below to have a different look to the rest of my work so I created brushes which look like they're being used on a textured surface to give the painting a rougher aesthetic and I purposefully muddied the colours. I've been trying to make brushes which look like spray cans and I used them to give the painting my sloppy, messy style. I find that drawing with the navigator in the right hand corner helps as the thumbnail view lets me see the whole composition so I don't spoil the overall concept of the piece. I'm learning a lot about light and shapes and I think this has helped to make my drawings look less flat. The reason I chose this picture (I used a screen shot from the Joel Schumacher's "Falling Down" as reference) was because I noticed that most of my work is centered around expressive eyes so I set my self the challenge of portraying the character using everything else. The aim is to keep learning until I can apply these skills to my cartoons and design work.
It took about 2.5 hours to complete this (so it wasn't really a speed painting) and I learnt a throughout the process. I wish I'd started painting in photoshop earlier because it's the piece of software which has excited me the most!