Last time, I posted this image a little prematurely in order to be able to participate in Illustration Friday's prompt, Journey. You can see the earlier version here. And here (above) is the new, final version with some improvements, I hope! I worked on the grass, added some texture to the road, and tweaked some other things: some touch ups to the trim on the truck and a bit more rendering on some animals. (That giraffe was looking pretty flat!) So, I hope it looks better now.
As usual lately, there were more Digital Baby Steps in this piece. I've been so lucky to learn how to work digitally from such master teaching artists as Will Terry and Rob Colvin. In addition, I do One-to-One sessions at my local Apple Store. There's no end to what I need to learn! My trainer there is Justin, who is also an artist and graphic designer. (Lucky me!) Visit his website: avoidperil.com and you will see. Justin is a wonderful instructor who has contributed greatly to my Digital Baby Steps.
Here's another little step that I've found to be extremely helpful: saving swatches. You can see your swatches by going to Window > Swatches. Here's my current collection:
While you are painting in Photoshop, you might select a color from the color picker (you'll see this below) that you want to save. Once you've selected your color it will appear in your tool bar. I've shown just a part of the tool bar below. To save your new color to your swatches palette, double click on the color. You'll be double clicking on the foreground color. (Looks like a little black box here.)
After you've double clicked on it, you'll get a window that looks like this. You may still have this window open from having chosen your new color from the color picker, in the first place. Either way, this is where you can add your new color to your swatches palette.
In the upper right of this window, under OK and Cancel, you see the option to Add to Swatches. When you click on this, another little window will open that looks like this:
Here, you can name your new swatch, by typing where it says, Swatch 2. Name it whatever you like. When you click OK, it will be added to your swatches palette. Hover over the new swatch in the swatches palette with your mouse and you'll see the name that you've given to your brand new color.
I love this little trick! If you didn't know it before, I hope you have fun!
