Ask the Artist: longerthanwedo
Hello! Many thanks to oxoniensis for inviting me to take part in this activity. This is a great community and I've loved looking through Ask the Artist posts in the past; it's an honor to be able to participate as an artist! This post will focus mainly on icons, but I do other things, including larger graphics and traditional art, and questions related to any of my art are more than welcome. Beneath the cut is some general information, as well as a mini-tutorial and some examples.
Background:
My name is Shawna, I'm 17 years old, and I do art a lot. The end. Just kidding, I do more than that, but right now that's all that matters. I've loved art since I can remember, graphic design since I got photoshop, and Supernatural since I watched the first five seasons two years ago during the hiatus before season six. And then, naturally, I put the two together.
What I do:
I do lots of things, but what I spend most of my time (art time, computer time, free time) on is graphics, the majority of which are probably icons, but I also do larger graphics (sized for tumblr, or sometimes even larger as wallpapers). I also do traditional art (drawing, painting, digital painting), but I'm a pretty boring fanartist, since I generally just draw caps and images as they appear. I rarely ever draw manipulations; I prefer to get my ship feelings (Sam/Dean generally, as they are my OTP of all OTPs) out in photoshop, where I manipulate images in little ways, and where I can incorporate lyrics and quotes into my work, which I feel weird about doing with traditional art.
My icons can be found at thevividimagery ( the supernatural tag)
My large graphics can be found here.
My traditional art can be found here.
Inspiration:
The most inspiring thing to me is looking at the work of other people. I have a folder on my computer where I put icons by other makers that I love, and as of right now that folder contains almost 6,000 icons. Comparison is a good thing for me: seeing what others are doing gives me ideas to move forward with, and the motivation to create something I would save if I hadn't made it, if that makes sense. On tumblr it's similar: I look through my own blog often, because that's where I reblog the things I find pretty, and I ask myself if I would reblog my own graphics to determine if I like them or if they're finished.
Screencaps in and of themselves are inspiring to me as well. I'm in the process of going through every single episode of Supernatural and saving the caps I like, and I have thousands of caps saved already, even though I'm not even halfway through the episodes. When I'm lacking inspiration or don't have specific ideas, I'll scroll thorugh my screencap folder with my eyes closed, click on a random cap, and no matter what or who it is, I'll use it in an icon or a graphic. It's a great way to keep myself going when I'm not sure what I want to make.
If we're talking concepts or graphics with a "purpose" or meaning, I tend to turn to lyrics. I have a text file where I put all the lyrics that strike my fancy in relation to a particular section. There are other fandoms in there, but Supernatural is by far the biggest section. I have a Supernatural playlist on my iPod. I listen to music and sometimes I can visualize what I want the text to look like, or what caps/scenes would fit perfectly with the words of the song.
To get inspired for traditional art, I just browse deviantART, or look through screencaps for images with great light and shadows.
Process:
Now I'll go through a simple tutorial for what I do with many Supernatural caps. A lot of caps from the show are dark with rich shadows and colors that are somewhat hidden by shadows.
This is the base:
The first step with almost any cap is to duplicate the base (ctrl+j) and set it to screen. I then duplicate the screen layer until the icon is a little brighter than I would like. Then I duplicate the base again, put it on top, and set it to soft light:
I don't like how some of the shadows on the left side of the icon are kind of brown, so I take a soft round brush in black and paint over the left side of the icon so that the shadows are a truer black:
Next is a vibrance layer at +100 set to color (saturation can be used as a substitute for earlier versions of photoshop and other programs, but saturation is easy to overdo):
Then a brightness/contrast layer with +16 brightness to bring up the highlights:
Next are the defining and finishing touches. First two textures (this, by me, and this, also by me), the first rotated and stretched, and set to screen at 100%, the second set to soft light at 100%:
I want some more light and color in areas, so next is a screen layer with soft brush marks on it that looks like this on its own, set to screen at 51%:
To put color in the shadows, I add a screen layer filled with a really dark blue:
Then I copy all my layers into a new layer (shift+alt+e), and set it to soft light at 63%:
To sharpen, copy and merge all the layers again, gaussian blur at 1.6, and lower the opacity to 37%, then copy merge them again and sharpen the new layer, setting that one to 73%:
The last step is one I almost always do, add some grunge with this texture (by me) set to screen at 50%:
That's a collection of steps that I almost always use. Different caps requrie different steps of course, and outdoor caps and caps with different lighting come with a different process, but this is a basic set of steps that can be easily modified for lots of different results. To show how those results can differ, and what sort of things these caps can do, here are some comparisons between the original caps that icons were made with, and the end result:
to
to
to
to
to
to
and
I think that's all I have to say to start with! Hit me up with any questions you have: about icons, graphics, traditional art, anything. If you have a question about how I made a specific icon or graphic, or how I achieve a certain effect, or how I would color a cap you have, etc, feel free to ask - that's what I'm here for!
Background:
My name is Shawna, I'm 17 years old, and I do art a lot. The end. Just kidding, I do more than that, but right now that's all that matters. I've loved art since I can remember, graphic design since I got photoshop, and Supernatural since I watched the first five seasons two years ago during the hiatus before season six. And then, naturally, I put the two together.
What I do:
I do lots of things, but what I spend most of my time (art time, computer time, free time) on is graphics, the majority of which are probably icons, but I also do larger graphics (sized for tumblr, or sometimes even larger as wallpapers). I also do traditional art (drawing, painting, digital painting), but I'm a pretty boring fanartist, since I generally just draw caps and images as they appear. I rarely ever draw manipulations; I prefer to get my ship feelings (Sam/Dean generally, as they are my OTP of all OTPs) out in photoshop, where I manipulate images in little ways, and where I can incorporate lyrics and quotes into my work, which I feel weird about doing with traditional art.
My icons can be found at thevividimagery ( the supernatural tag)
My large graphics can be found here.
My traditional art can be found here.
Inspiration:
The most inspiring thing to me is looking at the work of other people. I have a folder on my computer where I put icons by other makers that I love, and as of right now that folder contains almost 6,000 icons. Comparison is a good thing for me: seeing what others are doing gives me ideas to move forward with, and the motivation to create something I would save if I hadn't made it, if that makes sense. On tumblr it's similar: I look through my own blog often, because that's where I reblog the things I find pretty, and I ask myself if I would reblog my own graphics to determine if I like them or if they're finished.
Screencaps in and of themselves are inspiring to me as well. I'm in the process of going through every single episode of Supernatural and saving the caps I like, and I have thousands of caps saved already, even though I'm not even halfway through the episodes. When I'm lacking inspiration or don't have specific ideas, I'll scroll thorugh my screencap folder with my eyes closed, click on a random cap, and no matter what or who it is, I'll use it in an icon or a graphic. It's a great way to keep myself going when I'm not sure what I want to make.
If we're talking concepts or graphics with a "purpose" or meaning, I tend to turn to lyrics. I have a text file where I put all the lyrics that strike my fancy in relation to a particular section. There are other fandoms in there, but Supernatural is by far the biggest section. I have a Supernatural playlist on my iPod. I listen to music and sometimes I can visualize what I want the text to look like, or what caps/scenes would fit perfectly with the words of the song.
To get inspired for traditional art, I just browse deviantART, or look through screencaps for images with great light and shadows.
Process:
Now I'll go through a simple tutorial for what I do with many Supernatural caps. A lot of caps from the show are dark with rich shadows and colors that are somewhat hidden by shadows.
This is the base:
The first step with almost any cap is to duplicate the base (ctrl+j) and set it to screen. I then duplicate the screen layer until the icon is a little brighter than I would like. Then I duplicate the base again, put it on top, and set it to soft light:
I don't like how some of the shadows on the left side of the icon are kind of brown, so I take a soft round brush in black and paint over the left side of the icon so that the shadows are a truer black:
Next is a vibrance layer at +100 set to color (saturation can be used as a substitute for earlier versions of photoshop and other programs, but saturation is easy to overdo):
Then a brightness/contrast layer with +16 brightness to bring up the highlights:
Next are the defining and finishing touches. First two textures (this, by me, and this, also by me), the first rotated and stretched, and set to screen at 100%, the second set to soft light at 100%:
I want some more light and color in areas, so next is a screen layer with soft brush marks on it that looks like this on its own, set to screen at 51%:
To put color in the shadows, I add a screen layer filled with a really dark blue:
Then I copy all my layers into a new layer (shift+alt+e), and set it to soft light at 63%:
To sharpen, copy and merge all the layers again, gaussian blur at 1.6, and lower the opacity to 37%, then copy merge them again and sharpen the new layer, setting that one to 73%:
The last step is one I almost always do, add some grunge with this texture (by me) set to screen at 50%:
That's a collection of steps that I almost always use. Different caps requrie different steps of course, and outdoor caps and caps with different lighting come with a different process, but this is a basic set of steps that can be easily modified for lots of different results. To show how those results can differ, and what sort of things these caps can do, here are some comparisons between the original caps that icons were made with, and the end result:
to
to
to
to
to
to
and
I think that's all I have to say to start with! Hit me up with any questions you have: about icons, graphics, traditional art, anything. If you have a question about how I made a specific icon or graphic, or how I achieve a certain effect, or how I would color a cap you have, etc, feel free to ask - that's what I'm here for!