Help needed regarding GIMP for my art

[Craig Lupine]

Hey guys. I am in need of some help regarding how to use GIMPs tools properly. I was first introduced to these programs back in High School with Macromedia Fireworks, I have some idea down but I would really like some help on how to use it better for very fine work.

I'm attaching some samples of my latest work along with this post. All I need are some pointers and or tutorials for making them look better.


This was my latest piece i made with GIMP. According to those who commented on it, the linework was not clean and the lighting and shadow effects through them off.


This one I was very bad on for both the color and the light and shadow effects.

One thing i would really like to learn is to ink these digitally, my hand is not steady with a tablet, which means I have to ink traditionally. Any help would be appreciated.

[Arzoroc]

Well, you know all the basics like lighting and such, so there's only little to say about that.

But do you work on different layers when painting? That's one of the small things everyone should know about. One layer (probably on "Overlay" mode) is for lighting only (you only paint white on that layer), one is for shadowing (same with black), one is for coloring, one is for the basic scribble and the topmost is for the final outlines of your object/person/whatever.

Setup (from top to bottom):

Outlines
Light
Shadow
Color

You can also apply this method for every single part of your image (for example one for the cat and one for the man on the bottom) to have even more opportunities to change one part without affecting any other.

Other than that ... I'm not too sure what to tell you as I'm not that much of a painter

[Craig Lupine]

Thanx for that notion. I would like to add more art later on as well, do you know if this site has individual galleries?

[Arzoroc]

Well, you can post them all in different topics or just make one topic and give us a link to your deviantArt page We don't have galleries though..

[virtualTune]

his link is his "location"