GRAPHICS AND TYPE
- BLENDING MODES,
TEXTURES AND MASKS
16. MASTER PHOTOSHOP’S ADJUSTMENT TOOLS
17. CUSTOMISE PHOTOSHOP FOR YOUR TABLET
Emi Haze (www.emihaze.com) is a freelance digital
artist and illustrator, whose work retains a
traditional, handmade feel thanks to the blending of
many media elements, including photography and
custom textures. He draws on his experience in
traditional media to give his digital work this
tangible feeling, as he explains: “Before working in
digital art and illustration, I [started out in] drawing,
painting and later graphics. I always loved the
gesture and the warmth of creating a sketch, in the
stroke of acrylic or oil colour, in the splashes of
watercolour or ink. So [nowadays], when I start
developing an image I try to include my manual skill
in the design and in the use of colour, digitally
importing it into my artwork. [In a single image] I
combine hundreds of Photoshop layers with many
and many graphic elements and textures. All of the
blending modes, layer masks and adjustment layers
I use, make the starting image less digital and more
similar to a painting or drawing.
“This phase of manual elaboration is then merged
with a strictly digital phase. Selecting parts of different
photo images, I try to blend, using the double exposure
technique, the human body with nature and its four
elements: fire, air, water and earth. The result is the
vision of an imaginative world hanging between reality
and fantasy, dream and utopia, and in which colour and
sensitivity have the predominant role.”Giulio Rossi (www.behance.net/giuliorossi)
creates his striking character designs using a
graphics tablet, which is an important tool for many
digital artists and illustrators. However, how you use
it is key if you want to improve the quality of your
illustrations. Rossi doesn’t change a lot from the
default settings of his tablet, but he does “assign
specific keyboard shortcuts for each software [that
he uses], but it really depends on the graphic tablets
model you’re working with.” His general advice is to
customise your Photoshop workspace to make
working with the tablet easier: “I suggest everyone
customises the Photoshop user interface and
creates different ones according to the type of work
you have to do. I have my own working space forDigital artist Eric Proctor (www.tsaoshin.
deviantart.com) says that his top tip for better
illustrations is to master colour control using
Photoshop’s tools: “Learn to use the colour-
adjusting tools such as Curves, Levels and Color
Balance. These tools are some of Photoshop’s
strongest assets and can help you see
imbalances in your work as you compose. I often
fuss with the colour in my paintings throughdigital painting (which is very minimal with only the
tools and panels I actually use to create an
illustration: Layers, Brush Presets, Color, Swatches)
and another one I use when I have to work for
different projects. So more complex than the other
one, with more icons of the tools I need, for
instance, to organise, align [and] modify the
elements inside the page such as text, shapes.”
Finally, if you are using a tablet a lot, then the kit
needs to be right for you: “An ergonomic comfortable
stylus with a pressure-sensitive tablet is crucial to get
your best potential in drawing in the most natural way
possible, but you can also improve it by changing the
Opacity and the Flow of the brushes so you can work
easily at your own pace.”these tools. They help me to create broader colour
palettes or correct lighting problems, especially
early on in the painting when I’m laying down the
initial palette. I find that working with the Curves
tool and Color Balance, I can shift a painting away
from looking murky or cloudy to something more
vibrant and saturated. Before I finalise any
painting, I tend to do a final run of colour
adjustments to add the last bit of pop.”© Emi Haze© Eric Proctor© Giulio Rossi