Digital Painting Techniques: Volume 5 - OUT OF PRINT!

When I first got hold of this book I was a little skeptical. I'm a semi-professional digital artist and make my living doing architectural visualizations while trying to advance my digital painting skills in my spare time in order to break in to the concept art industry. This was my first such book on the purely digital painting medium.My skepticism was that I figured all the best tutorials would be in video format. I wondered how you could learn about such a dynamic medium from still images and written word. I myself create basic tutorials for my paintings and find it quite a challenge to get the information across.But I was quite shocked to find myself learning an awful lot of insider tips! This book covers everything from character design, environment design, weapons, vehicles and in a variety of styles from cartoon to using photo-real textures and working using 3d renders as a basis. All of which are useful to the aspiring (or even professional) digital artist.Basically, if you've ever looked at a digital painting and thought 'how do they do that??' there's a good chance this book will answer that question.It doesn't just cover things like brushes and Photoshop techniques, but also shows you each artist's workflow, from their very first brainstorming through to thumbnails, error correcting and the final touches. It also shows their thought process and even philosophies, which is invaluable.Finally, rather than come with a CD, you're given a link to a resources file which contains a few brushes, textures and models used in the various tutorials, which is a nice bonus.My only criticism was that a few of the paintings were quite poor (not many though) and I'd have expected each painting to be quite a high standard.

As it happened, I had to wait almost a month before postal services delivered the book to me. Yet, it was worth every penny and every single day of waiting.The book show various approaches, and neat tricks, to deal with different painting problems. From the concept stage, to detailing the final piece and dealing the materials. While it focuses on the PS, it also introduces uses of 3D in painters and concepters line of work. Clean layout and high-quality printing compliment this rich content - if you are lazy enough to skip the learning part, at least buy it for the pictures :).In my opinion this is a must-have.

This books takes on many different artist - and with that said, many different techniques and styles. It's interesting to see how some artists are using programs such as Sketchup software to make the process easier, giving a much more realistic result. This is a great book for artists in all levels, I would say. Not only is it very educational, but you can also sit down and enjoy amazing pieces of art while doing so.

I would have called this book Concept Painting Techniques, as reading through this book it uses all the tricks of the trade used by a lot of concept artists within the film and game industries. This is a fantastic book show casing different artists and their work and the techniques used on each piece. The software used is naturally Photoshop for each piece, but theres also an added dimesion in a couple of pieces in which Sketchup 3d software is introduced and put to great use. The results speak for themselves and I think you’ll find these particular areas of the book more inspiring as I did. I have a background in 3d, so to see a really fast way to model and add textures to models in scenes without the fuss of traditional uv mapping in a 3d software is a god send and a breath of fresh air in that department. If you want to get to grips with digital painting techniques and require advice on the way, then this is one book I recommend.