I had some spare time this week so I decided to give my Wacom tablet a workout. I have been meaning to download some traditional artist brushes from deviantart for a while, but I have been too busy. Finally I got my chance and let me tell you, there is a wealth of free stuff available. I would suggest that you stop what your doing and get over there. These resources are a joy to use and come in so many flavors. I want to stick to the traditional stuff for this post but hey, if you're not making use of these FREE resources, you are selling yourself short.

Traditional artist brushes simulate real-life drawing instruments, like graphite pencils, charcoal, ink and acrylic/oil paint. Here I used a combination of a bunch of brushes that I found. I started out with a pencil brush, doing a quick sketch. Then I started laying on color with a mix of graphite, charcoal and acrylic, having a lot of fun experimenting with tone, shade and blending techniques. As far as blending goes, some artists feel the smudge tool works for blending color, and other are strong for the brush opacity setting method. I used the brush opacity setting method, by setting the brush opacity to like 23% and lightly brushing on color until a blend was achieved. It worked really well, and after some more practice, I am sure it will pay off with a more traditional artist look to my day-to-day photoshop work.

Granted, I did not spend a lot of time on this piece, simply let it flow and tried a lot of different techniques that I don't normally use. I was inspired by DaniDraws website. There are some fantastic videos and sketches to get inspiration from on her website. Check it out!