Little Miss Muffet

So I'm taking "Children's Book Illustration" again this semester.  I wanted to show off my first finished painting for this class!  Our first assignment was to illustrate any scene from "Little Miss Muffet."

And now...... here is my very first DIGITAL painting:  

(drum roll... badabadabadabadabadabda.....)

Little Miss Muffet sat on a tuffet

eating her curds and weigh.

Along came a spider

who sat down beside her

and frightened Miss Muffet away.

Little Miss Muffet didn't know that her tuffet

was a hairy monster at bay,

quite mad at the spider

who sat down beside her

and frightened his dinner away.

By: Ginny Tilby :)

(scroll down to see how I did it)

I haven't taken a "digital painting" class so I planned to teach myself.  Some of you don't know what digital painting means.  It's like this:

(this is what I used)

This is called a "Wacom Tablet."  It works like a mouse.  When you touch the tablet with the pen, it's the same as clicking a mouse.  You can paint MUCH more smoothly and realistically in photoshop this way.

And nowadays people can draw straight on their monitor!  This is called a "Cintiq."

(we don't have these at UVU yet)

Some examples of digital paintings by professional illustrators that I know personally are these:

Will Terry

Don Seegmiller

Justin Gerard

Here's how I did it.

First, I drew this picture:

Then I scanned it and saved it as a jpeg image.  I checked out my first wacom tablet at the lab, I opened this image in photoshop, and then went to class and said, "Uh... I don't know what I'm doing."  Then Lee said, "Hey Adam, can you come help Ginny?" 

My classmate Adam Munoa gave me a 10-minute digital painting lesson at the end of class Monday before I started painting.  He said to first paint it in black and white, getting all the values correct (meaning my lights and darks).  Then add a color layer on top of the b/w layer, set it on "multiply," and use color as a glaze.  He said basically do it the same as if I were doing a b/w oil painting and then glazing color on top.  Okay.  Check!

So then I painted this black and white image all on a single layer:  

I have to say, the undo button is way easier than repainting or erasing.  Last, I glazed the color on top and voila!

NOW... If you want to see a digital painting come to life before your eyes in 2.5 minutes, check out one of my fav videos by Will Terry: