Thanks for the kind words Sparker..
Happy to hear the words about style, that made me a little less nervous :)
When I say I work 99% digital it is probably 80%... Once it was 100%, but I have returned to my normal pencils and paper for all sketching. It is much easier for me to sketch and correct with normal pencils for some reason, so going back to that way of working has shaved a lot of time off for each illustration.
So this is how it works for me:
1 - Get a clear idea of what I want to paint.
2 - Collect resource material and check out what other people have done on the subject.
3 - Print out reference images and so on.
4 - Make some coffee and start making doodles to get me warmed up.
5 - Thumbnail sketching - meaning very small sketches that examines shapes, compositions, lights and shadows.
6 - Choose some of the best thumbnail sketches and work on those in a bigger format - I normally do around 4 sketches on each A4 paper.
7 - Make a final sketch on a chosen format and draw until it's done. If there are areas with mistakes or areas that are hard to draw, I finish those as it wont be easier in the digital program (in my opinion).
8 - Scan the drawing or trace the drawing so I only got lines and scan that.
9 - Start painting in either Corel Painter or Adobe Photoshop.
Some people are good with a mouse, I have tried once and it was simply not possible for me, so I got a Wacom digitizer, had 3 different ones now I got the Intuos3 A4 - but the smallest ones are like a gazillion times better than any mouse. Easier on the wrists and pressure sensitivity.
Now in terms of brushes and techniques I am not the best to explain that. I think it's a personal thing and every artist I know working in digital are constant experimenting with it.
For inspiration and relaxation use a couple of hours watching digital painting movies on either YouTube or Sclipo - a couple of urls to get you started:
http://youtube.com/results?search_query … rch=Search
http://sclipo.com/search?search_text=di … =0&y=0
I really recommend Bobby Chiu's videoblog on YouTube. He is a great inspiration and a great talker, much like a modern version of Bob Ross - right now he has 30-something videos:
http://youtube.com/user/digitalbobert
For brushes I would recommend Deviant Art - there are a lot of great stuff there. You could look at the first section of "Learning To Paint Digitally" - some good beginner stuff there and links to some nice brushes:
http://news.deviantart.com/article/34010/
Don't try and compare analog tools with digital tools - it's a different world. Just see the computer as yet a great tool to add to your arsenal.
Sorry for the long post, hope there is something in there to get you started.
Regards
Thomas
Oh I almost forgot Dany's illustration blog. It's loaded with movies and great reading on all things related to illustration and digital workflow:
http://danidraws.com/
