Using Art Tablets...
An Art Tablet is a piece of computer hardware - a pad - that plugs into your computer.
You can draw on it using a it's pen (or other tools you buy for it) which is much easier (and better for your wrist!) then using
a mouse. Not all tablets are the same: in order to do decent digital art you need a tablet that is "pressure sensitive"!
This means the tablet will know how hard (or soft) you are pressing with the tool you are using.
In my experience Wacom makes the best tablets (see wacom.com for details on all their products).
They provide a range of sizes and prices and pressure levels so you can find one that is right for you.
This tutorial assumes that you have an art tablet, as it really won't work well without the pressure sensitivity
Okay I have a tablet... Now what?
Sadly, while my art improved a massive amount when I got my tablet,
it took me years to figure out how to really configure it with Photoshop to do what I wanted.
And of course Photopshop 7 and CS did not exist when I started out. Eventually I figured
out that a lot of what mattered were setting up your brushes properly and learning
how to make your own brushes.
Below I have covered a few "brush" tips for both configuring and creating your own
brushes. In following tutorials I will cover creating specific brushes (such as those for fur, plants etc)
and using them.
Configuring Dynamics
Learning to configure the dynamic settings for your Photoshop brushes is the key to taking advantage of your pressure sensitive tools.
In your "Brushes" menu a brush can have different settings turned on or off for it. For digital painting and coloring I find the dynamic settings the most useful. The image below shows the Brushes menu and the important dynamic settings I use:
The first window shows what a brush is like with no Dynamics on
The second window shows the same brush with Shape Dynamics turned on.
As circled in the image I find it helpful to set the Roundness Jitter control
to "Pen Pressure" the Minimum Roundness all the way up to 100%.
The third window shows the same brush with both Shape and Other Dynamics turned on. I set all settings here to "Pen Pressure". I also find turning on "Smoothing" can sometimes be helpful.
As you can see by the time I am done with the Shape and Other Dynamics I have a brush that will "fade" out at the end of my strokes as I lift the pen. This makes a HUGE difference. You can also experiment with the Color Dynamics settings (as shown below). You can have the actual color you draw with change depending how hard you press - mixing foreground and background colors, becoming darker/lighter, changing it's hue and saturation, or any combination of these options.
Creating Your Own Brushes
At first I stayed away from creating my own brushes because it just sounded hard and scary. It's actually VERY easy and very useful. In addition to using the Dynamic and other brush options listed in the sections above it is useful to create your own brush "tip" shapes. Here is how to do that:
First create a new white canvas.
Next select a brush to draw your new brush shape with. I normally use pretty small brush configured with Dynamics that I like.
Now draw the new brush shape. In this example I did some grass shapes (this is really very easy to draw if you have you pressure dynamics set right!)
Now use the Marquee tool to select the area with your brush shape
Go to the edit menu and select "Define Brush"
A window will open where you can name your new brush!
Now you have a new brush to draw with! This will appear at the end of your current brush menu. By adjusting the size and/or color it's very easy to draw clumps of grass as shown below. If you create a number of these brushes for grass, plants, and leaves you can easily draw detailed landscapes quickly! You will probably want to set/adjust the Dynamics of your new brush too - remember after you've done this to click the "New Brush" icon on your brushes menu so you can save a brush with your specific settings.
Managing your brushes...
To change the order of your brushes, name your brushes, or export/import new brushes just go to the Edit menu and pick "Preset Manager". From here you can organize your brushes and other customizable Photoshop tools/areas too!
