Shading Techniques

I'm looking for help in some good texture shading techniques I can use for when painting clothing or skins. I am fairly experienced in photoshop and I am most comfortable with drawing paths, photocompositing and such things, but painting has never agreed with me.

Every time I have tried its been a frustrating experience. I find myself with a lack of ability to move my mouse like I can move charcoal in 1st life.

Does anyone have any tips they could give me to help with shading? I know it isn't charcoal but do tablets give me the control over my painting that I would like?

i know there are some really good texture workers out there who just use a mouse, but i don't quite know how they do it. Like you, I am more familiar with RL mediums rather than digital. A tablet makes a huge different because it is pressure sensitive. You can play around with gradiants and using paths with layered blurs and smudges, but at the end of the day I decided having a tablet was necessary for what I was trying to accomplish.

now i just need to get used to drawing on a tablet while looking at a screen, rather than the pen/brush/pencil. lol

I suppose I will have to get a tablet and join you in the learning how to look at the screen instead of my pencil crowd.

I think part of my problem is transfering what I want from wire mesh shading to a 3d application. Painting in 2d to make it look 3d makes perfect sense in my mind but the stretches and what not of painting in 2d mesh to make a 3d more 3d has somewhat frustrated me.

I saw a post the tool Tattoo and I think I will try it out when I get home from work, does anyone have any other tips to assist me there?

Riann, furthering your thoughtline, are you familiar with Deep Paint?

When I'm shading clothing and skins (using a mouse) I tend to duplicate the layer I'm shading, then go all out shading it using dodge n' burn, not worrying too much about how it looks and exaggerating the shading... I then apply a Gaussian blur to that and then adjust the transperancy of the duplicate layer to get the shading dead on.

It kinda works... I'm not very artistic and this seems to be the best way I've found so far. My skins look alright, I think... not as minutely detailed as some, but I like em that way

I also cant always get the proper contours I need with a mouse, my major trick is zoomng in to about 500% and taking it nice and slow.

To answer your question, and to cement that tablets should be included with computer purchases like mice (mouses) is - My friend's DA page. http://annisahmad.deviantart.com/

No, getting a tab will not make you, or me, instantly good. But the artist can do great things if he (or she) has the proper tools.

I wish you luck ^_^

One of his profesional concept pieces done with a tablet:

Wow Armath thats amazing that kinda makes me want to throw away my messy art supplies (though getting messy is part of the fun) and get a laptop and a tablet!

To do shading without having to rely on painting (or making a path for every stroke), build up layer by layer and use layer masks. So for example you'd start with your base layer (the most common color). To shade lighter or darker make a new layer, adjust your color accordingly, paint in your shading on the new layer, then use a layer mask to fine tune it. That way you can't screw it up and you can play with the layer masks (touching up, blurring, etc) until you get everything just where you want it with nice looking blends. Jezebel's technique of duplicating the layer, adjusting it, blurring it, then blending it back in is also a good technique.

Ive used a wacom tablet for about 4 yrs . While the tablet is awesome and I love it dearly I tend not to get as much use out of it when doing skins or clothes .
I start a new layer above my cloth or skin set my brush to airbrush on a low opacity and paint my shadows or highlights in . Its basically just tapping the mouse to get light soft tones . This safe guards you against screwing up your image, its also helpful because you can adjust the layer transparency . Im not a huge fan of dodge and burn because I feel it usually looks just as the word says "burned".
For shadows just take the eyedropper grab your main color and take it down a few shades , for highlights take it up . Good luck on your creations .

In echo of what other people have already said, do yourself a favor and get a tablet. I got mine mostly because I'm taking classes in and working on more professional photoshop stuff, but even a small Wacom Graphire (4"x5" drawing space) does wonderfully for that. They retail for $80-100 but I got mine used off another student for $40. Takes a little practice to get used to but it's many many times better than only painting with a mouse.

If you *really* want the tablet to behave just like traditional drawing medium like charcoal, you might check out Corell Paint, a program designed particularly for that functionality, which currently has even my non-artist friend raving. I haven't used it myself, but I'm told that with Corell + a tablet, you can do stuff like "twist the stylus, and the stroke on the screen will twist). It's no less usefull in Photoshop or its competitor programs: you still have preature sensitivity but the only things you can controll with that are line thickness and if you select the option, transparency.