nazSTUFF - Digital Fish Paintings 05

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Digital Fish Paintings _ 05

Using Illustrator outlines to build alpha channels, friskets and the anatomical features of freshwater fish as digital paintings in Photoshop

Note: These projects were painted completely using only a mouse, software and a Power PC Macintosh computer in 1999. No digital tablet was involved.

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Then I created a new LAYER entitled “scale highlights.” Then, choosing a white foreground color with about a 50% transparency, set at “screen” for affect, with the scale guideline grid visible, I “stamped my scale highlights into each scale position.

There are some wonderful discoveries about Photoshop’s painting abilities happening here. First, custom brushes CAN be transparent. This means you can paint shapes with graduated tones. Secondly, instead of stroking the custom brush you just CLICK in place. After doing about five of these you feel like a magician!

The next great illusional trick is this: I duplicated the edited “scale guideline” layer. Remember, I erased all of the unneeded scales, softly. I made the original layer invisible. I NUDGED the new layer a couple pixels to the right and a couple pixels down. I blurred this layer just slightly. I made it 60% transparent with an affect of “multiply.” And, presto, all of the scales now have shadows and look 3D. Illustration 13 shows this early success with the blotches overpainting layers made invisible. They are BENEATH the scale highlights layer! This technique is continued over the entire fish, adjusting brush sizes as you go. If you look carefully into Illustration 14 you’ll notice that I also did something else that adds more realism and lighting. I created a second custom brush shape and added a slightly orange highlight to the front edge of all of the scales toward the front half of the fish’s body, as if reflecting some far off light. It’s a small thing, but what a difference. ALL of the scale work is kept transparent so that the skin colors and patterns previously painted show through. It is the combination of all of these layers that makes this painting so effective and eye catching. Once you learn this technique there’s no limit to brush shapes and highlights you can add for your own dramatic affect.

The rest is just hours of labor. Using the many techniques I’ve described above the work of detailing the fins, blotches, patterns and scales goes on. It is worth noting, I suppose, that at this phase of development, no attempt whatsoever was made to add lighting or shadow to the illustration. Eye colors, for example, were drawn but not highlighted. All of this is determined by whatever environment the fish is in. The eye does not have a bright white spot on its own. The fins remain semi transparent as well to acommodate the background. In Tutorial 004 I place some of my fish into a pond environment where I add highlights, change their entire color scheme, create shadows and more. Take a look!

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Gallery of Game Fish Paintings:

Here's a snapshot of the entire collection of digital fish in this collection.

Species illustrated above include: Largemouth Bass, Carp, Smallmouth Bass, Pumpkinskin Sunfish, Walleye, Striped Bass, Black Crappie, Grass Pickerel, Yellow Perch, Spotted Bass, White Crappie, Bluegill, Sauger Fish, Red-breasted Sunfish, Northern Pike, Great Lakes Muskie, White Bass. This was the major portion of my digital painting project. These mages are now available as reproductions and gift imprints of many forms.

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Enjoy these digital fish paintings... CLICK on thumbnail for more info. Featuring Rainbow Trout, Black and White Crappie, Striped Bass (Striper), Walleye, Northern Pike, Blue Gill, Yellow Perch and a Large-mouth Bass, all created using these digital tools... Illustrator (vector) and Photoshop (raster).

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Official USPS Fish Postage Stamps

Fishing Stamps selection includes Yellow Perch, Bluegill, Walleye, Striped Bass (Striper), Large Mouth Bass, Rainbow Trout, Black Crappie, White Crappie and Red-breasted Sunfish. Other products also available.

More Info is on our BLOG