Del's Doodles

[Badger]

Getting faster is mainly just a matter of practice really. You basically develop a routine or process. Also the improvements are pretty clear already so keep going!

Another thing that can help is knowing your palette ahead of time. Like for my big Reyalinn town map, I didn't have to worry about the colours because I already had them set from previous practice maps.

Thanks, I will. I have given myself 6 months to get my skills back up to speed, So I push myself every day, even if I only get to squeeze an hour of art in on a given day. I like the palette idea and will start saving particular palettes that work for me.

Wow, I really like these!

Thanks, that means a lot!

Definitely not a professional in painting but I've been a photographer for a while and the thing that helped me to improve my speed is to develop a workflow that works for you and to practice. Sometimes this means that I would edit the same image several times working toward the same desired result. I'm still working on my work flow and figuring out what preset actions I can plan using photoshop to minimize the recursive nature of image manipulation. To get to that point I need to learn how to get what I want from the images that I producing and I am certainly working on that point.

Yes, I spend a lot of time in photoshop using the CTRL Z function on things I try and don't like. Back when I was earning commissions, I had a lot of actions made up on things that I did a lot of, like making a selection, inverting it and expanding it by 1 or 2 pixels, and this sped up the process quite a bit. This was just learned from the experience of making maps and thinking about what I could do to take shortcuts on things that I constantly repeated.

Del

[Badger]

A lame attempt at imitating Larb's style of drawing stone structures... I don't think I quite captured the essence of his work. I found the outside/inside bricks difficult to do. Oh well, one day maybe, but that day is definitely not today.

Del

[LunaticDesign]

I think that yours are a little more regular in size

[Tiana]

If any of you professional's have advice for how to get faster at things, I am all ears!!

Feel, don't think. Use the Force.

For coloring, though, split your inks into two layers, one for the outline and one for the details, that way you can duplicate the outline layer and use the bucket fill on it. Clip Studio Paint certainly has a few options for the bucket tool which make it easier, including one that can expand color underneath your inks (generally more of a comic thing) and ignore gaps (more useful in this case). Doing the colors for that lil inn you posted would have probably taken me 5 minutes... but I am highly practised right now and you'll get back into it. You're obviously already getting betetr as you go.

Though half the time I paint in my color anyway, so that it intentionally looks messier and less digital.

[bkh1914]

A time-honored teaching method is to copy a master.
After a couple of attempts, you'll start learn the technique and the flow.
And eventually it will come naturally in your own work.

[Badger]

Thanks for the fill tip, that is a neat function, and it took less that five minutes to color this in. Thanks for the other tips Tiana, I learned a long time ago to put my inks and what I call my inside inks (which is just the details of an object) on seperate layers. Working in photoshop pretty much requires it if you want to fill selections right. On my maps I usually keep an Ink layer for all the same types of objects, so on a regional map that means mountains on one layer, forests on another, hills on yet another... same with city maps, walls on one layer, rivers on another, roads on another and buildings on yet another layer.... then I group them for each type, using an ink layer, an inside ink layer, a base or background color, a drop shadow layer, a shading layer and highlight layer.... sometimes a texture layer as well. all in all, it ends up being dozens and dozens of layers.... but I find it easier to work with that way.

bkh1914: I absolutely agree!! It's how I have learned just about all my mapping skills. As I explained above with all the layers, I learned that from Mike Schley. It's what I love about my friends here at the Guild, because most of them don't mind you asking how they do something and give their knowledge freely.

Del