Category: Art Post

Top 3 How to Draw Videos

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Learn How to Draw Anything

There are many how-to-draw videos and tutorials online, and some of them are very good. If you have been following me, you know I have been doing some videos on drawing with pencils as well. Some of my drawing videos has gotten pretty good responses from viewers, so I am posting my top three videos here.

In my videos, I try to approach it differently than from many others out there. Instead of showing you how to draw a specific thing, I want to show you how to draw anything. And that involves showing you the very basic fundamentals of drawing. Which is what? Well, doing a drawing is mostly repetitious work. It is nothing more than a series of strokes. How you apply the strokes makes all the difference. Therefore, it is all about hand control. Once you master hand control, you will be able to apply the knowledge in your head to paper. Without hand control, it doesn’t matter how many art books you read, you can’t translate that on paper.

That is what I am starting with–hand control. Judging from the feedback I get from viewers, I am pretty sure it will help you if you are a beginner artist. Let me know what you think. Thanks, -Wei

How to Draw Lines

How to Shade with Cross-Hatching

How to Draw Curves and Circles

Lady Dragon Statue – Paint Master

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My Statue is Finally Done!

If there was ever a labor of love for me, this is it! Below are the approved Lady Dragon paint master from the factory. The final product should look very close to what is shown.

The release date is March of this year. If you want one, you can pre-order my statue from the Yamato website. Or if you like, you can order it directly from me by emailing me and I’ll put you on the list. Then once I get the inventory, I will email you to confirm the order. You can always change your mind, there’s nothing formal here. The cost of the Lady Dragon statue is $199.99 with free shipping within the United States. The statue is 1/6 scale, approximately 12.5″ tall.

Check out the statue and do let me know what you think by commenting. Oh, almost forgot to mention, this statue features full cast-off capabilities! That means the dress comes off. You know I would not deprive you of that.

Lady Dragon Images

lady dragon

How to Paint Portraits – The Soft Airbrushing Technique

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Portrait Painting Doctor and his DogI never thought I would be painting a dog but there’s a first for everything I suppose. I had my hesitations on this commission piece, mainly due to the subject matter. Painting fur is a tedious process. But I got through it and I’m glad I did. It’s nice to do something new once in awhile.

This owner loves his dog. And only after I started to paint and having to look at the original photo for a long period of time did I finally started to feel how much he loves this dog. And it’s that love that I wanted to show in this painting as well. That was my focus. If you can feel the love he has for this dog, then I would have succeeded. That is what motivated me to push myself and finish this piece.

As usual, this was painted in Photoshop using the Soft Airbrushing technique. I didn’t make a video of the painting, but I did manage to save off snapshots of the painting throughout the process. The image is below.

The Painting Process

Pencil brush for Photoshop

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Pencil Sketching in Photoshop

Looking for a pencil brush for Photoshop? I think I’ve found a good one for you. I finally tried out some pencil brushes for Photoshop and I am surprised how well it replicated the pencil texture. I googled “pencil brush” and found quite a bit of links for it. I download a couple of pencil brushes and found one that worked well. You can download it here: Oniai-love-ru’s Pencil Brush. Below are samples of that brush set.

pencil brush for photoshop test

This pencil brush set offers 15 brushes, though most are variations, they are useful. This set allows you to retain the pencil texture even if you change the brush size. I tried out another pencil brush set and it only came with one brush, and changing the size destroyed the pencil texture. Why would you want to change a pencil brush size? Well, because when you sketch with a real pencil, your strokes will differ in size depending on how sharp your pencil is. One thing I like to do when sketching with real pencil is to keep pencils with different sharpness. That way, I will always have duller pencils for broader strokes, and a sharp pencils for finer lines. Therefore, being able to change the pencil size adds another level of realism.


Batman Sketch with Pencil Brush

Here is my test sketch using the pencil brush in Photohop. The original art was from Alex Ross.

batman sketch in Photoshop with pencil brush

Basic Tools for Drawing

If you are new to drawing with traditional pencils, I have some videos here that will give you a good introduction to pencils and other basic tools for drawing:
Basic Tools for Drawing – Video 1
Basic Tools for Drawing – Video 2
Basic Tools for Drawing – Video 3

Couple Portrait Painting

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I’m a Wedding Painter?

A professional photographer once told me that being a wedding photographer ranks the lowest on the totem pole for photography. If that’s true, will being a wedding portrait painter make me the lowest of painters? Haha. Okay, seriously, no disrespect for wedding photographers. They do great work. I think it’s just that being a wedding photographer has a relatively low entry requirement, therefore, you get the amateurs as well as professionals. Anyhow, back to painting. This painting was done at a request from a father who wanted to give a painted portrait of his daughter and future son-in-law as a little surprise wedding gift to them. He owns a custom wrapping and printing company so naturally this would be printed. I hope everything went great and I’m curious how this painting was received by the bride and groom.

Soft Airbrushing at High Resolution

This was a much more involved painting. Usually with my limited time, I spend roughly 2 hours for any kind of work on my own. Since the painting was to be printed, I had to work at a much larger resolution. This took me about 8 hours to paint. The final resolution was almost 4000 pixels wide. Ultimately, this was a good test for me because I was curious how the larger resolution would affect my soft airbrushing technique. As it turns out, the affects were minimal. Working at a larger resolution just meant using a larger brush, which in Photoshop is never an issue. But at larger resolution, more time was spent on the details, which was to be expected. I’m glad my technique has survived the test of high resolution.

Painting Hair and Details

The most challenging part was her hair and the details on her dress. I get impatient with too much details. I don’t have ADD, it’s just that I don’t like too much repetition=). But I’m glad I got through it. The fun part was making the composition come together. Like fading some areas out to focus the eye, and sharpening certain edges to draw attention to the area. That’s the art part that I enjoy most. Because without that, it’s just a copy of a photo. Well, hope you like this, and do check out the video below for the painting process. Until next time, -Wei

Portrait Painting Video