In the business of concept art and design, there are a variety of medias and applications which many artists use to produce their work with, however the most famous and influential has to be Adobe Photoshop, with the correct technology and knowledge, Photoshop gives the artist a limitless amount of resources and materials, unlike most traditional art, a lot of the techniques seen in Photoshop require knowledge of using Photoshop's various features. One of which is the brush tool, arguably the most important feature in a concept artist’s work.

When Opening a new Document in Photoshop, a series of options are given to you, including the size, resolution and colour scheme of the document: This is important depending on the purpose of the work for example, RGB is the common colour scheme used for most computer monitors, and is best used for digital based documents, whereas CMYK is the colour scheme of printer ink, and is more suited to prints and reproduction copies of documents.

With a new canvas opened, a white box will appear, this is the canvas base. On the sides of the canvas are the toolbar and the features bar, selecting Brushes (The logo of the pot of brushes) on the features bar on the right side, this will open up the brush menu.

The Brush tool in Photoshop is one of the most customizable tools used, most concept artists create their own brushes, however there are also multiple brushes available for download, when first opening the brush toolbar a series of presets are already available, however we’ll be using the defult ‘round brush’ for the time, below are the basic customisation options, most of these can stay the same, however the spacing is important, the less spacing, the more smoother the brush overall looks.

In the side of the brushes menu, there are a series of other options, this is where our graphics tablet will come in use, a graphics tablet is a usb tablet which comes along with a pen and is used by many graphic designers along with concept artists, the main reason for why the graphics tablet is so used in the design industry is due to the pressure sensitivity that most graphics tablets seem to have. The harder you press, the more opaque/darker the colour and depth of the pen is, something which is not included when drawing with a mouse.

Some of the options to include with this brush include shape dynamics, with the pen pressure set with this option, the softer I press with the pen, the brush’s size changes with the sensitivity of the pen, another option to select is transfer, with the pressure sensitivity also enabled, the softer I press with the pen, the more opaque the brush becomes, when used delicately this creates a very painterly style, which is common in most examples of concept art.

As we can see in this side by side comparison, the stroke made by the mouse is flat and more rounded, it’s also a lot more of a jittered line, whereas the custom brush with the Wacom tablet is smoother and has a lot more tonal value in comparison to the mouse stroke.

Other customization settings include changing the brushes opacity and flow. The opacity changes the transparency of the brush overall, this is useful for adding minute colours to a piece, and the flow meter changes the shape of the brush with each stroke, as I continue to paint, the overall length of the brush decreases, much like in real life.

With an outline and basic shading on a piece of work done, I will further explain how the use of a Wacom tablet helps colour a piece of work, and furthermore add tone towards the painting, along with showing one of the benefits of using Photoshop to produce artwork, along with a basic explanation of colour and light.

If we look into the bottom right corner we can also see another useful area of Photoshop. Layers are the panes which any work is presented on, multiple layers can be used throughout a piece of work, in this example the grey background layer is behind the outline of the car (Titled “Hue/Saturation 1”). Many concept artists use multiple layers to organise their work.

Mixing colours or ‘Blending’ is replicated through two colours of different nature with a gradient between the two colours, using the colour dropper tool (hot keyed as “I”) and selecting the colour of the line drawing, then opening the colour picker allows me to see all the different tones available for that specific colour, picking one of the darker tones at the bottom gives me a preview of the colour, When working on a piece later, I can add those custom colours to swatches, which saves the attributes of the colour to be used later.

The technique known as “On Screen Mixing” is one of the perks of painting via Photoshop. When painting the darker tone, paint over or near the lighter tone (Or vice versa) , holding alt+I will bring up the colour picker one again, and will provide a comparison between the colour selected and the current colour being used. The trick is to use the colour picker near the edge of the brush stroke, and continue to use the colour selected, and repeat the process.

As the two colours have similar properties, but still are noticeably different, they begin to blend together, forming tonal variation. Blending is also made easier with the use of the transfer option in the brushes menu (mentioned earlier) as it allows for transparent colours which helps blending.

With further blending done to the front of the car, the painting still lacks colour variation and looks more flat because of this, colour is needed to help create more variation and depth into the piece. Considering I want the tone to imitate a reflective surface, a contrasting colour would be suitable to create this effect.

The extra addition of colour gives the piece a more finished look and also makes the rest of the tone appear flatter and also defines any previous tonal detail.

Coloured/Finished drawing (Notice the two layers below), the outline is placed over the colour layer, considering it’s transparency it also creates shading over the colour layer.

Black and white outline. The eye shown in the layers shows us which layers are visible, looking back at the finished drawing, we can see how useful layers can be when adding tone and colour to a piece of work.

Coloured/Finished drawing (Notice the two layers below), the outline is placed over the colour layer, considering it’s transparency it also creates shading over the colour layer.

Black and white outline. The eye shown in the layers shows us which layers are visible, looking back at the finished drawing, we can see how useful layers can be when adding tone and colour to a piece of work.