How to fix 10 Basic Mistakes in Digital Painting

Digital painting is quite tricky. You get the proper software and that's it, you can start painting. Every tool, even the most powerful one, is within your reach. All the colors are ready to be used, no mixing needed. If you've just converted to Photoshop from traditional painting, it's not that hard; you only need to find the counterparts of your favorite tools. But if you're a beginner in both kinds of art, the start is a nightmare—the one in which you're not aware you're dreaming!

The trickiness of Photoshop is based on its apparent simplicity: here's the set of brushes, here are all the colors, here's the eraser, and this is the Undo command. You start painting, it looks bad, so you search for other tools to make it better. And just look how many tools there are! You try them all, one by one, and magic happens.

However, "magic" means that you're letting Photoshop paint for you. You don't have any control over this, but it still looks better than you, a beginner, would ever do (at least, that's what you believe). So you let this happen and produce lots of pictures in the hope that they'll turn into masterpieces one day.

Professional digital artists you admire use Photoshop to bring their visions to life, but they use it as a tool, not an art producing machine. What's the difference?

• Professionals imagine an effect and make the program do it.
• Beginners make the program do something and if they're satisfied, they keep the effect.
  

Does the second option sound familiar? If so, keep reading. In this article I'll show you how to improve ten different aspects of your workflow so that you become an aware Photoshop artist. With these ten simple tips you'll understand the mistakes that might have been blocking you for a long time!