Rendering/Blending

Anthony Jones reveals the small tweaks you can make to your painting process that will make a big difference to your art

Publisher Anthony Jones Price $4.50 Format Download Web www.artstation.com/robotpencil

While some video tutorials are like epic sagas, offering a big-picture view of creating art, this video from Anthony Jones (‘AJ’) is more like a short story. The tale that AJ relates here is how you can improve your rendering with ease and a little practice, making your paintings look smoother and more realistic.

Three pithy chapters give you a guide to what’s needed. First up is a basic exercise to create natural blends. AJ shows you how to break down forms into simple shapes to get your initial values down, then start to blend them together. There are a few different methods he uses, but his main point in this video is that many artists and students simply don’t practise this painting stage enough. Just crafting out simple forms to the best of your ability can teach you a lot.

The second chapter sees AJ get into the mechanics of rendering in Photoshop. He drills down into brush settings such as Shape Dynamics and Flow, showing how they affect the results, so you can make your brushes ‘blend-friendly’. He also reveals his preferred settings for blending with the Smudge tool, and discusses how pen pressure settings can tear up the rule book when you’re painting with a graphics tablet.

AJ’s point in the third chapter, however, is critical: no matter how much you practise and tweak your brushes, the crucial ingredients are time and patience. You’ll have to invest a lot of time to achieve great rendering, so he suggests ways to help retain your focus while you work, so that you avoid taking shortcuts through impatience.

There’s a fourth video without narration that brings all of this together, as AJ paints a head with immaculate blending. His aim with this video is to show that virtually anyone can add polish to their paintings with a little dedication and enough patience – and with these simple techniques, he succeeds admirably.

It’s easier than you think to render smooth, natural blends in your paintings, as Anthony Jones shows. Boredom is a very real obstacle to achieving great renders: AJ has some hard-won wisdom to share on how to keep yourself motivated.

Rendering starts with practice, says AJ, as he demonstrates the basic exercises that will help you improve your painting skills. It’s not just about which tool you use: AJ drills down into the details of setting up brushes to making blending quicker and easier.