A thing of beauty, some great skills you got there Jorn  

Thanks guys! More coming very soon!  

I love this thread and am very impressed with all what you can do!
I have popped in the thread over the past year a few times and just noticed today a ton of pictures are missing from a few of replies unfortunately.

Well, I used to draw back in the day and put away my pencils, inks and paints when I was around 20 when I realized I didn't have what it took to make it in the comic book world and I just went about my life.

I always got the itch to try again, but never was inspired to try again.

As some of you have seen, I got a little creative using my photos of my figures to make some digital artwork in THIS THREAD, but recently I saw a post about an artist's work over on RS name Alistair Eales who was watercoloring vintage figures. He did commissions too.
So I commissioned a Leia Bespin (go figure) from him and he sent along a scan of the final work and man, I was inspired to try drawing again. (I'll show off Alistair's piece when it arrives in a separate thread).

Anyway...
This time around, I decided to ditch the traditional pencil and pen approach and go all digital.
I picked up a Wacom CTH-480 (chearper on Amazon) small tablet for under $100 to see if it would work well, fired up Photoshop, spent over 8 hours these past few days and well, it is MUCH different than pencil on paper!

Its not any better, not really worse, but much different. It is jumpy every now and then (or perhaps that is just my nerves    ) but overall the more I try things, the more I am liking it! Doing things all digital with the use of unlimited layers does have some major advantages however as I will show a bit of below.

I still need to wrap my head around the different brushes and get used to a 4" x 6" working area whlie looking at a 24" monitor and then how best to deal with zooming in and out and get the right "feel" of the inking and painting aspect of things.
And then there is the pressure settings, opacity and so much more. I thought I 'knew' Photoshop, but Photographic tools in Photoshop are not the same as drawing and painting!!!!

So here is my first attempt at a Leia Bespin pic from her 31B back (man, there is crap detail in those pics - very dark and contrasty in places and flat in others - I would kill for a good scan of the camera ready art used for it!!!!!!!!!!!!!)

I am showing the steps I did just to document my fist digital piece (which isn't done, but it's done enough to get feedback and suggestions and well, I am happy about the progress ).

Please be kind..............

Pre-sketch with a quasi-grid to help match proportions


sketch layer over top pre-sketch


removed pre-sketch layer


added slight "enhancement" layer to be done later


first decent inking layer over sketch


inking only - body will be added at a later point


some experiments with brushes and pressure to add detail in hair - this will be re-done (that's the beauty of layers in digital!)


add a quick bit of hair color


some eye and lip color


added an OK flesh tone


a tad bit of shadow and highlights


same as above but the extra hair detail removed (starting point for new hair detail layer)


all inking removed to show color only (not bad as a standalone?)


Experimental brush #2


Experimental brush #3


Experimental brush #4


Those experimental brushes obviously were just tests to see a bunch of things, but there were important in the learning process so why not show the bad or odd along with the good!

So there you have it.... my favorite as it stands now is this one with the extra detail removed but I will add in some more, just not as much next go around:


I know even the best piece is still not great, but I am very pleased with my first try after 20 years sketch-less and a foray into a new medium at the same time.
I hope to improve as I practice more. Well, I hope.

So.........

Is anyone else into digital art with a tablet or digitizer with Photoshop or other imaging app?
Anyone have any digital tips? (plugins, cool add on brushes, how to achieve some traditional paper type effects????)

Anyway........ thanks for looking!

cheers!


EDIT:
If anyone wants to see the full size I was working with, here is a flickr set of the above.

EDIT#2
Apparently Alistair already posted the painting he did for me on his blog. Blog Post Here

Great artwork Jay, I love all the different variations. But I agree with you on your final choice, definately the winner for me.
I have a wacom bamboo tablet and pen, but I mainly use it for photoshop manipulation, as I find you can be  far more precise than you can with a mouse. But I haven't tried drawing from scratch with it yet. It can be a tricky thing to get the hang of at first, but I think your results are first class bud  

super cool Jay   

Some great stuff there guys   
 
Heres some random pencil sketches from here and there    these are from 2011
 
Easter Island Moai sketch
 
 
John Muir portrait
 
 
First ever self portrait
 
 
A few Star Wars Sketches I did back in 2006
 
Binary sunset
 
 
Aurra Sing (was never happy with this)
 
 
AT-AT
 

from http://blog.theswca.com/2015/04/celebration-anaheim-vader-case-project.html