A Chameleon Gets His Colors

[Olimpia]

What an interesting day to upload this, since there are several other cham art threads around today!

I did a portrait of Fierce, an Ambilobe panther that several of you might be familiar with. I wanted to practice doing chameleons digitally, and he gave me the perfect excuse! Reference photos are courtesy of Eric at Chameleons 101.

Sorry about the watermarks, but I've had issues with theft recently!

The "semi" finished work:

I am not entirely happy with it, I'm still deciding what to do behind him. So I may update with the truly finished version in a couple days. But for now, enjoy!

 

[hallenhe]

Very nice! I'm fascinated by what can be done with digital, but haven't had the time and/or patience to sit down and learn how to do it myself. I've been seeing more and more lately to tempt me to learn...

 

[Cainschams]

That looks really neat!! Awesome job

 

[Olimpia]

Very nice! I'm fascinated by what can be done with digital, but haven't had the time and/or patience to sit down and learn how to do it myself. I've been seeing more and more lately to tempt me to learn...

Thanks! It really helps to have a digital tablet of some sort. Before I used to try to draw with a mouse and that was impossible!

 

[Olimpia]

That looks really neat!! Awesome job

Thank you!

 

[Miss Lily]

Wow! That's brilliant! I wish I could do that!

 

[jannb]

Really nice Olimpia! I like!!!!!

 

[Olimpia]

Thank you!

I'm going to try to do a portrait of each of my chameleons, to decorate my new reptile room aka "repti-den" lol

 

[Breeze]

what program do you use?

 

[Olimpia]

Photoshop 7.0. I should update, but I hate having to relearn how to use a program lol And then a Wacom digital tablet.

 

[Breeze]

Ah I have the newest version of photoshop. You should make a tutorial on how to do that. It's interesting.

 

[Olimpia]

It would only be like three steps long! lol it's super easy.

I draw the outline on one layer, then create a second layer set to "multiply" and it lets you color over your lines without ruining them. And that's about it! A lot of people I know use dozens of layers for everything, but I like to keep it simple.

 

[chamyndst8]

Nice work. A million times better tha what I can do. I would probably only be able to draw stick figure chameleons. Can you draw freehand?

 

[Olimpia]

Thanks! Yes I can.

 

[chamyndst8]

You should try to draw Fierce freehand too and see which comes out better. From the looks of it, the digital version is going great.

 

[Breeze]

It would only be like three steps long! lol it's super easy.

I draw the outline on one layer, then create a second layer set to "multiply" and it lets you color over your lines without ruining them. And that's about it! A lot of people I know use dozens of layers for everything, but I like to keep it simple.

Thanks and for coloring it in, do you just use regular brushes and textures?

 

[Olimpia]

Thanks and for coloring it in, do you just use regular brushes and textures?

Yes, I just use the normal brush tool with varying degrees of saturation to fade the colors and such and a little bit of blur to really blend in certain shades. I didn't use textures at all for this picture (although I'm going to see if I can make my own chameleon skin brush), I just tried to achieve some type of bumpy texture by using a lot of dots. All my roommates heard for hours was my digital pen going "tap... tap tap.. tap tap tap tap..." lol.

 

[Breeze]

Haha. Thanks again, I'ma try it sometime (hooray for summer vacation)