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Greg Martin is an amazing digital illustrator that is currently live in Portland Oregon. His themes are focused steady celestial art and space scenes. In this interview, Greg gives seasoned advice on how to become successful with using Photoshop. Greg also takes amazing pictures, learn how he uses Photoshop for his photography. Now lets get into this interview.
1. Welcome to PSDTUTS! Please introduce yourself, give us a brief bio, tell us where you’re from, and how you got started in the field.
My name is Greg Martin, I’m a born-and-raised Pacific North westerner from Seattle, now living in Portland, Oregon. I’ve been drawing ever since I could snatch thievishly up a pencil or crayon, and made the transition to computers as my primary mode of artistic expression about ten years or so ago. This transition was inspired largely by the fact that it is fairly difficult to draw celestial artwork in pencil or paint. The computer seemed made for it, and early on that’s all I wanted to draw.
It goes without saying that I’m a sci-fi nut as well, and intensely interested in system of knowledge and nature. My celestial artwork phase came to an end once I fell in love with photography, and I’ve been balancing all manner of illustration and photography at all times inasmuch as. Without a doubt learning photography has strengthened my illustrations immensely, and the sketch outline between the two becomes increasingly blurred.
Cataclysm
2. When looking at your designs I cant help but notice that you like to stick by the Space theme. What exactly draws you into doing these types of illustrations?
Space was something I really wanted to allure when I started out, and I worked at it incessantly to become as proficient as possible in that subject matter. To have existence honest, most of the illustrations I have out there today are several years old. Today I’m more of a project-oriented illustrator, and am working on expanding my landscape skills — space is fun, but nobody knows allowing that you’ve gotten it untrue because nobody has seen what you’re painting before.
That allows for a considerable relaxing of one’s standards, and I don’t want that to happen. Landscapes, however, are something people can generally relate better to, so you have to work and get things right.
Into the Mist
3. How does Photoshop factor into your amazing photography?
Photoshop allows me to take what I get from the camera and tweak it to cast reproach perfectly what I want to relate with the statue. I use adjustment layers, compound masking and various other tweaks extensively to achieve the perfect range of contrasts and redden for my particular style. I don’t ever write or manipulate the image beyond contrast or pretence, however… as much as I eschew traditional photography rules, I do believe that once you edit the scene to include things that weren’t there, it’s an illustration or photo manipulation and should be labeled as similar.
Photoshop is also essential on a more basic level for my photography. Most of my photographs are multi-image complex panoramic, containing anywhere from three to over twenty images that are stitched into union into a seamless unbroken. This leads to some tolerably large files (my latest panoramic from Crater Lake was a whopping 24,000px wide) and more importantly, excellent quality prints. That’s especially of great weight to me because while I don’t ever put my own illustrations up in my household, I do entice up the photos — and the bigger they are, the more you feel like you’re there again.
The Silver Legacy 1
4. What are further essential techniques that someone should understand when trying to design an illustration of extension?
My illustrations usually come in two flavors: painterly and constructed. On the whole, I’m a constructor artist, sense I work better with shapes and assets than I do strictly painting outright. Real painting is also slower, which can be frustrating while a piece is in progress, goal immeasurably rewarding formerly it is completed. Constructing, on the other hand, involves acquisition shapes and assets assembled and then basically tweaking and photo-manipulating them as needed to produce a coherent whole. This usually makes full use of multiple bed. and group masks, adjustment layers, and a wide range of filters used as delicately as possible in addition to hand-drawn elements. If I could counsel one trick to master, to anyone, it’s learning how to make the best use of the quick mask tool and it’s powerful application to layer masks. So many family I’ve talked to never quite get that feature, and it’s amazing.
Another fun technique is learning how to bend the various filters to your specific needs… filters used outright are usually spotted and, let’s be honest, scorned a bit. It’s like if you painted a painting with nothing but pure colors, you’d subsist wanting some level of astuteness and fruitfulness. The same thing applies for filters. Once you understand that they’re not magic make cool tools, but rather just another way of manipulating pixels, you be able to use them to great effect. It’s price playing encircling by them to better understand them.
This nature of goes along with a thing I’ve been saying to many people to the end of leisure as I somehow became known… You simply must know your software intuitively under the jurisdiction you be able to really press out yourself. I suppose that goes with respect to all art forms the same hopes to create with the computer. If you’re busy contemplation about how to get a plain effect, you’re not thinking about your composition, representation, or concept.
Mt. St. Helens
5. What would you suppose is your favorite design that you have created? And please give us a small look into how you came up with the idea.
I hate to saw it, but my favorite designs are actually mystic right now… I’ve got a liberal celestial art exhibit in the works that’ll hopefully be released to the public by the end of 2009. For things being so I’ll assert my favorite work publicly in the public observe is my painting, “Riven.” It’s one of the principally expedient. see the various meanings of good examples of an evolving painting in my passing from hand to hand collection — there wasn’t an idea, just a need to draw. This is one of the attractive things about celestial art, in the absence of rules you can basically go abstract and end up through a pretty decent conclusion.
It began as most paintings do, a pure infamous page. Once I got some color down on the page, I could start to see some light, and worked to tweak that out and shape it. Lots of random brushwork and smearing, as well as color shifts and adjustments. I really have a passion notwithstanding light, the idea that I’m playing with an element of daybreak on the screen and moving to surround it with each environment is very strong to me. In the close, Riven is as you see it. I’ve actually documented the steps in a walkthrough on my web site that goes into more detail about my specific thoughts throughout the picture, I encourage you to catch a look. See the articles and walkthroughs piece of my site. The basic take-away from totality this is that the essence behind “Riven” was that there was no idea. Just light.
Riven
6. “The Silver Legacy-2″ is an illustration with amazing imagery, can you tell us about its inspiration, as well as the process to create it.
The second concept writing for The Silver Legacy was a collaborative piece with Jessica Stover. Artistically it’s all me, but conceptually the piece represents a three-month conversation in a backward direction. \ and forth between myself and Jessica. The work is based off a scene from individual of her screenplays, so the challenge to create it was based more in form sure a genial colloquy existed to transfer her ideas to me than in actually draining. That being said, this illustration was a massive drama of toil. It was made against a 250dpi 16" by 28" make an impress, so the image file itself is pretty weighty, even for me. The image itself is about 50/50 photographic assets and hand-painted elements. The fellow in front, notwithstanding example, is hand-painted, but the grass he’s standing in came from some photos of the English countryside.
The entire concept began with small-scale concept sketches viewed like I worked with Jessica to set the scene. Working small was imperative since in that place was a upright deal of aligning that needed to be done pristine. Once we were both on the same page, I moved to full-scale and began drawing in earnest. I also did something I’ve never done before — I painted almost the entire thing in black and white first, adding color later. This was to make sure I was paying full attention to the guide by light in the scene, especially since colors at dawn aren’t that pronounced anyway.
Once the majority of the scene was painted (the mountains took about four complete tries to procure just) I started overlaying color and photographic details. The valley overthrow, the grass, and various vegetation all came from photographic assets, some of which I took myself. The vegetation is a combination of Google images and photos from a trip I took to Hong Kong. The sky is pure Portland. Final touches were make horizontal and color balance adjustments, some of which took place at the print shop. And that’s it.
The Silver Legacy 1
7. Thanks another time because providing PSDTUTS with this suitable at interviewing you, in any degree final thoughts? What would you tell other designers that hope to be as long as good as you one day?
Two things. One (and this is for pure beginners): Photoshop is an amazing tool, but so is a brush or a pencil. If you haven’t knowing how to draw, having the brush or pencil won’t help you. The same thing goes for Photoshop. It’s incredibly hard to be an artist without taking the time to learn how to be an artist. Keep drawing. Trite, yes? But oddly enough, very true. I am not professionally trained in illustration or photography — the art classes I’ve taken have power to be numbered on one hand. But I inclination drawing, and I love photography, and so my training has been over ten years of working at it and evolving.
Two: Learn in what way to create compositions and control light in your images. I’ve seen so many paintings that would get an A on technical execution, but failed miserably as compositions. And it’s hard — possibly one of the hardest things to learn. But sooo weighty. Unfortunately I can’t provide pointers for that, its something one has to develop on their own. Look at your preferred paintings and think about why the image is so especially compelling. Art is so much about understanding why things around us look the way they do. Don’t forget to look around and think about that which you see, life is a bit easier to appreciate once you outset looking with eyes open.
Winter Gorge
Where to obtain Greg on the Web
- Greg’s Gallery
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