Blending techniques?

[fishamit]

Hi all, got a problem:

I have my sketch' I picked my palette. now this very tricky for me, I'm horrible with colors. I'm assuming some of you own an Intuos tablet. so say I was to draw the intuos pen.

I'd first pick the light gray color, then the dark gray for the lower portion of the pen. The I pick the colors for the shadowed parts of the pen and for the highlights. then I paint the base colors in the sketch, and use the darker and lighter colors for shadows and etc to paint in shadows and highlights. then, it's ALT key time! that's where the problems start.

Now I know it takes practice, but I'm rarely happy with the results I get. when I blend to little it looks like blocked in paint, and when I do too much I lose the shadows and highlights contrast. Any tips?

[RyanBarrett]

http://www.conceptart.org/forums/showthread.php?t=47859

and

http://www.conceptart.org/forums/showthread.php?t=107217

both excellent threads covering basic painting technique in photoshop..
without seeing the trouble you're having, don't know if anyone can much more help.. I would suggest the "sample and paint and lower opacity method", and work with smaller brushes as you move along in the blending phase to prevent losing your value contrast.