No, this gawdawful mess is not my “art”! It’s a stage in a tutorial course, where I’m experimenting with how to paint on a model. I’ve done hundreds of hours of tutorials, and finally I get to some of the bits that for me are the real fun part. I mean, the main reason I got into 3D was to do organic sculpture and painting, but so far I’ve been immersed primarily in hard-surface modeling, materials, lighting, and a bunch of other stuff. I’m saving my favorite parts for last, and have deliberately hunkered down on the more technical, rigid, and fundamental stuff.

The main painting tool in Blender is also the only one. Basically you have a can of spray paint, or an air brush. But what fun it is to start spray-painting a sculpture (and without the smell]. There’s another program one can use to get much more sophisticated about brush options, but for now I’m just happy to be able to paint on a sculpture at all.

Of course, you have to “unwrap” it first, which is only kinda’ fun if you can geek out on that sort of thing, which fortunately I can.

Above, you can see pieces of the unwrapped texture (in this case a supremely simple unwrapping]. The cool thing is you can paint either directly on the sculpture, or on the unwrapped pieces. If you need to get in crevices, painting on the flattened version is easier.

And then, above, you can combine your paint with various “textures”. Here I added a metallic effect and luminous effects. Then, you can go back into the “texture painting” mode and paint directly into the metal and the light! I was just spraying paint willy-nilly, but it suggests so many possibilities (and not just X-mas ornaments].

Doing tutorials can be a drag, and sometimes I have a hard time even staying away. I have to take exercise breaks in order to keep going. There’s zero creativity involved, and a lot of it gets redundant, but learning is not without its drudgery. I’ve been waiting for this missing piece before doing another side-project where I do something of my own to practice my skill set.

I believe it’s time for the next independent project, or maybe plow through and finally finnish this course, which has over 100 lessons.

~ Ends

5 replies on “Finally, I get to paint in 3d”

  1. now, THIS i can get behind. And is what separates those using an free phone app and a few clicks to “create” a piece and a true artist who spends hours of time in practice , no matter what the conduit.My one roommate does something similar and is why i admire her skills, even though it is technically digital ( she also paints and sculpts with the tangible materials , as well as has her own business doing Shibori dying). This is pretty amazing stuff actually and something i have zero patience for. Hell, 2 years ago i bought a digital program myself ( something that started with an A , don’t recall) and tried using it once or twice. I couldn’t get past the first few simple buttons . Of course there were tons and tons of online video tutorials included but i just could not sit and watch and make myself learn…lol. at any rate, in the case i equate the process to what some of us non tech savvy artists do when we do several versions of the same sketch or piece before we actually start the main event , or spend hours blending just the right colors, to create a palette , or testing out different textures/mediums for a planned future piece. Great job and insight ..thanks!

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