Great Photoshop tutorial on where to put a shadow from a local light source, and how dark/light to make the cube on
http://psd.tutsplus.com/tutorials/drawing/light-shading-shadow-photoshop/
This was a somewhat older video course in perspective, but I went from noob to (at least thinking I could) draw everything and anything in correct perspective. Very clear explanations at a slow enough space to understand everything without having to rewind (I finished it in 2 days, but I have played with Blender – free 3D software, and had math at school so I was somewhat familiar with looking at things in 3D).
Start - Right Angles
The lessons (it’s filmed in a classroom setting) start off with a quick introduction, and then deals with Right Angles (eg, cubes/boxes).
Right Angles
Then we move on to Circles and ellipses
Circles and ellipses
Ellipses is what you use to draw wheels and clocks etc in perspective (someone who doesn’t know how to draw in perspective will probably never ‘guess’/ eyeball this correctly, but once you know the ‘rules’ it’s pretty easy).
Open a box
You learn how to open boxes,
Fences
And how to draw fences (and how to figure out how much smaller things get the further away they go).
It’s a little expensive at $129 (US dollars – free shipping), but if you need to be able to draw things in perspective, this is video course that will get you far very quickly.
Although the end credits by Mr Vandruff say he saw a few mistakes and omissions, I didn’t notice those. In fact I appreciated the lack of a use of a straight edge on the chalkboard since that saved a lot of time and didn’t affect the knowledge/message. My only gripe would be the video quality, it definitely is not HD – it was filmed in 1994 – but you can see everything just fine so it didn’t bother me.
Website: http://www.draw123.com/perspective/
In my ongoing quest to master skintones (or at least be able to paint something that looks alive and somewhat realistic), I bought Scott Waddell’s tutorial. For me this was the one that made things ‘click’.
Palette
Palette used:
Scott starts by sketching from life.
Sketch
He goes over his sketch with Raw Umber, and then begins painting.
Start painting
He doesn’t really talk about the colors he uses at all, in stead he ‘simplifies’ it:
Start with a light tone (that’s not the highlight), and follow the form. The less light something catches, the less vibrant and saturated it gets.
Painting 2
Painting step 3
Scott walks you through his painting process, dividing the face up in ‘parts’ that he later connects.
Almost done
I really like his realism and the softness and accuracy of his skin tones.
The downloadable video is $20 USD and it is 50 minutes long.
The first 10 minutes deal with the sketch and palette, the rest is painting.
The download is in WMV format, but with software like the free video converter from Freemake you can very easily convert it to anything you like.
Well worth the money.
Website: http://www.scottwaddellfinearts.com/