INTRO TO TRANSPARENCY

Hello! In this tutorial you will learn to draw those desired transparent objects, and ways you can make them look life-like!

I will also show you how to make many different types of transparency, or in other words, the difference between ghost transparency, and plastic transparency/glass transparency.

GHOST TRANSPERENCY

In folklore, ghosts can either be visable, barely visable, or not at all visable. I'm going to use barely visable as my example because other wise it wouldn't be "ghost transparency" if it was solid or completely invisible.

First draw your ghost. however you go about doing this, after you are done with the art, dim the opacity like so:

On another layer, draw on the outsides of your ghost with pure white(or whatever color your ghost is colored) and blur it.

This should make it look a bit different and more life like(as far as ghosts go:)

You will notice that if we copy and paste it onto another colored layer, it colors with the background. This technique can be used for shadowing as well, just use black for your shadow and dim the opacity until it gets to your likeing. This technique is also way faster and beats making a new color for shadow.

And now we have acheived "ghost" transperency!!

GLASS/ PLASTIC TRANSPERENCY

To achive perfect glass transperency, you have to get the sun's glare hitting off of the glass just right.

Here I have my drawing of the cup lineart.

 

You may not be able to see the cup's end but it is there it just blends into the wood table.

Looking back at my reference images, im going to try to imitate the glass's glaze effect.

But first, I shrink my selection.

And fill it in on a new layer with white. Nothing too bad will happen if you don't make a new layer before you fill it in, it will just get in the way later on, so I advise you to fill it in on a NEW layer.

Now I dim the layer

And this gives it a plastic-y effect that looks good by itself(in my opinion)

Now we add the sun's glare to a new layer.

And then touch it up a little

Since my cup is smooth, I had no problems with the lighting of the cup, but if your cup has grooves, the outcome of your cup's surface glare will be different.

Now im going to fill my cup with water.

I do this by making a new layer, shrinking selection of the cup's outline, and filling it in with blue.

You should get something like this:

Now I put the blue layer under the cup outline layer and details layer.

It should look like this, or close to it.

And now I just touch up my water untill I like it

And now I have my cup filled with water, although it does look a little off doesnt it?

To fix this I dim the water layer just a little.

And now we are done with our water glass!!!

PLASTIC

To draw plastic cups I'm going to use the same outer sketch as I did with my cup, just so I can save time, and because hey who wants to draw another cup when you already have one?

To start I repeat the first four steps in the glass cup section, and you should get something close to this.

So far it looks like it could be good just by itself, but lets add some more details.

And now we have acheived plastic transparency!

THANK YOU

I hope this tutorial helps you and your transparency needs! Thank you for staying with me until now, and have an awesome week!