Hello again!
After a brief hiatus, I'm back! I've been quite busy working as the Charge Artist for UNCSA's production of Dying For It. I'd love to tell you all about it, but the show hasn't opened yet-- check back next weekend for a post discussing the exciting process!
Last time we talked about Trompe L'oeil painting, so this week let's talk about one of my other big passions: Digital Artwork! I recently did a piece called "Terry Removes Her Helmet"; a digital portrait of one of the characters for whom I am writing a comic. More on that in the future. You can see the finished piece on my Personal Art page, or at the bottom of this post.
Before I get too deep into this, I want to state for the record that I'm using Photoshop CS6 and a full set of Kyle's Brushes. They're a wonderful collection of digital brushes that are designed to emulate natural media in a digital format. Kyle is actually a teacher of mine at UNCSA, and his brushes were written up in Wired Magazine this year. If you have any interest in digital painting, I highly recommend them!
I started out with a photo reference of the actress Noomi Rapace for inspiration. I often use photo references for very loose guidance and placement building up the character's actual features. I used a green color for the sketch because I find black often kills a composition and is generally uninteresting, and setting a color early on gets me living in the color palette long before I put down any "paint".
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After I got the layout sketch down, I picked a direction of light, and proceeded to finish filling out the drawing of her body and face with the Pencil 4H brush. I use it in just about all of my digital pieces for layout, and it often ends up in the final work, like this one. Various parts of her face were done on different layers to help edit placement and prevent the loss of lines I might paint draw over. When I got to the background, I made the other invisible, drew it flat, and then used Free Transform to ever so slightly put it into perspective, and place it behind Terry, implying subtle depth.
Click Any Image To Enlarge
Once the sketch was complete, I switched over to the Oil Flat Wonky brush and proceeded to put down all the base colors in the piece. You'll notice that none of the colors you see initially ended up being the final colors used in the piece. These colors are very important to the final piece however, because I use a lot of blend modes and opacities later on.
The first thing I did after basing was work on the face. This was through a second layer on top of it to add some dimension. I used a lot of electric blues and purples for the light and shadow, set to the Soft Light blend mode. Moving on I added more light and shadow by painting with a heavy hand, dropping the layer's opacity, and fading out a bit more. Along with this technique and various blend modes (on either the brush and layer) I painted the face and outfit. I also eventually popped the eye by placing a layer above the drawing and hitting it with a subtle highlight that overrode the outline.
Click Any Image To Enlarge
Once it was all based and Terry's figure was mostly complete, it was time to shift my attention to finalizing the background and unifying the piece as a whole. I played around with some Hue/ Saturation overlays until I found the background I was looking for. From there I used what is probably my favorite and most frequently used digital brush Real Watercolor- Big Wash. I will often use this brush at various sizes and blend modes exclusively for a piece. As usual, I took the brush off of Multiply and set it to Normal. Here I used it to really let the lights shine (heh) by creating a very intense source and blending it out unevenly for an unnatural effect.
By this point, I was really close, but something still wasn't right-- the background and the figure still didn't quite feel connected. To solve this problem I emulated a glaze by creating a new layer, filling it with the same green as the light, and selecting the Hue blend mode. I popped a layer mask on top of it, erasing a few areas where I wanted the highlight to pop out, and then dropped the opacity down to 10%.
Voila! By now it was ready for the Void logo, (which was solid white and set to Overlay), and my signature.
Are you liking these process blogs? Have any critiques? Please feel free to drop a line in the comments or shoot me an email!
Don't forget to check back next week for an in- depth discussion of the show I'm charging, Dying For It!
Terry Removes Her Helmet
My Layer Panel