Sunday, January 12, 2014

Painting from Life - Digital


Here's a digital life painting from today. My set-up was an Intuos 3, MacBook, and Photoshop CS2 - I had 3 crashes early on - and I'm pretty sure it is because years ago, I spilled coffee into my Intuos 3 - and after taking it apart to let it dry, it's always made some weird things happen in Photoshop - randomly. For instance, all I could do at one point was write 'Notes' on the image. Restart computer. Then, the laptop just had this crazy horizontal grey blanket come down over the entire screen, saying I had to restart the MacBook... crazy voodoo stuff like that... anyhoots... here's a gif of the images: 


and a breakdown of the process today:
The first 15 minutes was the drawing stage, getting it all down.

I had to expand the canvas as her foot was too close to the edge of the canvas. There's a real easy way in Photoshop to expand the canvas without going to Image Size, Canvas Size etc... hit the 'C' button for Crop, and simply drag out the crop tool outside the boundaries of your current image file to wherever you want.. hit the 'Return/Enter' key and BAM! instant canvas expansion! a 'Reverse Crop' if you will! 

Under the drawing layer, I blocked in the local colour of the skin- and picked out my colour palette, the magentas were for the cloth around her... and the image on my laptop DID NOT look this 'orange' I swear. it looked way more naturalistic on the laptop screen.... 

More blocking in the hi-lights at this stage and local colour of the cloth

After blocking in, I looked and had to re-establish my linework - I also noticed that I had 1 too many layers on the abdomen area - I corrected the abdomen and other areas with linework again.

 For shadows, instead of directly painting them in, I made a new Multiply Layer and made a lasso selection of the shape of the shadows I wanted - under the neck, and under the chest - pick the same local mid-skin tone and fill with a Gradient (set to - fade to transparent). When filling with the same local colour onto a Multiply layer, it will come out darker. And heading into the last hour of the pose, I made sure to start detailing the face.

The session was done after 2.5 hrs - but less with breaks in-between - the total sitting time for the pose was about 110 mins. I made sure to detail the feet - I love drawing feet and hands - and I try not to ever neglect them - as they are an infinitely rewarding challenge. Rewarding in that, I gain more knowledge and new poses for them by never neglecting to draw them. I also made a lasso selection and gradient filled the hi-light of her hair.

 I also did a lasso shape on her abdomen and right leg - and filled it with transparent gradient with the hi-light colour - and played around with the opacity of it 

Overall I think I have to be mindful of the warms and cools more - you can see a hint of it there in the shadow on her upper chest.. more of that - and I would have liked to add some more hi-lights, leading the eye from the top of her thigh, to the abdomen, to the chest and into the face, so that it would create an arc going upper right - but hey.. that's something to think about for next time! Cheers!

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