“Donkey skin ” by Chris Beatrice
TWO
When I’m ready to really start painting the figure, I get rid of the sketch layer and lay in the brightly lit areas as well as the really dark darks (the crevasses and crannies that get almost no light). As you can see, this is done very quickly. Normally I’m still working at about 25% zoom level.
THREE
Here I start to tackle some of the details of the face. I’m going for a kind of stunned fear, almost a blank stare, and it takes a few tries to get it right.
There is a lot going on in terms of the colors in the costume, with several different light sources hitting it, so at this point I do some experimenting with various reds, oranges, yellows and pinks. The lantern light is sort of an “equalizer,” pulling everything it hits toward a warm saturated color (yellow / orange). But at the same time, the various “local colors” of the objects in the scene need to differentiate themselves from one another.
The human eye is much more sensitive to variations in hue and saturation in this area of the spectrum, so some of these color shifts are really minute, yet the dress, face and cushion still read as very different colored objects.
FOUR
Still working on that facial expression, I add more detail to the facial features, and try to maintain that wide eyed expression in the process. I also paint in the light and shadow on the cushion, to help frame the girl. Then I rough in a headband or something (at this point I’m not sure exactly what it’s going to be, but I wanted to round out the form of her head a bit, and also make her costume a little more “royal” looking).
FIVE
I think the face is looking pretty good here. It’s still pretty loose – you can see the separate color shapes pretty clearly, but that’s how I like it. Also, even printed at full size (8″ x 10″at 300dpi), a lot of the detail is hidden, so it’s usually a waste of time to work in a lot of detail at 100% zoom.
SIX
Now on to the dress. I just continue to refine the basic shapes laid in initially. Sometimes I smear around the shapes that are already there, making rough oval shapes pointed or triangular, etc. – whatever is needed to carve out the forms. I also subdivide shapes and add finer wrinkles to the dress here and there. This part is fun!
I gently bring in a secondary light on the girl’s right sleeve (on our left), and refine the trim on the dress a little. The dark gray / black band running down the front of the dress is almost completely washed away by the saturated light, making it appear like a dull yellow orange.
A few highlights in the hair, some detail to the headband, and I decide to leave it at that!
Latest Comments