'Photoshop'

Software Used :

Free Brushes :

I don’t know about you, but when I begin a painting there are usually two ways the idea arrives in my noggin: either it’s a happy discovery  while making random marks on the canvas, or it’s something that came to me while I was out and about living in “the real world”.

Like how at the movies watching a comedy I get the idea to paint flowers and robots, or while I’m in the shower scrubbing shampoo off my head I envision a captive mermaid screaming at heaven … You can never really be sure where you’ll get your inspiration, but when it does come, hold onto it like a lifeline! It can be the fuel to your flame on those days when picking up the pencil seems like a journey.

In the case of this piece, I initially really didn’t know where I was going until I passed by a blind man on the street who seemed perfectly capable of his surroundings. The moment granted me a solid visual to my idea. After that it was all cheddar cheese easy … Well, not quite, but at least I felt a little more confident with where I was heading!

I began this piece mundanely enough by using the default scattered Maple Leaves brush, with settings of:

• Spacing – 46
• Size Jitter and Angle Jitter – 100  
• Roundness Jitter at 40
• Minimum Roundness – 50 (make sure the Roundness Jitter isn’t too great; we don’t want our maple leaves to look like they’ve been steamrolled!)
• Opacity Jitter – 20 (also turn on Pen Pressure for Opacity – this is the only setting that I use to recognize Pen Pressure in this setup; the rest of them are all on random jitter)
• Finally, set that Flow Jitter to a more aggressive 40

Then it was all about making some marks on the canvas! I first of all filled the canvas with a dark blue, since I was going to make my character an orangey hue. Utilizing color complementaries will help make your piece pop, and as long as it’s done subtly it won’t come off as tacky or crass (Fig.01).

I very quickly established the general lighting and texture for the background; I also started to bring in varying greens and oranges on top of the blue (all on the same background layer) (Fig.02) – keeping things rather subtle, spending little time on it, and letting it all flow freely.

On a new layer I started to pose the character and the lighting. He was looking like Mr. Smoke here – interesting, but not what I wanted (Fig.03). At this stage I was thinking: What the hell am I going for here? Is it a guy looking at something in his hand? Is this a confused ape? Or a bald ferret the size of a man?! So I decided to take a walk, clear my head, and that’s when I came across the blind man in the street and – pop! – things fell into place enough for me to head back to the canvas.

Here I started solidifying; better defining where the lighting was coming from – the top-right corner in this case, with a slight bluish accent on his back (Fig.04).

For now, the focus is on subtracting and adding to the shape of the character, keeping the flow in the gesture while not making it overly exaggerated and cartoony; I want to keep this piece somber. To me, lighting, gesture and silhouette are the aspects I must focus on and struggle with in a painting. I feel that if the lighting is convincing you can make anything come to life! If the gesture is convincing, any shape can be interesting, and if the silhouette captures your imagination then the piece will be remembered long after.

At this point I noticed that whatever he had in his hand was starting to look a lot like a potential infant skull, which I thought was gross, but intriguing … (Fig.05) And then I decided to make it a bestial skull instead (yeah, I chickened out!).