Digital Painting Failures & Successes

The evolution of the world involves the success and failures made by people, and nature's other inhabitants and resources. The same proves true when applying this context to art. The evolution of my art (and most likely anyone's, I believe) is partially based upon the mistakes that I have made and have learned from, which are all going forward to evolve into successful triumphs. What may be a success to me, however, may be at the complete opposite end of the spectrum through your own eyes when looking at the final results. Keeping this in mind, let's move forward through the piece that I'm going to walk you through today...

Step 1

(Fig01) To the below left, you will see a quick sketch which suggests the central ideas that are coming into focus. To the below right, you will see a rugged exploration of some colours and shapes. At the very bottom of this page are the main tools and palettes that were used whilst painting in Corel Painter IX. Two main brushes were used: Eraser Brush (standard) and Detail Airbrush. When laying down colours and details, I blend by decreasing the brush's Resaturation option to 0%, and "viola”! To affect the level of control for blending whilst the Resaturation is set to 0%, I simply play with the percentage of the brush's Bleed. The circular Colours palette is the one I visit most often as I lay down my colours, although lately I've also been expanding the Colour Sets palette for easily picking pre-selected colour values.

Step 2

(Fig02) I then start work fleshing out the faces, body structures, and wardrobes - all the while trying to maintain a sense of balance. After major changes, I generally tend to temporarily flip the image in the opposite, horizontal direction to easily spot any incorrect proportions or any other undesired oddities. This process also aids me in cropping the canvas with more satisfactory results.

Step 3

(Fig03) After having worked with the four, main characters for some time now, they appear to be more of a clustered mess at this point. I make a decision to add more interest and break away from the dreadful monotony by increasing the size of the canvas more vertically, and by adding larger-than-life faces.

Step 4

(Fig04) Lighting has been unplanned so far, and rather surprisingly neglected, so it's time to rectify this problem. Using a round gradient in Adobe Photoshop, I make a decision to change the tonal feel of the piece.

Step 5

(Fig05) The second character is now added - opposite the female doppelganger with the blackish rose - because the picture was crying out from the negligent lack of compositional balance.