Making Of 'Pat the Pirate'
Half of what makes form, compositions, and lighting work is values. So if a painting with multiple light sources, or a complex mood and palette throws you a curveball and prevents you from just painting, try concentrating on just three values, because you can always add the tricky colors later. As is the case with this painting, which actually started as a quick sketching practices, but turned into a full fledged painting.
So below, I wanted a warmer piece...so I decided on the low saturated purple as the mid-tones for the face. I also wanted the main light source to be like an orange sunset...and the shadow, tinted to a dark maroon.
As you can see from the brush strokes, I have the stylus pressure set to opacity only, not size. Putting size on is a great way to get details later....but I find it frustrating when blocking in areas of paint. I was looking in a mirror also for the facial expression, with only a desk lamp on, during the afternoon.
You'll notice above that for the face, all there is, is purple for the mid-tone, dark reddish brown for the shadows, and the yellow for the highlights. Now take a look at below:
A little more colorful. Paint with three values (local color tinted by environment, highlight, and shadow color), then what was added, was a layer on top of our painted layer, but it is set to COLOR. I painted just faded, big strokes of bright orange, over on the left of the face. Another layer was set to HUE, which I painted the bluish tint on the shadow areas of the face. I try to get the colors right, and then add these layers for adjustments. It doesn't always work, it's just an option and way of trying out different tints, texture, and nuances - throwing some "paint" around on a different layer so you don't muck things up :)
So we've got our layers from top to bottom like so:
The Hue layer is optional. The main ones I keep going back to are color, and overlay. Now, I added those layers just to see how it could turn out. I will continue painting in the Normal layer, with the others turned OFF, so I can keep blocking in the local colors, again, just concentrating on my original color selections. I will then turn the extra layers back on, and continue trying new splotches of color adjustments.
Although I never paint with the Color and Overlay layers set to Normal. Here is what they look like when on Normal, without the painting underneath:
Remember, you can always down the opacity of the layer, and we'll be adjusting Levels and Saturation later....it's important to just keep it in drive, and keep painting.
But with those layers back on, we have this so far:
Because I was having fun with this one, and it was an exercise, I expanded the canvas to see where things would go. Planning and sketches is great, but sometimes those doodles can turn into something. Below is a progress shot, without the adjustment layers.
If you're curious as to how big I'm working - Below is a 100 % crop of the face.
If it's for web or a Maya background...I usually work double of the final resolution. If you go to Window > Documents > New Window ... that will bring up an "instanced" (to use Maya terms) window. Set one window to 50% to see what it looks like from far away, and paint in the other window set to 100%. Hope that makes sense. Also, if you don't know this tip already - The keys [and ] on the keyboard change your brush size. Hitting 1 - 9 on the right side of your keyboard changes the opacity of your brush from 10 to 90%, with 0 making it 100%. Holding Alt gets you a quick color picker. B is brush, E is eraser. H is the hand tool, for moving around the big document. As with any program, knowing a few shortcuts gets you concentrating more on the art stuff than breaking your flow with menus and buttons.
Below is a shot of the hand, rendered again in monochrome...later adding the fun adjustments. I tend to paint with low saturations for some reason. Maybe because I mostly paint at night, or in a dark lab, so the contrast seems more intense? I don't know heh. I didn't even think to fix it till later...
Another note on layers. One of the goals of this piece was to keep it as "painterly" as possible. One way to force me into doing this was keeping all the paint on one layer. Color adjustments don't count. Now, as you'll see soon, it's good to have layers, when blocking in an environment. Also, if you're not sure about how something will look, add a layer, and paint it to see. If I like what I just did, I'll Merge all the Normal layers back together, and continue. This helps keep things organized and unified....because as you might know, layers can get into the hundreds, heh.
With the color layers, you're trying not to use these as crutches. You can actually use an approach of painting in purely black in white....then adding color layers and making a piece out of it (like the dragon on my site under Progressions) As others might say, and I, from practice believe too...that shooting for the right colors at the start is much better for you in learning how light affects objects and their colors. A guessed at what the green vest would be in light, and shadow....and found out later, adding some low blues, and reds in there do help it out. So that's what these layers are there for. Try getting it right the first time, but use the tools to adjust and elaborate your painting.
So above you can see how I'm blocking in the sky and, heh, water....yahhh. I also roughed out the rest of the figure, and a possible sash....which I ended up painting out.
Remember when I said layers can get overwhelming. Well above is just that. I'm working with a multi-planed landscape, and am moving around objects to see how the composition could work. Most of those are set to normal...because I applied, or baked (whatever term makes sense) the Color, Hue, and whatever other layers I tried into one normal layer, Layer 1. So, each layer is another element, which I'm painting, and seeing how it works. Once I like the composition, I'll squash all of them together, so I'm back to one layer. And then I'll continue detailing the piece, and unifying it's elements.
A quick word about the masks above. You can see Layer 1 has the figure with the dark maroon. I used the wand tool to grab the maroon around the figure, then selected the second button on the bottom of the Layers palette (it's that dark square with a light circle). That creates a mask of that selection. So now, I can paint whatever of the background, and not worry about going through the character. And, as you can see below, the edges of the character are fuzzy because of this. Again, once I flatten everything, I'll repaint most things and make the character feel like it's painted in with the piece.
After receiving a comment on possibly adding a cooler light source coming from the right....I tried a layer that looks like below, set to Overlay. Which got the results that person, and I was looking for.
Ok, check out below. This was right after merging all the layers so I'm down to one again, to continue painting. I did the left, thought it was fine, and was about to move on and keep working. But I thought I'd try and see what it looks like to mess with the Levels. And bam...now the piece pops...has a fuller value range, and is more saturated. Now, this might not be your intention for the piece, if it were the Antarctic you're painting, you might not want to do this....but my intention was a colorful and vivid piece, and I thought the left was exactly that...till you experiment with Levels, Color Balance, etc..
You might have noticed I repainted the sky entirely. This was after a night's sleep and realizing what I painted the night before was just horrible, too detailed, and it interfered with the character. So using the same palette I just stroked in a more calm sky, which helped pop his face out more.
Also, I put what I had so far into Maya, lined up the camera, and modelled that grate you see on the deck, applied it to a layer, erased where the figure intersected it, and below is a first stab at a result. I end up basically repainting the entire thing, but getting perspective on something like that in 3D is very helpful. The actual planks, were done using the Polygon Selection tool in Photoshop, clicking the vanishing point, clicking way in the foreground, twice very close to each other, then going back to the vanishing point....making thin triangles of selection, from which I painted the dark shadow color, then moved the selection right a few pixels, and painting in the bright orange highlight, making sure to break up the highlight and shadow so it looks like wood, and not pixilated lines. Then a photo I took of some moss was thrown over the area by the pirate's feet, set to color dodge, which created a nice texture.
Below is a 100% zoom of the final left hand so you can see how rough things get. Anatomy's not perfect, but it worked for me, heh. You can see the small details, on the vest, and the hand creases, and the very blotchy strokes making the fingers....but because it's such a high resolution....zooming out, it looks very tight...or somewhat tight, heh. Remember, when painting; hold ALT for an instant color picker.
And below is the finished work. A few details have been fixed recently from a few comments people have made. And the goals of the piece were met....to experiment with a broad color palette...try adding subtle textures, render a full figure, and try to keep things loose and painterly. Hope you gained something by this, even if it's just a new keyboard shortcut...heh.
Yeeeearrree!!! And have a mighty fine day by thunder!!!
Have a good one!
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