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A Master Piece with Joe Bluhm (view source)
Revision as of 18:10, 3 August 2020
, 18:10, 3 August 2020no edit summary
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Colors are blocked in, so now I’ll start carving out the shadows. I like to put a “linear burn” layer (similar to “multiply”, but it brings out more saturated and darker tones) just above my colors and pick a very light muted flesh color – a sort of grayish tan around 5-10% value. With the same brush, I’ll knock in shadows. This is easy, fun, gives a lot of form, and does a lot of the heavy lifting. Cool. It’s already starting to look how I want.
Now this is really rough and almost mono-chromatic (doesn’t look like skin too much...), so I should probably grab some color variations and paint on top of this. I’m still under the ‘pencil’ drawing, and this makes me feel safe... it keeps some of the form that I haven’t painted yet, but that’s cool, because I’ll keep lowering the opacity of that layer so I’m slowly phasing it out.
This will force me to define the ‘paint’ layers rather than rely on those scribbly lines. So I sample the color of his skin and go rosier and a bit darker to paint his cheeks and nose. Skew it a little grayer under his eyes... a little more yellow to... well, yeah, I vary it up. Look at the reference, you’ll see color shifts in skin. Skin isn’t easy, but if you look long enough you’ll see trends and remember them. Then on top of that, you’ll see specifics on people and heighten them. I’m going to do this for a few minutes. Just to give some color, nothing fancy.
Skin tone always eludes me. I know some artists who learned very intuitively and accurately what makes skin look like SKIN. From my time in animation and CG modeling and texturing of characters, I understand the principles of subsurface (subdermal) scattering, varying specularity, translucency and hue shifts due to blood vessels... all that garbage. But I still have to look extra hard at reference to make something believable. I bet that never goes away. Oh well.
So we’re ready to start ‘painting’. By that I mean actually choosing values that are pushed lighter and darker, to start defining the final value range and hues of the painting. How dark do I want to go? How bright and saturated. Time to start making some choices. I’ll stick to what I see in the reference... I’d love to play with color more and go different places with it, but for this one I feel the need to plow through it. Like a practice piece to get brushed up rather than a show piece... I’ll stay away from risks right now (I know, I’m a wuss).
So I continue painting darks above the eyelids and highlights on the forehead. This forehead is tricky, and I made mistakes in my drawing. I would like to go back and place the brow wrinkles where they “should” be, but I will see how this turns out. I want to treat this like my game day. Did I fumble the ball? Maybe... kinda... We have to live with that. I’m going to hope I can make it back some other way in this piece.
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Paint, paint, paint. The brush strokes are a bit loose and haphazard. They are also a little uniform, as this brush is based in a rectangle shape. This is okay. My buddy, Court Jones, once told me that “calligraphy” in painting is important, and I’m still trying to get better at that, so I’ll consider those obviously digital strokes with perhaps too-small-a-brush to be a foul or penalty or something. It doesn’t look good, but it’s not horrible, and I can still win the game.
From here on out, I wish I had more insightful things to say about what is being done. I am painting. I am painting on TOP of the pencil layer now, slowly phasing it out, entirely. I am getting closer and looking closely at one feature or landscape at a time. How does the brow meet the cheek, and the cheek meet the bags under his eyes? How much texture or contrast should there be? Do we need more saturation? These are the little decisions being made for about 20 minutes, piece by piece, over the entire face. This is the zone. This is where I am not planning, not contemplating too much, not taking step by step, but rather sprinting and pushing. For me this is zen. This is relaxing and rewarding. I am happy and at peace.
OH CRAP! An hour has gone by and I’m about done. It feels a little stiff and straight-forward, so let’s add some painterly flair. If we brush some softer edges here and there, add some color shifts in the background, and a few other fun brushy tricks, we can make this feel a bit more painterly. That should be enough to cap this off at just over an hour.
So how does it feel? Does it feel good? A friend walked in as I was putting the finishing touches on it, and said “that’s XXXing cool!” so that felt good. I don’t know if that means it’s good, but I’ll take it. I think I learned a little about what I need to do to get better with the next one, and that’s all I can ask. It felt like a little victory, but who knows. It was fun, and I got something out of it.
Phew... time to wipe my forehead, take a shower, and rest. See you next game day!
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''Joe Bluhm is a Golden Nosey Winner and currently resides in Louisiana where he works as an Art Director for the Academy award-winning Moonbot Studios. You can see more of Joe’s work at www.joebluhm.com''
