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Here’s some progress of the digital painting, cg art, that I’ve been working on. It’s of a species of people from the trilogy that I’m writing. There’s more to theses magical creatures, and magic hardly describes the genetic structure of these little Wittles.

If I had to pin point what medium digital painting felt closest to, I’d say pastels. The sense of layering and blending is very similar. Secondly, I’d say it felt also like a distant form of sculpture. My hands aren’t pushing and pulling, but I’m using the tools to do it.

Now if any of you say that computer art is super easy, you are wrong. It takes just as much work, just different sense of technique and understanding. Just because you can take certain stuff away and maybe accomplish certain aspects faster, you still have to deal with being distant from the artwork and learning how to make what you want with the tools of the program and tablet. Different way of thinking and can definitely be a puzzle. It deserves it’s own respect, separate from traditional art.

The pictures, (which are only half the size of the original artwork) are just close ups of the face, the area I’ve been focusing on the most.

This is the first layer of skin. I started working on the eyes and adding lashes. The lips, eyebrows, and hair have not been added.

Here I’ve worked on the eyebrows, eyelashes are added and the skin is smoothed out. Nose is shortened and chin is made smaller. The face is rounder.

This state I’ve worked on the hair, ears, lips, neck, shoulder. The skin has more detail; eyebrows are shaped; eye highlights have more detail. Face is reshaped again. Nose is reshaped.

I did this yesterday: Reshaped the eyebrows and face, added more depth to the face and the skin. I plan to shift the lips around. The ears need some more work, as do the neck, shoulders, and the hair isn’t finished. Also, all that I’ve shown you so far is the face. There’s her torso, body, legs, and wings, yes, wings that I have to finish. But the process is awesome. While I don’t have to worry about the artwork taking up space or cleaning up a mess, a digital file can be very nerve wrecking at times. Backing up your work is extremely important. As of now, I have the digital online and on two separate pc’s.

Yea, there’s lots to do, but this baby ain’t done till I say she is!….Five years from now…. Ok, let’s hope not.

This wasn’t really a post geared toward answering questions, but more about of sharing the  progress. If you have a question about any of this work, feel free to email me or leave a comment!

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If you read my post “A Start to Digital Painting and Eliminating the Fear Factor,” you’ll have known where I’ve been and what I’m working on. My goal is to write my own trilogy. I’ve loved reading and experiencing adventures through the imagination, and one thing I’ve always had since I was little was an imagination. The question is, how much do I use it? Not enough. But there’s a hitch to my goal, which I hear might make it easier or harder to get my book published (we’ll see): I want to illustrate the trilogy. Yet, I don’t want to just illustrate my own things, but hopefully transfer over to the illustration industry completely.

What I’ll talk about in this post is how I’m starting digital painting without taking classes or workshops. Now I must admit, my husband, John Robert, has experience with Adobe Photoshop, and in turn he has been able to show me a lot of pointers, key shortcuts, and basically got me going with the program. And I also have a lot of experience drawing with traditional materials. Both of these factors have brought me to combine Photoshop with my past experience, and lead me toward the illustrations I want to create.

But maybe you’re starting to or want to start but don’t know what you need or where to go for information? In this post, and in future posts to come, I’ll walk with you in the direction I’m going and how you can apply it (or disagree) when you make your art. Classes and workshops are great and you can definitely gain a lot of knowledge from them, but perhaps between the equipment costs, you’re running low on funds and want some general guidance. That is what I’m hoping to provide.

EQUIPMENT NEEDED:

A solid monitor: Dull monitors will distort the brightness/contrast/color and many other aspects of your work. If you can afford a color calibration software or an NEC monitor, that would be best and give you the ultimate truth to what you’re viewing from your computer. I haven’t the funds for those options, so I went to the next best thing: an HP monitor that has bright view technology and sharp image.

A tablet: No questions asked. Hands down. The best tablet to ever exist is Wacom. My only personal opinion of course, but it continues to last and never fail. John has had his tablet for seven years and it still works and performs superbly. Thus, I had to have one as I entered the digital areana, and you’ll need one too. You cannot, I repeat, CANNOT achieve certain brush strokes and brush dynamics with a mouse like you can with the Wacom tablet and pen. The pen is what gives the strokes that look natural and have the gradation of a real pencil/brush stroke. They also come with nibs that will help your Wacom pen feel like a pencil or brush when you use it.

A painter software program: While there’s many programs out there (Corel Painter 11, Corel Painter Sketchpad, Sketchbook Express, Adobe Photoshop, etc.), it’s always good to try some free trials and see what program is right for you. In the end, I’m a Photoshop artist. The program is straightforward, I already know the key shortcuts (which is what you need to memorize to streamline your workflow), and it is what I’m most comfortable with.

Reading Materials: No, not just any reading materials, but digital materials. I enjoy Advanced Photoshop and ImagineFX. They come with instructional dvd’s, brushes, images, and much more. Tons of content and a lot of great learning examples and techniques. This is also what keeps your imagination process from becoming stagnant as you look at what other artists are doing.

A pad and pencil: Just because you go digital means you stop using traditional methods. Traditional methods are often the starting points for some artists, like myself. It’s still great practice to draw from your mind or draw what you see.

YOUR SETUP: This is really about what makes you comfortable while working. Make sure your space, whether you like it large or simply small like mine, gives you the focus and convenience you need to accomplish your art. Don’t have a room for it? If art is important to you, you’ll make room for it…whether it’s in your dining room, living room, or bedroom. John knows how important art is to me, and made sure that I got half of the living room in our 700 sq. ft. apartment.

Now you know. Go do.

Starting to go digital: what made you take the jump?
Already a digital artist: what’s your favorite equipment and setup?

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A sensible person would plan their weekend anniversary by visiting a place maybe an hour or two away and have an easy couple days. That means that John and I were either insensible or didn’t want an easy weekend vacation when we picked Portland, Maine, as the mainstay for our first wedding anniversary.  Why did we choose to travel eleven hours away from our easily accessible Virginia backyard? One word: culture.

Even five hours away gives us a similiar environment to one that we are so used to and familiar with. We wanted a place we had never been, as well as one that would have an area that we could enjoy for a short time.

Portland had several criteria:
1. A city with everything in decent walking distance.
With the Portland Museum of Art, numerous amounts of local restaurants, tons of privately owned shops, and galleries, we were never without anything to do. All it took was a look around the bend and there was a new place to visit and explore.

2. Restaurants that you couldn’t find anywhere else.
We didn’t want to just visit a new place, but also experience where we ate and what we ate. The food was great and there are still places we didn’t visit because there wasn’t anymore room in our stomachs. I guess we’ll have to go back.

______________________________________________________We ate at Flatbread, a restaurant that uses all
__________________________________________________organic foods. This was the shepherds pie flat bread. YUM.

3. The lighthouses and ocean.
Less than ten minutes away laid unique lighthouses that were so important to the community and function of the town. Along with the lighthouses came the Atlantic Coast, that was peaceful in and of itself, with the fresh ocean breeze and lapping of the waves.

Of course, these are reasons we enjoyed a place. Perhaps you’d prefer a day in Florida.

Even with the small amount of time we had there, we felt like we saw a lot. But there is still so much we haven’t seen and we’re already making plans to go back.

Which places do you like to visit? Tell us why!

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Originally starting off as a wedding and portrait photographer, my husband, John, thought that his love for people, family, and friends meant that people was what he loved to photograph the most. But along the journey, John realized that memories from his childhood and interests that he developed played a greater part in his photography.

Mountain climbing, biking, camping, and many other outdoor activities he participated in with his family, were parts of John’s life puzzle pieces that God is putting together. We’re slowly recognizing the bigger picture, and still far from figuring it out. In this past year, John became aware of the influence that the vanishing moments of the world around us had on his photography. And this last summer he decided to take a step toward this interest. Through it he found out more about himself as well as the what he wanted in front of his lens. Click here to view his most recent work. He’s not going back.

This new direction not only excited John, but it inspired him.  Change can be scary at first. How is he going to make a career out of it? How will he carry on the business side? We’ve had some feedback on how the landscape photography world is saturated with too many photographers and there’s no way to make it. Isn’t that with anything? Some people even think there’s too many people in the world! But too many photographers in the market to make a living? That should never be the determining factor for anyone, and we made sure it wasn’t for John.

But we’ve all been there, right? How many times have you figured out that there was something loved to do but didn’t enjoy what you were doing with it? A vocalist who sings in theater but really wants to sing in a rock band. An engineer who works for a company but what’s to be head of their own firm. A culinary artist who owns their own business but wants to be world’s next top chef. Or how about an artist who painted portraiture and wants to be an illustrationist. We’re all out there. Some make steps to fulfill their calling. Others don’t. What steps are you taking? What best reasons are there for you not to make that change?

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Here is the long awaited photo of progress on the current oil portrait in process.  It’s just a close up.  (The whole painting will be revealed once it is complete.) Spencer is painted with grisaille gray underpainting.  I changed some of his facial structure some. He looks older.  He’s going to change so much as I add more layers and sculpt his face. Sculpture with paint.  Haha.  Also what you see there is the application of the 2nd layer which is the first layer of color.  His hair has the complete second layer.  One thing I’m being a little to cautious of is that I’m afraid to add too much color and what that is doing is making him look very pale.  He looks washed out and almost dead at the current with the full 2nd layer of color.   Kind of creepy.  The gray undertone is coming through really well.  I need to kick up the color.  But I’ll talk more about that later when I can actually show you what I’m talking about.

The I applied the gray layer very thick for a wash.  Don’t know why.  I just decided to try it. Again, the more detail I start out with, the easier it will be to progress the painting, yet I find I’m still having some trouble.  He looks older than he is and I’m dealing with those issues.  The horse has the burnt umber wash.  With all of that hair, I don’t feel that there is a need to have translucency in the skin.

But one thing for sure, he’s coming across with the sense of honor, bravery, and c0nfidence that I wanted.  Bravo.

Constructive criticism is welcomed.

blessings,
Grace