Tag: Photoshop

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Raccoon Totem

RaccoonTotemHere’s the last painting of the year and another addition to my Totem series.  At present, I’ve got about eight to ten animals waiting in the wings to be painted.  I’ve had the reference photos for a number of them for quite some time and even though I don’t have an order in mind, it just seems that each gets their turn whenever it feels right.  I had not expected to be painting the Raccoon Totem this year, but when choosing which would be my last painting of 2013, I went through the different folders and reference images, and it just seemed the right time to paint this one.

Whenever I try to manipulate which Totem I’ll paint, whether it’s for commercial reasons or a request from the gallery, I never feel completely good about it.  I learned a while ago to just paint whichever one feels right for the time I’m ready to start a new one and my best work will come through.  This time, it was the raccoon, and (say it with me)…I had a lot of fun with this one.

There appear to be new challenges with each Totem, whether it’s features or fur and for this one, the fur and hair was different.  It wasn’t particularly difficult, but the wiry raccoon hair is unlike any of the animals I’ve painted before.  Just as the Bison and Otter Totems required me to paint hair a little differently, the Raccoon required me to paint on more layers than I normally would, in order to get that deeper layered look I achieved with the hair in this painting.  I’m pretty pleased with how it turned out.

RaccoonCloseThis was painted on both the Wacom Cintiq 24HD and Wacom Cintiq 13HD displays, using Photoshop CC.  No photos or overlaid textures were used in this image, it was all done with brush work.  I don’t keep track of how long it takes to paint these anymore, because I usually spend an hour or two here and there over a two or three weeks when my other deadlines allow it.  As always, I relied on a few reference photos for this painting and would like to thank my friend Susan Koppel who provided me my main reference for this Totem.  Susan takes wonderful pet portraits, and also donates her time to her local Humane Society in Nevada and you can’t help but want to adopt all of the pets she photographs as she makes them look their absolute best.  Rather than me ramble on about her skill and talent as a photographer, check out her website and you’ll see for yourself.  You can find her at susankoppel.com

Happy to end the year with a Totem painting and looking forward to painting a lot more of them in 2014.

 

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Commission – Duke

DukeMy latest commission, this is Duke, painted in my Totem style.  While I often like to post work-in-progress shots online with paintings I’m working on, the first look at this one is the final image.  As it was a birthday gift for the client’s wife, and the client is also a friend, there was a slim chance that she might see it online and recognize it as her dog.  Let’s face it, ruining a surprise is just bad for business.  This was completed at the end of last month then sent off to my printer in Calgary.  The final print was a giclée on canvas, 18″X24″ with a shadowbox frame.  Shipped to Dallas, it arrived yesterday and thanks to the magic of online video, I was able to see the reaction when it was opened.  That’s just icing on the cake.

I know I say this a lot about paintings, but this was  a lot of fun.  I had a number of reference photos to work from and the client chose my exaggerated caricature Totem style of painting over my portrait style and I really enjoyed painting Duke with his happy goof expression.  It’s true that I enjoy both painting styles in which I work and I allow clients to choose which one they prefer for their image, but the Totem style is my favorite.  I laughed out loud a few times while painting this image and am glad I finally get to share it.

For those who like the tech details, I painted this digitally in Photoshop CC using both a Wacom Cintiq 13HD and a Wacom Cintiq 24HD display.

DukeClose

 

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Lizard Sketch in Painter 12

LizardSketchFBIn my ongoing efforts to incorporate Painter 12 into my workflow, this is another painted sketch.  As is my style, I’ve taken a lot of creative liberties with the anatomy of our lizard friend, here.

For this one, I used only the Chalk Brushes in Painter.  While I fully expect to incorporate a mixture of the available mediums in the future, restricting myself to only one at a time right now is forcing me to get used to and judge each on its own merits.  I really enjoyed working with chalk, especially since there are a number of different types to choose from.  One of the great features I found with Painter 12 is the availability of adding paper textures while painting.  In real life, the texture of the paper would be universal over the entire image, but not so in the digital realm, at least not in Painter.  I can change paper textures so it only affects the brush strokes I’m making at the time, and then change again without affecting the ones I’ve already made.  Adds a texture element when I need it but doesn’t restrict me when I don’t.  Great feature!

Something else I’m enjoying a great deal in is the Brush Tracking feature.  I’m painting on the Wacom Cintiq 24HD and even though my pen pressure is pretty consistent and I’ve got the Tip Feel set to how I like it in the Tablet Properties, different mediums in Painter require a lighter or softer touch.  Brush tracking on the fly allows me to change the pressure sensitivity as often as I’d like.  It’s really easy to do and takes very little time away from the canvas.

I’m really enjoying discovering all that Painter has to offer this Photoshop artist and I plan to keep at it.  I have a feeling I’ve just scratched the surface.

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Taming Painter 12

TigerSketch

In an effort to broaden my digital painting horizons, I recently bought Corel Painter 12 and am trying to get used to it.

Having been a digital painter with Photoshop for many years now, I’m very comfortable not only with the default tools, but with customizing and designing my own brushes so that I can paint the way I like.

By pairing and customizing Wacom’s hardware and Adobe’s Photoshop software, I’ve developed a very comfortable workflow and I know how to get the results I want with the tools at hand.  So if everything is working so well, you might wonder why I’m bothering with Painter.  The short version is that Photoshop and Painter are the industry standards when it comes to digital painting.  Some artists use only one of them, but many use both together, taking advantage of the strengths that each offers to produce the best results.  I would like to have that option.

I invested in some initial training with Lynda.com to try to learn the ropes, but it didn’t give me what I needed.    The class and instructor were fine, but when it comes to software, I seem to learn best by first doing something.  If I can’t figure it out by trial and error (usually a LOT of error), then I’ll go searching for articles, videos, and classes online.

The painted sketch you see above is my first attempt at painting in Corel Painter 12.  It took me a few hours as I tried a lot of the different available mediums, quickly realizing which ones I didn’t like and which ones had potential.

Painter 12 is designed to emulate traditional media.  If you’re a traditional artist, that’s probably great news.  But I’ve never painted with traditional tools.  I learned how to paint in Photoshop, so to use oil painting or watercolour in Painter was incredibly frustrating because I’ve never used them before and didn’t like the way they worked.  In all honestly, there were a few instances where I tried a brush and said, “Ugh!”, disgusted at the results.  When it came to the cloning tools, I abandoned them without even taking them for a spin.  I’ve never like painting or tracing over a photo and those tools are designed to do just that.  While some people enjoy working with that option, I’ve never done it in Photoshop and I don’t plan to start now.  Photos don’t belong in my work.

Now you might be wondering if this is just a blog entry to slam Painter.  Let me assure you that it’s not.  While half of my drawing and painting time was spent with a furrowed brow and clenched jaw when the tools were not working the way I wanted them to, the other half was spent with raised eyebrows in surprise and even a grin or two when I discovered a few things I really liked.  I might have even said, “hey, that’s cool” out loud a few times.

Once I realized that I didn’t have to use EVERY medium in Painter, I started to enjoy myself.  After all, I only use a small percentage of the features in Photoshop.  Painter is designed to emulate most traditional mediums so that it appeals to a wide range of artists.  But it doesn’t mean that a watercolour painter now has to learn oils and charcoal just because they’re suddenly available in the same place.

I found painting with the acrylic brushes really enjoyable.   They work the way I want them to and I plan to spend a lot of time painting with those.  The airbrush tool offers a LOT more options than the Photoshop airbrush does, so I’m really looking forward to incorporating that into some fine detail work.

I pride myself on having a really good handle on the Photoshop brush engine but the Painter brush engine is a whole new animal.  I’m bracing myself for when I tackle that monster.  Taming that beast is an absolute necessity because designing and using my own brushes is a big part of how I paint.

So what do I think of Painter 12 after only using it a short time?  I think it’s an impressive piece of software that I have no idea how to use.  Now, had you asked me the same thing about Photoshop ten years ago, I would have given you the same answer.  They do share many of the same shortcut keys and tool options, like zooming, panning, layers and other functions, but there are other operations that are completely different and therein lies the challenge.

When talking about this on my Facebook page, I said, “It’s as if somebody came into the kitchen while I was cooking and moved everything to different cupboards and drawers, changed labels, and translated the recipes into foreign languages.  I can still cook, but there won’t be any finesse to it until I get used to the new layout.”

Just like anything worth doing, it’s going to take me time to become good with Painter, just as it took years to become good with Photoshop.   When it comes to painting, neither one of them is a ‘press this button, press that button’ piece of software.  Digital painting is an art medium all on its own.  If I were learning how to paint with oils, acrylics, watercolour, charcoal or any other traditional medium, the learning curve would be just as steep, if not more so.

I’m off to a good start, but I’m under no illusion that I’ll be doing any commission or gallery work in Painter anytime soon.  Probably a lot more of the type of painted sketch you see above for the next little while.  But I plan to keep at it, work through the frustration and practice as often as I can.

When it comes down to it, that’s the only way to create better art no matter what medium you’re using.

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Painting Choices and Challenges

I’m currently working on a portrait of Canadian Astronaut Chris Hadfield.  The reference that I’m using is from a Youtube video, so even in web HD, the quality isn’t great.  I’m used to working with poor quality reference from time to time, and it’s actually a good thing when it comes to portraits, as long as the quality isn’t too bad.  If the quality were perfect, I might rely too much on the photo and there wouldn’t be enough art in it, just replication.

A common practice in painting from photos is using the grid method.  The short explanation is that you divide your reference photo into grids, then you divide your canvas into equally proportioned grids.  This helps a person establish where the major landmarks fall on the reference photo and suggests that those same landmarks should fall in the same place on the canvas grid.  Here’s a very basic explanation of The Gridding Method if mine doesn’t do a decent job of it.

Norman Rockwell, Leonardo da Vinci and many other artists of note would use the grid method in their work.  Some artists consider it cheating, but then again, I’ve met artists who say I’m not a real artist because I sell my work commercially.  Art for a living is not a profession for anybody with thin skin and there is often no harsher critic than another artist.  I don’t have the rare skill to paint a person’s likeness from memory, so I need photo reference, as do most portrait artists.  My take on the grid method is that it is a tool that has its place, but I wouldn’t rely on it completely.  Photoshop has the ability to apply grids in any configuration over your image.  It’s under Preferences > Guides, Grids, and Slices.  When I do use it, I choose percentages, but you can choose more precise methods of measurement as well.  7 percent is pretty small, but you’ll see why I chose that at the end of the post.

Preferences I never use the grid at all when I’m painting my Totem paintings because they’re not supposed to look like the reference photos.  Nor would I use grids when doing caricature work, because exact proportions would defeat the whole purpose.

Just to prove that I can paint without the grid method, this is a portrait of James Whitmore that I did on the iPad, where grids weren’t possible.  I had a photo, the iPad, and nothing but time.  It did take quite awhile, and a big challenge was the low resolution possible with the first gen iPad,  but I’m pleased with the likeness I was able to achieve.

James Whitmore - iPad painting

I try to only use the grid method when I’m stuck on something in a realistic portrait of a person or know that something is wrong and just can’t quite see it.  For example, when I’m working on a likeness of a person, I may know that there’s something wrong with the eyes, but can’t figure it out.  I’ll flip the canvas horizontally, vertically, try all of my tricks and still be stuck.  By using the grids, I’ll see that it could be something as simple as the corner of the eye is in the wrong place or the iris doesn’t have the correct curve.  I only use the grids when a painting is in the middle stages.  Once the likeness is there, I don’t use them anymore, because I find that relying on it too much makes the subject of a portrait look wooden.  I pride myself in the personality and life in my images and that doesn’t come from accurate placement of features, but from artistic impression of the subject.  This is also the reason I paint people that inspire me or characters I feel a connection with, because that helps me with the feeling of the work.  Having the tools is easy, knowing when to use them comes from experience.

Here’s a challenge I faced this morning on the current painting of Chris Hadfield.  In the reference image I’m using, his mission patch is clearly visible on his shirt.  Because I’m trying to capture a moment, I want to include that in the painting.  I went back and forth on how to do it.  That mission patch is readily available online in pristine condition, just as the designer would have finished it.  One way to do it was just paste the perfect image in position, use the distort and warp tools, maybe rough it up a bit with a texture brush, add a little blur and it’s done, quick and easy.  Another way I could do it, was do a vector trace of the graphic, basically just using the pen tool, trace over the coloured elements, convert them to paths, fill with colour, distort, warp, place, texture, blur, done.

So why didn’t I do either of those?  With a logo in an editorial cartoon, I do that all the time, and I’m fine with it.  Usually on a tight deadline, it’s a satirical commentary, and an accurate logo that I’ve recreated with the pen tool by tracing over it is something I’m comfortable doing because of the context.  It’s part of the job and spending 20 hours on each editorial cartoon would be career suicide.  With the painting, however,  it felt like cheating.  To somebody else, it might not have, and that’s OK.  Everybody needs to make their own choices.  I just know that had I done either of those,  I’d finish the painting, would probably like the end result, but every time I look at that patch, it’s going to bother me.

HadfieldWIP04

So I decided that for the patch, I would use the grid method to help with the accuracy of the pieces in the patch, but paint it as I see it in the reference image.  It’s going to take me quite awhile longer to paint the patch, but I’ll be happier with it in the end.  As you can see from the above reference image on the left and painting on the right, I’ve got a long way to go to get it right, but it’s not like it’s wasted time because I’m still learning from every painting I do.  In the end, I’ll be happier with the painting, so it’s time well spent.

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Martin Sheen – The Details

Martin Sheen - PortraitYesterday, I wrote about why I painted this portrait of Martin Sheen’s character, Tom, from the movie ‘The Way.’  Click on this link, if you’d like to read it.  Today, I figured I’d write a little bit about the how, as there are always artists out there who want to know the technical details, and I’m happy to oblige.

This painting was done entirely in Photoshop CS6 Extended using a Wacom Cintiq 24″HD display.  No photos were used in the painting, aside from reference.  I didn’t keep track of how long it took me to complete it because I wasn’t on deadline or in a rush, so while I could easily say 20 hours, it was probably more, over a few weeks.  Without a deadline, I was able to nitpick it and get it as close to perfect as my current skills will allow.  At some point, however, I just have to call it done, because any changes become so minute that nobody will see them but me.

With all of my previous work, it has become my practice to start a painting at low resolution, usually around 9″X12″ at 72ppi.  Then, as the painting progresses, I will keep bumping up the size and resolution.  I teach this method in my PhotoshopCAFE DVD, “Animal Painting in Adobe Photoshop” and it’s the same practice I use for painting portraits of people.  There used to be two reasons for doing this.  First, when you’re working at low-res, you can’t get distracted by putting in too much detail because the size just won’t allow any.  This forces me to well establish ‘the bones’ of a likeness before working on wrinkles, skin texture, and hair.  The other reason for starting at low-res was that my computer had reached the end of it’s efficient life for this type of work and at full-size and full-res, the brushes just wouldn’t move well enough to make broad strokes across the digital canvas.  A completed painting was never more than 18″X24″ at 300ppi, because at that size, I could only work on the fine details without experiencing some lag.

Recently I had a new computer built and I’m back to working on a very current, high end machine.  Running 64bit Windows 7 with 64bit Photoshop, 16GB of RAM and a 4GB video card, everything is running incredibly smooth.  I could have started and finished this painting at full-res, without any problems at all.  BUT, I’m going to continue using my low-res to high-res workflow for the first reason I mentioned.  It forces me to get the likeness right and it works well for me.  That being said, I decided to push this painting to see if I could make it larger, which also allows more attention to detail.  This final painting is 32″X24″ at 300ppi.  At that size, the brushes were working just fine, and I could have bumped it up even more, with no issues in performance.

I’m still using the regular brushes in Photoshop and haven’t used any of the Mixer or Bristle brushes in my paintings.  Those brushes are designed to simulate traditional media and I honestly don’t feel the need to do that.  Digital painting is a medium all on its own, and I don’t try to make it into something it’s not.  I do intend to give those other brushes a try in the coming year, however, simply to see if they’ll offer me some choices to make my work better.  While I’m pleased with the quality of this painting and very much enjoyed working on it, there will always be room to improve.

Thanks for stopping by.