Paintings 01

Tweet I decided a couple of weeks ago that I wanted to take up some form of painting again. It's been years since I did any proper painting, not since my art A Level, in fact, aside from some low level digital painting. I knew I wanted to try to master digital painting, but I also wanted to try a more traditional form. I was torn between oils and watercolours - I'd done oils at school but knew they were both messy and expensive, while watercolours were far more readily available. So far, I've just really been practicing with washes, colour mixing, and different techniques, but I did want to try and paint something recognisable, instead of just page after page of meaningless colour. This was one of my first attempts.

It was really rather simple. I began with a graded blue wash, simply adding more water to dilute the colour, to make the sky lighter as it approached the horizon, and then dried my brush in order to apply the blue paint for the water using the dry brush technique. The resulting white patches among the lines resemble light on water.

Once the sky and water were dry, I then used a much finer brush to sketch in the boat using dark brown. When it was dry, I added another layer to give a shadow and sense of depth to the hull and mast. Again I used the dry brush technique to add a reflection in the water.

All in all, I'm pretty pleased with it - it's not exactly going to blow the minds of the art world but it's simple and recognisable!

As for my attempts at digital painting, I loaded up Photoshop CS5, plugged in a Wacom Bamboo, and had a go.

I started off by actually tracing the tree outline from a photograph, and just added shadow by going over the areas several times. Then I created several background layers, altered different brush settings in the Wet Media brush set, and created a graded sky by sampling colours from a photograph of a sunset. I was quite pleased with the stipling on the grass, and the blending of the sky, although the white cloud effect doesn't work. All in all, I think I may give digital painting another go!

How It's Done - 01

Tweet I've been considering getting back into painting, both digital and traditional, and I've been talking to artists online about what tools, software and techniques they use. During the discussion, someone sent me this link, and I thought I'd share it as a good example of how you can combine the digital with the traditional. The work in question is by John Picacio, and illustrates Bran Stark of the Game of Thrones series atop his home of Winterfell. The full piece is here, but it's interesting to see how Picacio got from this;

to this;

It's always fascinating finding out how other artists work, and it's nice to see an artist admitting the use of photographic references!

Do you use references, and do you prefer to work digitally or traditionally?

#Tutorial - Smudge Painting

Tweet I love a spot of digital painting, but if truth be told, I'm not very good at it. However, I'm not keen on using Photoshop's Filters menu to 'fake' a painting as they never look particularly convincing. I first found this method in Photoshop Creative magazine years ago, and I've adapted it slightly to suit my own needs. This tutorial will demonstrate how I use nothing more than the Smudge Tool and a canvas texture to turn a photograph into a painting.

So choose your photo and let's go! I chose this photo of a rose, taken some time ago in the Alnwick Garden.

I used the split toning technique from last week to add blue tones. I've also cropped it to choose a particular point of interest.

Next, create a new layer above the background - rename it 'canvas'. Fill this with any bright colour - you'll switch it off and on so you can see which parts of the photo still need to be painted. For now, turn the layer off. Create a blank layer above this called 'painting'.

Now you need to grab the Smudge Tool. Load the Wet Media brushes that come with Photoshop, and choose one - I've gone for a brush with a wide tip. Set the strength to between 30-40%, and select the Sample All Layers box.

Click the 'painting' layer to make it active. Start 'painting' by smudging across areas of the photograph. I find it helps to follow lines, and fill in the spaces afterwards. If you smudge from dark to light areas, you'll get a nice painterly effect.

Keep going, turning the 'canvas' layer on and off to see which bits you've missed. Make sure you turn it off before smudging or the Smudge Tool will sample colour from that layer as well.

Et voila, the finished image!

There's just two more steps that I've taken. First of all, I've pasted a canvas texture over the top and set the blending mode to Multiply. I've also altered the Brightness/Contrast of this layer so the canvas shows up a bit. Then, I created a signature in Illustrator, pasted this into the image, and set the blending mode to Multiply.

If you've had a go, why not post a link to the finished piece in the comments?