Painting Process and Separating Lights
Added 2021-09-02 08:44:14 +0000 UTCHere's some progress on a painting I started yesterday.
I generally start with a rough sketch, and do a color comp over that, which looks something like this:
Kinda crappy, but enough to give me a general understanding whether my idea works or not. Sometimes I do it on a single layer below the line sketch, and sometimes I use layer blending modes. Then I lower the opacity and figure out a legit drawing, so I know the exact form and placement of things:
Then I do the local colors and start adding lights:
I first added general diffused atmospheric light coming from that window pane. It's very soft and pretty colorless
This is the atmospherically lit stage pretty much done, after which I just added some sunlight with a screen layer:
And then did some bounce light and light effects like saturated oranges bleeding out of the cast light and .
And then I just merge all the layers for the character and all the layers for the background and start painting over them. I have all the drawing and light information solved already, so I can just focus on texture, variety, details, brushstrokes and general juiciness, and that way the final image looks very complex but also sort of effortless - lots of people do this and if you don't have an insight into their workflow you'd think they're some kind of magicians.
I've also attached the PSD file as it is before I merge the layers :D
Hope this way useful!
