Making of Ash and Sam by Jeff Haynie Web: www.jeffhaynie.com
Step 4: Tight pencil sketch stage to define key details in composition
I compose the final composition by doing a tight pencil sketch using multiple layers of tracing paper. The importance of this stage is to refine the shapes and refine your drawing, especially any important details to the painting.
 Step 5: Under painting to establish the base light and dark structure
Since I had illustrated the cover of the game box, I had previously painted faces of the characters that I could use to get a start without having to paint them from scratch. I took my favorite value study, enlarged it to working size, and pasted these details in place.
Now I block in the base structure of all the main elements in sepia tone to mimic my traditional oil painting technique. Basically at this stage, you block in all the light and shadow shapes in sepia tone as a value foundation for the painting. The main Photoshop brush I use is a chalk brush with an ‘opacity jitter’ brush setting. It gives me the feel of an oil brush.
Step 6: Apply texture to break up digital look
At this stage I apply lots of texture information on top of the image to get lots of cool atmosphere and “texture stuff”. It breaks up the smooth clean digital look and starts to make the piece have more of an oil painting look. One way to do this is to load a texture into your brush using the texture settings. The texture I used was an old stained concrete wall I photographed on vacation. Place the texture on a separate layer above everything else, and set the layer setting to ‘overlay’ or ‘hard light’ then adjust the opacity to taste. Then I apply a layer mask to the layer, and paint into the layer mask to break up the opacity more randomly.
To make textures using a more traditional method, I use illustration board, canvas or watercolor paper. Sometimes I gesso it first with a stiff brush to get directional brush strokes in the gesso. After putting a wash of a dark color on the board, I tilt the board while it is wet to get drips and random texture. If you sprinkle salt onto the board while it is wet you can get some wild texture. That’s an old watercolor technique. The outcome is a texture with drips and cool happy accidents. After it’s dry, scan it in, and use it as a grayscale texture.
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