My intentions for creating this image were solely to improve my digital painting technique, and to test my patience. I decided to use an inspiring stock photograph I found on www.deviantart.com. The stock artists name is Lockstock (http://lockstock.deviantart.com). Here is the original image. As you can see I modified the colours, making them cooler, and cropped the image considerably mainly because I wanted to main focal point to be the face/collar.
Some great digital artists out there begin by blocking out colours and then slowly add details refining the shapes as they proceed. I haven’t tried that yet, and coming from a traditional art school I have been taught that a good drawing makes a good painting (and I’m pretty sure Titian also said so :-). So I drew the face as well as I could, not worrying much about details, all I needed were the outlines of the shapes and shadows, but I wanted them as precise as possible. When I do a recreation of an image, be it digital or traditional, I always work with the original right next to me, comparing almost every stroke. I find you learn alot that way although I know it seems a mechanical process. This painting in fact was not intended to be considered a “work of art” but more of a study, as I stated above.
So anyhow, here was my base, this is what I started from. Initially I wanted her dressed so I drew in a sleeve but later (after painting it almost completely) I decided that it would have been a distracting element. I went back to the bare arm, as in the original.
I dove immediately into doing the face because I really wanted the enthusiasm of the painting to come through there....I know myself pretty well, I can get bored, and I think you can see that sometimes in peoples work! I filled the skin level with a pinkish colour as a base for the skin then I started putting in blotches of color. Looking at it now it seems pretty crude but I’m glad I hung in there. The skin of the face was done all on a single level at this stage.
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