Friday, April 11, 2008

a little something for me


with all these illustrations for the novel that i've been working on lately, i felt like i needed a break and do a little something for myself (and coincidentally for mypsptubes.com). i wanted to try something new with the painted coloring effect which i've been trying to obtain but so far unsuccessfully. however, i think this may be the closest i've gotten yet. i took one of those chunky brushes in photoshop and basically used that throughout the piece from the flat colors all the way to the highlights and even the background. it was tough not to smooth things out with an airbrush like usual. i used another artist's work as inspiration - Pepper Sunshine
one of these days i'm going to get that good. but i really have a long way to go. heck i don't even know how to work Painter yet. i need a book which sucks cuz i hate to read. =[
at any rate, i pretty much just took the brush opacity and fill down around 20% (give or take a couple percents) and went for what i know. one big change that i did do which i will continue to do from here on out is create a color palette in the very beginning. i read in one of my photoshop magazines that it's a good idea to start out with that and darned if they ain't right! keeps things uniform and helps me to not deviate from my original vision. u can really get carried away when ur working on personal illustrations. u start to experiment with different settings and color combinations and before u know it, the piece starts to look like a bucket of easter eggs. also, i used pink and deep orange to create the shadows instead of my usual brown or whatever color is produced when i multiply the skin color to itself. worked out really nice. i'm having my personal issues with her mouth. it's probably more the art itself than the colors cuz i think i may have drawn her lips too big. oops. ah well. i never said i was the world's greatest. (that would be the hubby. =P)
to offset all the warm yellows and oranges, i even dabbed a bit of turquoise as a faint secondary light source. interesting...well, for me at least. ^__^
man, i've really gotta try to sleep at a normal hour. it's 6:30am and i'm just about to go to bed. sheesh!!

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