Video: My Painting Process

This is a quick video I made while working on my Pop Princesses digital painting. I didn't want to do a full tutorial, but rather just show the work in different stages of the process. These are all techniques developed over time by practicing & learning from other artists I admire. I'll describe a bit of the process and what takes place in each stage below:

• The first step I do is create a line art sketch using my tablet in Photoshop. Sometimes I'll do the sketch in pencil on paper and then scan it, but this time I decided to do the sketch directly in Photoshop.

• Next I try to think of what the background will look like, because it'll affect the color scheme and lighting. For this portrait I didn't want a real elaborate background because I wanted to showcase the figures, so I decide to do a simple gradiated background with a half-tone pattern.

• After setting up the background, I take the pen tool (using the line art sketch as a guide) to create base color layers using the midtones for skin, underneath the line art on a seperate layer. This way I could hide the line art while I painted, but refer to it later if I needed it. The pen tool lets me create clean shapes for the figures, which is important because they'll serve as the basis for all the painted layers above them.
  


• Once the base color layers are done, I create new layers for each figure and use seperate layers for each body feature (hair, eyes, lips, and any clothes or accessories) on top. This way I can paint each item without worrying about messing up another, and can easily fix/make changes. I also do this for the skin shading and highlights using the clipping mask option, so I can shade without affecting the base layer underneath or painting over the edges.

• Using the clipping mask and selection tool, with my line art as a guide, I select the different areas of the body to render and paint them using a soft airbrush. I start with the shadows and then add the highlights, and afterwards I add texture to the skin using various brushes. I like to add the textures after the highlights on a layer above the skin, because otherwise the texture can get washed out from the brightness of the highlights.

• Once the faces and bodies are rendered, I then do the hair and any accessories next. Again, everything is done on seperate layers, so by the end of the painting I usually end up with close to 100 layers. To keep everything organized, I group all the layers according to each singer and each body part, and color code them for easy recognition.

• After some adjustments to the levels and background, and some fixes made to Rihanna's eyes, the painting is done. This is only one style of painting that I like to use, there are other methods and techniques that I like to experiment with dependent on the subject. This is just one example of how I like to work.