PROCESS VIDEO // glare - part 2

Here’s the full process of my Glare painting from last month! I split it into three parts, and this is the second of those three. The last part is coming right up!

Here’s some information about this video:

• This second process video has been sped up by 350%, so 3.5 times the original speed. 

• This painting session took me 10 hours in total. 

• I mostly used the hard round brush from my own brush set to paint this. 

• This is painted in Adobe Photoshop, but the same workflow can be applied to most digital painting software!

Here are some helpful resources that can help understand this process in more detail: 

• Creating a strong composition: This tutorial talks about how I arrange different elements to create a sense of visual flow in the image. This played a huge role in making my creative decisions for this painting!

• Creating emotive art: This video talks about how I use various decorative elements and visual styles to put the focus on mood and emotion in my artwork.

FLIPPING THE CANVAS

I start this part of the process by flipping the canvas. That’s because I feel like there are some issues with her face - I’m struggling to get it to look “right,” and sometimes flipping the canvas really helps to bring a fresh perspective to the painting. I don’t feel like flipping the canvas is a requirement, because sometimes it creates more problems than it solves for me. But it’s definitely a helpful tool for moments when I feel like I’m not really able to ‘see’ the problems clearly! 

THE MIDDLE STAGE: FLESHING OUT THE DETAIL 

The first stage of my painting process is about blocking in the elements, and the last stage is about cleaning and finalizing. This video represents the middle stage: sculpting out the details and making sure that construction issues are solved. I do a lot of work on her face during this stage, since it’s the focal point of the painting. I also do a lot of work on the moths, and end up completely changing one of them at the 37:03 minute mark. The reason for that is because I felt like the shapes were getting too repetitive, which brings a kind of predictability to the painting which I don’t like. By changing the silhouette of this moth, I feel like we get more variety and a more dynamic feel in this painting. It’s really important to make sure these kinds of problems are solved before moving to the final stage! 

SHAPES 

I love playing around with shapes in my art, and I think this painting is a good example of how it’s not just about the shapes of each separate element - the figure, the branches, the moths, etc - but also about the shapes created by light and shadow. At the 1:04:35 minute mark, I spend a lot of time refining the shape of the shadow by her chest. I stop thinking of it in terms of being a shadow, and more in terms of whether it’s an interesting and flowy shape that follows the contour of the body. This is a typical example of how I break away from realism and focus purely on lighting as a design element! If you want to learn more about these topics, I have a tutorial on creating interesting & flowy shapes, as well as a tutorial about using lighting as a design tool.

I hope you like this video - keep an eye out for the final part which is coming right up!