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Hi Everybody! I'm Cynthia Sheppard, and I want to thank you for joining me on this exclusive Noah�s Art Camp video.
I�ve had the pleasure of working for some amazing clients, such as Wizards of the Coast
Fantasy Flight Games, ImagineFX Magazine, and many others�
Today I�m going to demonstrate some of the digital painting techniques and professional tricks I use to create those kinds of images
I�ll take you on start-to-finish walk though of my latest painting
And give in-depth advice on topics that come up all the time in my work:
Painting the female figure and face, painting hands, and designing and painting realistic-looking fabric
So stay tuned, and I hope you enjoy watching and learning as much as I enjoyed making this video.
For the representational artist, good figure painting begins with good figure drawing
And good figure drawing begins with sketches from life
When you take a figure drawing class, the typical format has the artists start with a series of quick 1-2 minute poses, also known as gestures
Gestural lines, typically following the lines of the human skeleton, are used to show what the figure is doing, and how they're posed
On one hand, capturing the form quickly is said to �loosen you up,� but
It�s also training you to capture the essence of a pose without laboring over details.
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When I draw a female gesture in particular, I keep in mind a few common ideals
Her stature's going to be slightly shorter than a man's
She has a greater range of flexibility, particularly in the hip flexor area and the spine
And her hips are going to be slightly wider than her shoulders.
When you�re building larger compositions, the gesture drawing is the key to positioning the figure in the image, and making her come alive in your thumbnails.
All that life drawing practice helps you to build a visual library--
to understand how the figure moves and bends
so that you can create realistic-feeling poses and rhythms, even when you don�t have the figure in front of you.
Here I�m sketching a gesture for the main figure in my new painting.
During this step, I�m working purely from my imagination, and I�m not overly concerned with getting every proportion correct.
This loose sketch will influence choices I make in the composition,
And help me figure out what kind of reference to gather next, but I won�t start building up detail on top of this particular early drawing.
It's easy to be overeager to add detail-- For a lot of us, that's the most exciting part
But, the form has to work properly first
So each time I make a sketch, I'll add a new layer in Photoshop, and sketch over the last one
Refining, and refining until it looks close enough to correct to move on to the next step.
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From here, you can see the progression of the sketches
Going from my original pencil thumbnail to my final sketch from imagination
The next step is gathering reference.
I typically gather at least two kinds of reference images for every painting I make.
First, I create an inspiration folder, or a mood board, filled with a collection of images that represent motifs or themes I want to use.
For example, here are some of the images I pulled for this painting from an internet search.
Next, after all the sketching and planning stages are complete, I shoot reference with my camera.
Sometimes I hire a model or models to pose for characters.
Here�s an example of some references I shot for a piece I created recently for Fantasy Flight Games, next to the finished piece.
These photos answer questions about lighting and form, mostly.
The more practice you have at figure drawing, the closer to reality you can get just relying on your memory,
but there will always be little mysteries in the fine detail that the camera is great at solving.
In other cases, I shoot myself on a timer, and on rare occasions, if I can�t be there in person to photograph someone,
I�ll ask another artist to shoot references for me,
Like these self-portraits of Noah that eventually became my Magic: the Gathering card, �Bribery.�
Sometimes, if a piece requires elaborate architecture or an extreme perspective
I�ll use a third kind of reference, and that�s a 3D model
Like this very basic one I built using Google's SketchUp for the throne room.
Here�s the final reference image for my new painting.
This image is actually pieced together from ten different photos
And while inelegant on its own, it�ll help me figure out my final sketch, so I can move on to adding value.
Looking at the photo reference and re-interpreting it as a drawing by eye is a good practice.
Tracing over a photo, also called lightboxing, is an alternative that some artists use to save time
But be careful when doing so, because it can lead to an unhealthy dependence on tracing
And you risk copying lens distortion and other camera-related mistakes into your artwork.
A happy medium to both these techniques is drawing by sight, then pasting the reference image over the sketch
To check one against the other
Tsee if there are any major errors, but leaving little deviations intact.
Nearly all professional figurative artists rely on photographic references to some degree
But it varies from person to person and style to style.
How much work you let the camera do for you is up to you.
That said, where I see a lot of potentially good paintings fail is from a lack of visual information--
Meaning, if the artist had just had something better to look at, or had done a little more research
He or she would have made a more convincing painting.
All right, finally, we�re getting to the painting part!
Now that I have a solid sketch to work from, I�ll start adding value.
Up in the left hand corner, I�m making a quick palette to sample from.
It�s not completely monochromatic- it�s actually a selection of warm and cool grays
And I�ll use the neutral colors as a guide for building more saturated colors on top later.
Next, I�ll set my sketch layer to Multiply, lock the Layer, and add color to the lines
So that when I�m painting over top of them later I don�t get any unwanted black interfering with my colors.
Think of it like trying to paint over charcoal--
You don�t want the charcoal to get swept into your paint and make it muddy
The same is true for pure-black sketch marks in a digital painting.
And finally I�ll begin applying the color
Starting by painting in flat areas of medium-gray color where the skin's going to be
And then slowly building up the lights and darks.
As a quick note, I�ll be painting more than just the figure in this long segment
because it�s important to work around the whole composition
And build up the values of the foreground and background together
Not just fixate on tiny areas.
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A quick note here:
Something you�ll see me use constantly in Photoshop is the Fade command
If I make a stroke that I love but it�s too dark, I use Fade to knock it back.
I also do that a lot with large washes of color.
It�s just a lot easier than starting a new Layer on a lower Opacity every time.
Now that I�m reasonably happy with where my neutral values are heading
I�ll open an Overlay layer to begin adding more saturated colors to the skin
And some warmth in the shadows around the image.
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Before getting back to the task at hand, let�s talk about brushes and blending for a minute.
When *** demos, inevitably someone asks about what brushes I�m using.
The truth is, I�ve been using the same brush ever since the final sketch
It�s just a basic hard round brush customized with a little texture that I added to suit my personal style
But you can achieve everything I�ve done so far with the basic round brushes that come standard with Photoshop.
Now, blending skin follows the same principles as blending any areas of color together over a form.
You lay down the colors first, then sample one of the colors and paint into its neighbor
Stroking across the form, or �against the grain� to borrow a carpentry term.
Then sample again, and repeat.
Finish with circular brushing motions to get any hard edges smoothed out.
Please, guys, don�t rush this stuff.
Working quickly might be the right thing to do for gestures, but slow down and take your time when finishing a painting.
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Just a few final notes on finishing off the figure, here:
All that blending can leave some soft edges,
So as a final step you�ll want to go back over the outer edges of the figure
To make sure there�s a crisp separation between the body and the background.
Because I tend to work on very few layers, I achieve that sharpened edge by sampling color from the background
And manually painting the hard edge around the form.
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I hope you enjoyed this demonstration.
Coming up next, join me as I show you some techniques for painting the female face
in Part II of this exclusive video series for Noah�s Art Camp.