Brad's 2d Digital Painting thread:

BradMyers82

Hey guys, I have been practicing painting in Photoshop a lot lately, mostly human faces. I figured I would start this thread, and post the 2d work I do from here on out. I'm trying to create some decent work for my 2d art section of my portfolio (the stuff in it currently is really old now and embarrassing) also I would like to just get better at painting in general.

Here is one that I worked on yesterday and today. It's Megan Fox (the chick from Transformers). While 2d painting isn't exactly my favorite thing to do, looking at her all day wasn't so bad either.

Incase anyone is wondering: Yes I did trace around the major landmarks of the body/face when I started. This was for practicing painting and I wanted to get the proportions correct and just worry about the painting side of things. You can see where I started though from the WIP images I included. So I simply just painted my way from the first image to the final image with my reference image up on my 2nd monitor.

Oh, and you will probably notice a few things off (eyes too saturated, back more shadowy) these are indeed mistakes I made, but I kind of liked so I left them as is.



However, any critiques would be greatly appreciated.

Cody

Damn, Brad! Looking good buddy. That is a badass painting buddy! No crits from me.

EDIT- She's hot.

408

Very beautiful. The eyes are fine, the over saturation makes them seem interesting to me.

Over all I think that this is a fantastic job. The areas where I could imagine you improving the most are making the high lights and shadows a bit more of a gradient. At this point, you may find satisfying results with low opacity smudge and blur tools applied to areas such as the lightness around the lips, shoulder, chin, and shadows on the back.

For future reference, some times it is nice to start out with dodge and burn to define the shapes and add more color variation later. But this may just be a personal preference.

Good luck! Glad to see you very active and ambitious these days.

BradMyers82

Cody: Thanks Man!

408: Yeah, I try to stay away from dodge and burn (I haven't used them at all I think with these) simply because
A. Its a destructive method (I can use layers like multiply and linear dodge then flatten and smudge together later), and
B. It will only change the value and not the color.
But I agree, there are some areas where things could be blended better on the Megan Fox Painting.
I sort of let some stuff slide so it looks more painted like "artsy" heh.
Thanks for the kind words also.



Well, I switched it up and painted a dude.
I chose Brad Pitt and actually found painting him to be significantly harder.
There is just way more details and values to paint so it took me an extra day or two this time around. Here is what I came up with...

renderhjs

I would actually try to vary and mix the paintings right from the start. Use the reference pictures as references but try not to trace them. Instead maybe mix several reference photos together into 1 painting.

here is some random stuff I did with your painting (just for fun)

P442

lol @ renderhjs.

Megan Fox painting, face is dead on. Top of head, shoulder and ear are blurred. I'd go back and define those shapes more with a smaller brush. And next time, make her naked.
A+

bounchfx

wow dude, these look fantastic. I know you said you're tracing the forms, which is fine I suppose since you're focusing on painting itself (which is looking great), however, are you color sampling as well? the colors seem dead on.

I like seeing these, do more. and experiment a little like renderhjs said!

NyneDown

Nice studies man...really like that Brad Pitt one. And yea, I could stare at Megan Fox all day....haha

BradMyers82

Renderhjs: ha ha, that's pretty cool. Yeah, as for the tracing bit, I figured I could just do the line art without tracing, but I would end up tweaking until I get it looking right anyways, and it would simply end up wasting time (same results but take longer). However, perhaps I'll try to do things without tracing and mix things up as you suggested just to see how things work out.

P442: heh, yeah I'll try an not let things get too blurry next time. I think I'm just calling these done for now.

bouchfx: I am not color sampling really, but I do the whole color table / index thing where I get the main colors automatically in photoshop. This way, I can choose like if I want 32 + colors to start with, so its sort of like color sampling but not directly I guess. But believe me, when I do these before I get to the highlights and shadows and even later sometimes, the colors look way off. It takes some tweaking for sure.

NyneDown: heh, thanks dude.

t4paN

Damn, Brad's shirt looks more real in your painting than in the photograph, good job! Did you find that doing these paintings helped you in any way in your understanding of using colours? (hope that makes sense).

I've recently hit a wall in my character art when it comes to textures and I need to find a good way to practice at painting stuff...

BradMyers82

t4paN: Yes, I am finding this helps a lot! Pretty much, the more you practice anything, the better you get, but I think if you have a good plan, you will get better faster. The great thing about doing these I think is that because I am building a realistic painting from scratch, I am understanding more about tendencies of what colors are where, and where the values are found on these figures and how to make them look real. Like I used to find painting eyes to be difficult, now I think its one of the easiest things to do. I certainly have a lot of room for improvement, but I feel I am improving quickly and that's pretty much my goal here.

bounchfx

also, out of curiosity - how long did you spend on each piece?

BradMyers82

bounchfx: 2 days of work on Megan Fox and about 3 days on Brad Pitt. As I said, Brad Pitt was much harder, and I feel that I am getting faster not slower. It just took longer because of all the extra detail in the Brad Pitt painting. BTW, I have a Cintiq 12wx which helps.

renderhjs

I would still though not putting booth in your portfolio as they look to much photo traced. In Painter for example and some other consumer image editors there is a option to paint through a photo which is basically tracing but with some random brush strokes.
Imo. it doest show at the moment true artist abilities. Like I said I think one way to get to a more artist looking quality is to vary and mix it with more interesting things.

BradMyers82

renderhjs: I see what you mean. Actually, people thinking that these paintings are computer generated in some way was probably my biggest fear. I figured showing my WIP Steps would prove that it isn't computer generated and indeed painted; but I don't know. I was also thinking of including the Photoshop file as further evidence, however; I realize that no employer will take the time to look at that.

So I agree, I should move onto something different; mixing stuff is a good idea. I was also thinking I could show steps similar to how b1II does ( http://www.benregimbal.com/lpwerksmll.html ) on top of an actual uv layout. It's really pretty much the same process and should prove artistic ability IMO. Actually practicing and following his steps is what led me to do these paintings in the first place.

sir-knight

jeebus christie... I thought they were airbrush touchups! o_o I had to look a lot closer to see that they aren't Which is, what like the other guys said an issue if you'd like to use them as portfolio pieces. I have a friend that does master painting studies and his results are quite stunning, very similar to originals and he used them as portfolio pieces, the reviewers dismissed them as manips.

One of the things that I saw that let me see they were paintings is that there is a distinct difference in sharpness between the hair and some of the shadowing/features on the face. The hair is ultra sharp it cast shadows and it's own lighting while some of the shadows/lighting on the face are a bit fuzzy (just a tiny bit).

Slum

BradMyers82 wrote: »

renderhjs: I see what you mean. Actually, people thinking that these paintings are computer generated in some way was probably my biggest fear. I figured showing my WIP Steps would prove that it isn't computer generated and indeed painted; but I don't know. I was also thinking of including the Photoshop file as further evidence, however; I realize that no employer will take the time to look at that.

So I agree, I should move onto something different; mixing stuff is a good idea. I was also thinking I could show steps similar to how b1II does ( http://www.benregimbal.com/lpwerksmll.html ) on top of an actual uv layout. It's really pretty much the same process and should prove artistic ability IMO. Actually practicing and following his steps is what led me to do these paintings in the first place.

The difference here is that b1ll actually paints his stuff, you just traced photos. There's not a lot of study or learning in tracing a photo and pulling colors from it. If you want to do a study of a photo, have in on a second monitor and just *paint* it, like you would if you were looking at a live model.

BradMyers82

Sir-knight: Thanks.

Slum: I'm not comparing myself to B1II, I know his stuff is on a much higher level. His art is something to aspire to which is why I mention him. All I am saying here is that I'm learning, and I think that if I try to paint like he does, in his steps that it will probably show more painting talent then these studies do.

Also to clarify, the only thing that is traced is with the line art to get the proportions right. I didn't feel that this was a big deal because its not much different than following the flow of a uv map. All the painting I did was a struggle for me (not easy) and I actually do feel that I have learned a lot. The painting bit was done on a second monitor, I have a 24 inch with the photo, and I am working on a 12wx cintiq. I don't think that the tracing of the photo (or starting with basic line art) really changes the difficulty of the painting part itself.
But enough talk, lets see if I can actually paint like this on a real texture sheet.