• Software: GIMP (or Adobe Photoshop)
• Level: Advanced
• Subject: Kitar - Potion Assassin

Just some intermediate screenshots on the progress of this project.

Mid-tone Rendering

Here, I take the mid-tone of the skin color and flesh out the details.

A little extra care is taken on larger accessories (like the potion bottle).

Dark Tone

Before proceeding to the highlights, I work on the darker tone, to get a better definition of the shapes.

Stay tuned for updates!

• Software: GIMP (or Adobe Photoshop)
• Level: Advanced
• Subject: Kitar - Potion Assassin

In the last part, I was done with setting the color palette and creating the flats for this project. Taking time on the color palette, and creating the flats layer with patience goes a long way in making the painting process easier and much more fun.

Painting

After making the copy of the Flats layer and renaming it as Painting, I start taking the lighter shades of the different parts and start fleshing out the shape. To do this, I use a large round brush with pressure sensitivity on the color and opacity.

Use the hidden Flats layer to select the different portion, and then switch to the painting layer and start painting. This keeps the brush strokes with in the parts. Use line the line art as a guide and avoid pillow shading. (More on pillow shading in a separate post).

I keep progressing on to the lighter tones and build up the volume and shape. The weird orange-brown tone may look weird, but the color study showed that it worked. So, I am not going to worry about it now, and tweak it when I am going to detail. At this phase, all I want to do is get the general shape of the character.

Close Ups

Here are some closeups that should give an idea of the painting approach.

As I progress towards the lighter tones, I start using a smaller brush that the previous stage. Also, I establish my light source and put in the mid-tone appropriately.

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• Software: GIMP (or Adobe Photoshop)
• Level: Advanced
• Subject: Kitar - Potion Assassin

As seen in the last part, for this concept I have been tweaking it continually. The process I follow to enhance/modify a particular sketch is something along these lines.

I merge all the sketch layers except background when I am satisfied with that stage. The older layers I make almost transparent before merging. Once merged, I reduce the opacity of that layer, and create a new layer over it. On this new layer, using the layer underneath as a guide I tweak the different parts.

Line Art

After repeating these steps several times, and I am satisfied with the result, I combine all the sketch layers one final time and start with a fresh layer for line art.

This is in full resolution of A4 size at 300 dpi.

Color Study

When making elaborate paintings of landscapes or characters, I have found that it helps to do the color study before hand and stick to it.

Since I want to keep this painting as a series, part of the earlier one, I import the color palette into this paintings color study and derive the different color palettes from them.

Flats

The flats layer make is so easy to paint with in the lines. Using the Path tool of GIMP, I mark out all the areas and apply the darker hue with pressure sensitivity switched off.

When I continue to paint, I will be taking a copy of this Flats layer, named ‘Flats Copy’, and hide it. The visible one, would form the canvas for painting and rendering using the other hues and tones.

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After painting Anwun I felt like attempting another character design. So, here I made up another character.

Kitar, is an assassin from the same Order as Anwun. Assassin she might be, but her techniques are quite different. Her arsenal includes potions and powders and extracts of exotic herbs - for most part they aid her mates in the order, but she has used the same effectively in completing certain high profile missions.

With the basic idea sorted out, I went about doing some thumbnailing and selected one particular pose.

These are very small images, not more than 500 or 600 pixels high. At this point, more than detail, I am concerned with the overall structure of the pose of the character.

I spend a bit of time roughing out her costime. There are some repeating patterns that should help it create a harmony as a whole. There needs to be a style that is easily attained by having repeating patterns in shape as well details. Currently, I focus on the shape.

Next, I scale up the image to A4 size at 300 dpi.

This would be the point when I should be able to go ahead and draw the line art. But since I am not yet that good at human anatomy, I take time to study the muscle groups (see the green lines on her legs), fix proportions (her right hand) and even go about fixing her costume (her shoes are made knee level with the same repeating pattern).

I should be ready now to create the line art, but opt to take a day’s break to come back at this piece with a fresh eye.

Stay tuned using KalaaLog.com feeds for more udpates.

• Software: GIMP (or Adobe Photoshop)
• Level: Intermediate
• Subject: Potion Bottle

A potion bottle may seem like quite a complex thing to paint even for a simple shaped one due to all the reflections and colorful contents. But a pretty straigthforward workflow makes it easier.

Lineart and flats

Make use of extensive guide lines in a separate layer to get the shape of the bottle right. You could even use other tools like Inkscape - for now, I just went free hand.

You may imagine the potion bottle to be quite colorful with bright colors and think of using brighter colors as flats. But choose some dark value color - it is the contrast of the bright colors against the dark ones that makes it look colorful.

Painting back to front

The key to paintinig objects with transparency is to render them from back to front. Here, the far side glass is rendered first, and then the containing liquid and the cork.

Once this is done, using the line art as a guide by keeping it over all the layers and toggling its visibility, paint over the front side of the glass surface using a pressure sensitive brush.

Dont go overboard and cover everything up. Remember that glass tends to be opaque as its angle goes perpendicular to viewing angle. So the sides would be opaque and the middle would be fully transparent.

Highlights

Highlights are what makes potion bottle interesting subject to paint. Using the sketch as a guide, paint over a lighter and saturated hue of the colors for the blue of the glass and also for the liquid.

Use a larger brush, with lower transparency and paint over and around the highlights to signify diffusion. Take another brighter tone - almost white color - and paint over again and some points for the ’super highlights’.

Finishing Touches

Take a darker and duller tone of blue and mark out some of the bottles outline.

For the liquid, take a darker but more saturated tone and mark out its outline. Do not go over the highlights when you do this.

You are done! Do post links to your works in the comments below.

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This would be a short post detailing on the practical application of the theory of Depth by Color.

Lineart and Flats

As we did with the vector application of the theory, the lineart and flat color application is same as you would do for any digital painting.

The subject too is quite simple - a landscape scene depicting the rocky structures up to the vanishing point of horizon.

Color Palette

Applying the depth theory to color in digital painting, unlike the vector method, would require us to decide on the colors before applying them. You could use layers and apply the same techniuqe as vector, but painting by hand gives it a nice painterly feel.

Construct the color palette either on a separate layer or a new file.

Looking at the above color palette, it might look a bit elaborate. But I tried to show how I arrived at each color. I start with the flat (true) colors - at the left top. After making a quick gradation for the sky (A), I take the flat colors of the rocks and create variations of the color by applying a yellow light of the sun.

For most part of the plain, we will need to create a set of colors as variations of the base brown. To do this, first make a patch of the brown color. Next select the blue color of the sky, and decrease the opacity of the brush to 20%. Paint the blue over the brown color to almost 3/4th its length. Let go of the mouse button (or the pen) and then with the same brush settings, paint another layer over it, this time half the lenght. Do the same process once more for a smaller segment. This way, you will be building layer upon layer of the effect of ambient light on the brown color. This gives us the color palette (B) for the background plains.

For the rock structure in the mid ground, we do not need to make variations for the depth - just one 20% tint over the different value effected color is sufficient (D). For the foreground rock structure, keep the colors rich - and hence, do not apply any tint (C).

Detailing

To avoid going back and forth between your painting and the color palette during detailing, you can apply the different colors with a 100% brush first.

Start of by smoothing out the sky and detailing the background.

Finish of by detaling the mid and fore groudn rock structures. Since we have already chosen the color palette considering the depth, we need not worry about color while rendering the rocks. Just make sure that you choose only those colors that you have layed down.

Check the deviantART entry for a slightly larger view of the finished painting.

Please post links of the results of your experiments in the comment section.

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• Software: GIMP (or Photoshop)
• Level: Advanced
• Subject: Anwun (Assassin woman)

This final part of the three part series, we look at the detailing and dark shadow application of the character painting of Anwun.

Details

Still on the Painting layer, and still using magic wand + Flats layer to do a selection, I paint the eyes, lips and details of the hair.

There are some jagged edges, which I correct - without doing the area selection. After that, I refer to the color palette I had consturcted earlier and start putting in the highlights.

After that, I put a semi-interesting background on a separate layer.

I put the tattoo on a separate layer, so that I can adjust its opacity if needed.

Shadows

On a separate ‘Shadow’ layer, I put in the minute details of the hard shadows.

The hair on the face, the cloth around her waist, the weapon - all cast shadow on her. I even adjust the background image to hint on the shadow she is casting on the ground.

At the end of it, the layers are as above. I merge the Shadows, Tattoo, and Painting to one layer. The Background and BG Shadow as another layer. This way, it is more organized and usable in other works.

Check out the deviantART entry - Anwun for a large view of this painting.

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• Software: GIMP (or Photoshop)
• Level: Advanced
• Subject: Anwun (Assassin woman)

The last part, we had left at the lineart of the character, Anwun. In this part, you will look at the basic coloring. The details would be covered in the next part.

Color Palette

The color palette was decided upon even before any part of this character was painted. I am doing this to have a uniform theme for the series of painting I am going to do. For the next set of characters, I would be extending the same palette.

Flats and Basic Coloring

The complementary color for each area is used to fill in and create the flats.

The flats become a good tool to select and paint within the area. The painting is done on a copy of the Flats layer. The Flat layer is kept hidden (or below) the painting layer, and used with the magic wand tool to make quick selections.

Anatomy study helps a lot while doing the basic shading of the painting.

The study of anatomy helps render the muscles and fat properly - after all, the character has volume and a simple gradient would render it flat.  Once all of the skin area is completed, I move on to the fabric areas.

Every now and then, I keep switching on the lineart layer just to see that I am capturing the details properly.

Mistakes and Correction

All the while, I keep posting the work-in-progress images at the forums I frequent. (CGPainting.com is one of them which I run).

That is when a member points out the anatomical flaw in the character’s right leg. Upon inspection - I see that there was indeed a flaw.

These critique becomes invaluable resourcecs while you are learning drawing and painting skills. After some practice, we do get it right. But during the initial phases, we make mistakes. These peer reviews help us learn from those mistakes when we are in the process of self-learning.

I then refer to some anatomical drawings by Christopher Hart.

With that as reference, I go back to the lineart layer, and correct the leg. I then fix the flats, and also the painting layer.

Now that the most basic of the painting is completed, I can move on to detailing the hair, face, and also give some lively hightlights to make it more interesting.

That would be the next part. So stay tuned using KalaaLog.com feeds or the email form above.

• Software: GIMP (or Photoshop)
• Level: Advanced
• Subject: Anwun (Assassin woman)

After I did the painting, Slice for Demon Trio project, I gained a bit of confidence in terms of depicting human anatomy. Hence, I decided to undertake another project, titled Women of the Assassin Order. The background for this can be related to the Armem Enlom character from the Chaos And Order universe.

So for the first of this series, the character would be a lady assassin of the Oro Order - an assassin guild. She has passed the rite of passage of the assassin order and has several successful jobs under her belt.

Concept

As not much has been fleshed out in terms of back story, there is quite a bit of freedom in terms of concept.

The first of the study skethces is very rough, and I pretty much explore the different versions of face. Since I am still practicing anatomy, I make sure that I use enough guides to keep everything in proportion.

After I am confident with the subject, I move on to give her a more dramatized pose.

After that, I make several copies of the pose - smaller ones for now, to brainstorm on her attire. Even though the character is a fantasy, which means there is no actual reference to go by, the attire still has to makes sense and seem plausible if not possible. Once the pose and rough details of her grab is decided, we can move on to creating a clean line art.

Lineart

Working on a computer makes it real easy to have several iterations, do major modifications quite easily. To get a clean lineart, just create a layer over all the rough sketches and draw on it.

Before drawing the line art, you could scale up the image to required dimensions. For this piece, working in GIMP, I created a new document, A4 @ 300 dpi, copied the rough sketch into it and scaled it up while maintaining the aspect ratio. You could even go up to 600 dpi to draw the line art if the lines you draw turns out to be shaky. Once you are done drawing the line art, scale it back to 300 dpi and that should give you clean lines. Since while drawing line art, the only color used would be black and white, GIMP seems to go easy on the memory and it shouldn’t slow down the computer much.

Stay tuned - use KalaaLog.com feeds. Next post in this series would have the coloring process.

Before I get to things I learned, here is a round up of all the posts on this project:

1. Slug - Part 1
2. Slug - Part 2
3. Slice - Part 1
4. Slice - Part 2
5. Slice - Part 3
6. Screech - Part 1
7. Screech - Part 2
8. Screech - Part 3

Things that I learned during this project:

• Concept Study - Doing lots of study sketches helps a lot. This actually helped me a lot while I was workingn on Slice. References help in getting the artwork to be more believable, even when the scope is fantasy/fiction.
• Complimentary Colors - Use them extensively in the composition of your artwork. That too, painting over the complementary color of the target color of an area, makes it more interesting due to the color variation achieved.
• Details at Focus - Give extra effort in fleshing out the details of the area of focus. I did not do it too well, and was pretty late on the realization when I did this project. But I learned that you should not be detailing each and every inch of the artwork, it just tends to distract the eye.

That is all for now. Stay updated using KalaaLog.com feeds for more tutorials/projects/news.