Tool: Adobe Photoshop (10 or CS)

The idea behind this picture came to me one night while I was trying to sleep, thinking about some recent bad news of divorces from several close friends and families.

1. Sketch:
I jumped out of my bed, grab the pencil and paper, and spent about 3 minutes sketching it out, resulting in a rough drawing that’s only enough to remind me what that idea was about.

Later I started developing it a bit by doing some very rough painting in Photoshop, setting the looks and tone. At that moment everything was from my head, and I knew there are various places that would be painted better with references, so I didn’t spent too much time on them.

(click to enlarge)

2. painting and rendering (v1)
The color draft now serve as a underpainting. I do so simply by darkening the image quickly using the “curve” function, and overlaying some gradient in “multiply” layer mode. Then I started adding more lights on top of the whole thing.

For some parts I would break things down piece by piece, painting them out on separate layer, and then put them together. For reference, a mirror is always handy. At that moment I was very keen in seeing if the whole thing works or not, and simply had no patient in spending time looking for the matching ones.

(click to enlarge)

3. more painting! (v2)
I could have stopped at the stage of version 1. However I became unsatisfied with it after a while. and decided to use extra references to fix the face, making the character prettier, and soften the image to make it more dreamy.

I used a lot of feather-edged brush to blend things all over. As for changing the flesh tone, I blended in some pink and orange by opening a new layer in “overlay” mode, and then painted the colors there with a soft brush. To the hair, I painted the old things over with a customized hair brush that I learned from other great CG artists.

(click to enlarge)

4. Details

Hair

(click to enlarge)

I used a customized brush that I learned from other CG artists with the setting shown in this picture. You can make a similar brush very easily by making some dots in different opacities, size, edges, and arranging them in a similar manner.

(click to enlarge)

I’d paint a block of solid base color, and then turn down the opacity to 40%-60% for adding the lights to bring out the strains.

When it’s all finished, I’d use the dodge tool to emphasize the highlight. You can use the Burn Tool for the opposite, of course. Myself though find it harder to control in terms of getting the right color I want, so to achieve the opposite darkening effect in retouching, I usually would open a new layer in either “overlay” or “multiply” mode , and then paint the darker color there.

Roses

(click to enlarge)

Just like the hair, I’d paint some darker colors first as the base, then add lights to it to bring out the structure of the petals. If you like a shaper feel, stay with the hard-edged brush. To soft the whole thing I decided to use feather-edged brush, blending in some pink and purple here and there.

Dress

(click to enlarge)

When I don’t know how to draw something, I’d search the internet to find references, and learn how things look like. However I think it’s pointless to always copy the reference - well, unless you aim for a photo-realistic style, then there is probably no better way to achieve the effect other than staying as close to your reference as possible.

However, I personally believe that one of the most important factors in a good picture is consistency, or that’s what make a picture looks “finished”. Our mind is very sensitive to contrast, so if there’s something very photo-realistic while something is not in the same picture, the viewer would be aware of this inconsistency, consciously or not.

This usually causes the feel of “half-finishness” when people attempt the photorealistic approach without being throughout, so my philosophy is I either do it to all, or I don’t do it at all.

5.Finish!

Top it with some “bloom” effect to make it more dreamy.

Posted on Saturday, November 24th, 2007 at 8:46 am under Features
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