Digital Painting Process: "Uninvited" Working From Thumbnails to Finished Sketch P.S.

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I usually work out what I want to do with a piece to a higher degree than this. But I thought that this time it would be nice to take a plunge into a kind of ala prima painting. This pencil rough is really a thumbnail about 2 by 3 inches.

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I have scanned in the rough and brought it into painter 7. I kept the file small, 6.75 by 10.25 at 150 dpi. This makes my machines run a lot faster and I don?t want to be thinking about detail right now.

I tried the water color brushes but just don?t have the hang of them. So decided to switch to 1mpasto brushes to see what would happen there. Ok I got impatient and then filled the layer with the yellow ochre you see. I always have trouble pulling color from the air as it might seem. That is why my paintings are more monochromatic than most.

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Now that I have color over the whole thing I feel more comfortable (less anxious) about adding color or getting everything to have color and relate. I am still using the impasto brushes at this point. Making broad shapes and gestures to find the feel of the piece. This I believe is where you will be getting the energy in a painting.

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This is where I took the file back over to photoshop and added a multiply layer to bring my values down. And saturate my colors more. I am sure this can be done in painter I just know what I am doing in photo shop so it is faster for me. I just copied my one layer, the background layer and then changed its mode to multiply.

One of the reasons I wanted to bring everything down a couple of value notches is that I find it easier to paint from out of the darkness as it were. Pulling things out, letting shapes and subtle value changes influence me.

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Ok still in photoshop I made another copy of my background layer (note I merged the two before) I ran the cut out filter on the top layer and played around with the mode of it to see what I wanted. I think this one was left on the hard light mode then merged.

I like the cut out filter as it can make some cool geometric shapes out of what otherwise is a busy mess. I m sure that I reduced the opacity of the hard light layer before I got it to where I wanted it. Also I will erase out of the top layer where things may be to obliterated or I just don?t like the effect. Of course all this is done before merging. But then again there is always the history brush!

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In PhotoShop i am adding color. I like to have my brush set on stylus in the opacity window and usually leave the size variance off. Well this depends on what i am doing with the brush.

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Just starting to sculpt things and bring in more color. I think I am back in painter at this time. I have also dropped the impasto brushes for now, but will still experiment with the Sargent brush.

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More color and sculpting. I have probably used levels in PhotoShop several time by now as well as played with the color adjustments. I am still able to make some larger changes at this point, not that I have but it would be a good time. A lot of the color being added now is in painter using the oil pastel brush or sharp chalk brush.

It is important to say that I am lost, but having fun finding my way through this. You can not always paint a piece this way. Some times it is imperative to have a map or destination. This may be because of deadlines or just a simple matter of your mental state.

So I am still scribbling, trying to capture motion along with interesting shapes. Put something in, take it out, put it back leave it, add something to it, on and on.

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Made it darker in PhotoShop. I think I just made a copy of the layer and played with the opacity on hard light mode. This is helping me find what values and key I want for the painting. It also will punch up colors. This can be nice in areas but it tends to over saturate everything. I nice trick to pull a painting together is to (in PhotoShop) copy the merged layers go into image adjust hue saturation, click the colorize button and then move the sliders to where you want your unifying color scheme. Keep the saturation low as this is going to help tame some of the over saturated colors in your painting. Hit ok now move the opacity slider down to where the layer just tempers you piece to the desired effect.

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more of the same

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used the "unsharp mask" filter in photoshop.

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little things here and there. starting to think more about the figure.

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I am tying to get some perspective in the piece. Used PhotoShop and the line tool to grid this out and make my ellipse in perspective. Also at this point I?m starting to make masks in PhotoShop for the various ellipses on the machine. I like to use the transform selection tool in the selection menu to help make true perspective ellipses etc. Well it is close if not true.

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more, and i have to fix the figure!

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I cut and pasted her upper torso closer to her hips. She had a very long waist. I left her on a layer while I painted under her to fix where she was cut out.

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nudge nudge

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I think changes are too small at this pint to be of interest in this venue. My apologies.

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this is the latest stage. i will add to this for the finish.

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Ok, I guess I do need to field this question: No, I do not copy Phil Hale.

Yes, I'm greatly influenced by Phil's work.
I think that Phil has something close to genius in his art. I hold his talent in great awe.

Am I that talented? NO! Not anywhere near to it.

I worked with Rick Berry (http://www.braid.com/) for a couple of years. Rick suggested I use a particular palette (as well as a myriad of suggestions and moments of guidance, that I will always be thankful for) and it works.
I don't know what Phil uses as a palette but he also worked with Rick for many years. He basically grew up around Rick. There was a time when many people thought that Rick Berry and Phil Hale were the same person.
It's easy to see that conjecture given that Rick already had an alias, Sam Rackland, under which he did his fantasy work. But Phil changed and Rick changed and they are bringing to us some fantastic and innovative work.

I don't think Phil would be all that impressed with what I paint. He is on a higher and different level. My concerns are much more narrative. I like action and body language. I work very hard at coming up with my poses and never do I reference Phil for this. I think more in terms of Egon Shiele or Kent Williams, but throw in some more motion.

We all have influences. We could not be awake in this world otherwise.

Norman Rockwell for a period of time was greatly taken with J.C. Leyendecker?s work--the brush strokes seem almost the same. Frazetta! Go take a look at Howard Pyle and N.C. Wyeth and you will see where he did his groundwork. Kent Williams and George Pratt both went to study with Jeffery Jones and you can see it reflected in their work to a large extent. And of course, Kent also gets tremendous inspiration from Shiele too.

This is part of how we learn. You cannot entirely escape your influence. You take them in, along with countless other bits of visual information, and assimilate them, and hopefully come out with your own statements.

I believe that my work has moved on from greatly Phil-influenced to something else. It's still in great flux and I don't know exactly where it's going. Just take a look at what I have posted here over the last few months (I'm sorry to say that my web site hasn't been updated for quite some time). The painting I have shown, as my process piece, seems to me to have little to do with Phil Hale.

Those who dismiss another's work as a "copy" of another artist's style may need to either stop drawing or renounce all of their own influences. How many artists on this forum alone paint like Craig Mullins, Brom, or Justin Sweet?

If any of you were to be influenced by my work and subsequently paint like me (that is if you are not under the belief that it is just copied Phil hale), I couldn't be mad because the style is inevitably changed by what you bring to it. You might make something worse or better than I would. And if you were better than I am, you obviously are bringing something new to the game, something that isn't in my own work. Actually, even if you were worse, you still could be re-forming components and eventually make them into potentially great work.

One last thing I find peculiar. Would it be ok for my work to have the look of Phil's if I had worked with him? Why? How is that better than someone doing his own research, taking the time to go down all the wrong roads, backtracking and searching for the one that seems right, and doing this over and over---just you, your brush and canvas?
This is learning by experience rather than formula or having it handed directly to you. It seems legitimate to me.

I hope this answers the question.

Jon

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I have been busy working on several things at once and have not gotten around to working on the blimp painting until yesterday. Not much was done and I am deciding whether to push much further as the looseness of the piece is growing on me. But I did shoot some reference for the woman and repainted most of her. She still needs the rest of her accouterment, guns holster, doodads. I think I will work on it a little more then send in the final.

Thanks again.
Jon