Workshops

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In depth Portrait speedpainting

PORTRAIT SPEEDPAINTING
Paint a realistic portrait in less than half the usual time using a combination of oil and acrylic techniques and digital painting. Bill Corbett shows you how
o paint a realistic portrait with a reasonable amount of refinement and detail can take anything from ten to 50 hours but it doesnt have to. Using a combination of oil painting and acrylic techniques with existing digital painting techniques, I hope to show you how its possible to cut down your painting time dramatically.

Paint Shop Pro

Bill Corbett
COUNTRY: UK CLIENT LIST: Northeast Games, Fantasy Flight Games, Cerasus Media Bill Corbett has been drawing and painting since he was ten years old. Since 1995 hes worked as a freelance artist in his spare time, mainly for card games, rock bands and online communities. www.billcorbett.co.uk

To paint this way you have to be bold and decisive and have a good grasp of what you are trying to achieve. Hopefully the following steps will help you both cut down on those late nights and get a clean, finished look to your work. Although Ill paint this portrait in Paint Shop Pro, Ill keep the procedures I use generic enough for it to be adapted for your painting program of choice.

However you should be familiar with the following features: layers, layer properties, custom brushes, custom brush properties (dynamics), Dodge and Burn. Since Im recording this whole process from start to finish Ive also opted to avoid brush pressure settings for the painting stages but please feel free to use them yourself if youre following this workshop through.

DVD Assets
The files you need are on your DVD in the Bill Corbett folder in the Workshops section. SOFTWARE: Download a trial of Paint Shop Pro at www.corel.com.

The easiest way to prepare for the portrait is to gather all the elements that youll need in order to get the job done basically all of your reference material. This might include your own photos, sketches and possibly even a mirror. This is the stage where youll work out your

Preparation

composition, lighting and colour palette for the picture youre about to paint. The main purpose here is to have a reasonable idea of what it is you intend doing before you do it and not to waste time preparing additional reference material so that when you get painting you dont break the flow of concentration.

Creating the line drawing for the painting now will become invaluable later on if you spend the time making sure that you have your proportions and alignments down correctly. First I create a new image of about 130x90mm (300dpi) and immediately generate a new layer on top of this. I use a basic round brush shape of about five pixels, enough to roughly draw in the basic shapes for the body parts. I indicate the bone structure around the head and shoulders and draw in the basic bodice shape for the chest. I loosely indicate where the facial features will be aligned.

Drawing
Greyscale painting
An old technique, monotone painting will help you achieve your contrasts and lighting far quicker than starting out in colour, especially if youre trying to achieve a degree of realism in a short amount of time. Creating a colour layer over a greyscale painting is almost the same as laying down fine glazes in traditional mediums such as oils and acrylic.

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Workshops

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The first thing I do is flood-fill the background layer with midtone grey and loosely brush in a low Opacity off-black background. I then use the Airbrush to add a little contrast to the body, a very basic light and shadow placement. I make a copy of the line layer and merge it with the background, then continue to rough out before blending everything into a hazy mess. I now begin the process of gradually building up the dark and light areas around the body. I use a Basic Round brush on 100 per cent Opacity and 70 per cent Hardness, and change to the Round Airbrush occasionally for a smoother blend.

Contrast layer and blend

Roughing it out

Once Ive roughed out a basic sketch I drop the Opacity and create a new layer, then sketch over the previous sketch on that new layer. Now I can decide which lines work best and be more selective in my drawing. If I make a mistake its easy to erase, and I still have the underlying sketch to guide me. I repeat this step again and again, each time setting the Opacity a little lower than before, until I get to the stage where I make the final, refined sketch for painting. At this point I double the image size and increase the brush size by five pixels. I now complete the final drawing and delete the other line layers.

Refine the drawing

Procedural backup
Limit your layers and make procedural saves of your work in progress every 15 to 30 minutes. Keep them in an easy-toremember sequence and preserve them until you get to the end of your project. Youll be very glad that you did so when the computer crashes halfway through a painting! Or when youre working on a computer with a low spec and more than three layers sends your Wacom crazy

First I create a new layer and start to paint in the main dark and light areas. I then drop the Opacity of the layer and blend out the tone. Once Im happy I merge the layer into the main picture and blend the changes with the Smudge brush. Now I repeat the process as before but tighten up the contrasting areas. I continue to do so until the figure looks a little more solid. To smooth the contrast out quickly I make a new layer and grab the midtone of the figure. I cover all the skin area with this tone and drop the Opacity of the layer until the contrast is a little less harsh, then merge it all together. I repeat the process to subtly build up the tones I need. To speed things up even more, I can create a layer of about four to five roughly blended tones and blend them in the same way.

Now that I feel the painting is starting to work I concentrate on accentuating the features. This requires smaller brushstrokes and smaller areas of high contrast, mainly around the facial features. Thankfully the line drawing on the top layer prevents me from going too far astray and I can start to add a little detail to the features while I make these smaller blends.

Bring out the features

Paste as transparent selection

Ctrl+Shift+E to make quick masks from black and white images.

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In depth Portrait speedpainting

I use a few random custom brushes to spatter randomly across a new layer for the background. Once Im reasonably satisfied I erase the parts overlapping the figure and tidy up the leafy effect.

Background

areas so it follows the contours of her skin. I then start to add all the details to her eyes, lips, nose and mouth and eyebrows. I create a new layer and use a small Splatter custom brush to randomly apply a low Opacity skin texture. I now finish off the greyscale stage by adding and blending in appropriate highlights.

I start by roughly painting out the hair dynamics on a new layer, basically where it kinks, curls and falls across the head and shoulders. I quickly block in some tone and blend them together. Then I create another new layer, draw in more refined strands, smudge these out and merge this layer into the previous one. I continue doing this but overlapping and crisscrossing the strands a little more so they look more natural. I create a new layer, add the dark contrasts and blend it in, then use small round Burn and Dodge brushes to bring out finer strands of hair. Next I blur out the hair ends and smooth

Hair
out anything that looks too rough. I keep the hair on a separate layer until Im happy with it, then blend it into the main picture.

Mirroring
I use three custom brushes stamped down to create the dress pattern. I then create Overlay layers to lighten and darken her dress. I also add a few Dodge highlights to it. I freehand in a vine motif using a backdrop shadow to make it stand out on the skin. I select the whole thing as a mask and airbrush in the skin contrast

10 0 Colour I increase the image size by

another third, convert from greyscale to colour and crop the image to its final size. I create a new layer and start to lay down all the basic colours for the painting without overlaps. I convert the layer into a Colour layer and lower its Opacity. Next I create an Overlay layer with low Opacity and add some lighter flesh tones and alternative hair colouring. I define some colour in the dress and blend in the flesh tones. I create at least another two overlays (with low Opacity) as I finish off the colouring stages. Lastly I create Dodge layers and lay down highlights I can blend in, then add a few lines in the hair and a few highlights where I feel theyre needed.

Detail

Another old but useful technique. It doesnt matter what level of artistic ability youre at because looking at your mirrored work is almost like having a third eye! It enables you to spot mistakes a lot easier and will generally help you keep on top of your work in progress. The good thing about digital work is you can continue to paint while you mirror back and forwards.

Draw a line
Alt+L ing Press Shift while click to the left mouse button draw a straight line from the last point the left mouse button was clicked.

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