This image started as an exercise in improving the quality of my hair painting technique. A common flaw of my artwork has been that the hair is either simplistic, lifeless, or both. As I continued to work on the piece I decided to push the quality of every aspect. Normally I’ll hammer away at a painting over a day or two, but tend not to take enough time to consider any developing flaws or eventual lack of detail. This time I resolved to spend twice as long on the image, but spread over several days so that I wouldn’t get sick of working on it before I’d really tested my ability. The result is by far the most polished image I’ve ever painted.
I exaggerated the wind so that I could really go wild with the waviness of the hair. I also made the breasts larger than I normally would so I could experiment with variations in skin texture and trying to convey their softness (another thing that has sometimes been lacking in my work)…plus I just like big boobs. I added as much variation of skin tones as I thought I could sell convincingly without having an overtly coloured light source; so there are yellows, reds and blues in there, and I even used the purple of the lipstick on the skin in several places, believe it or not.
For once, there’s so much detail that some is lost at screen resolution (that’s usually not a problem with my artwork ). Here you can see some more of the detail to the eye and hair.
For once I can confidently say that this is the best I could have managed at my current skill level. It’s not often that I’m happy with a finished piece of artwork, but this is one of the exceptions. I’m going to go collapse somewhere now.
this is my first time looking through these threads(the artist within me has awoken again )
but man that looks fantastic… now is it digital or did you use oils… i like the real thin highlighs of yellow in her hair and how thin strands on the left are out a little bit like the wind is really blowing like real hair
i can barely tell but i think you did the same on the other side its just this one is not so high res i cant see. other than that i think its fantastic
Right now i think you can get more plains of structure in this painting. The light seems to be everywhere right now. When i squint my eye, her hair mass is about the same value. Nothing is telling me there is a dominant lightsource. Same can be said for her skin. Overall it is good, but I think with a few elements this can be better. Good job.
I used Painter IX with my Wacom Intuos3 tablet. 90% of the colour was laid down with the Tinting basic round brush, aside from some feathered Oils brushes for texture and a Sponge brush for the background. Most of the work was done with blenders. I used the Grainy blender to add texture to the dress, the Oily blender for the metallic effect on the trim, the Tinting blender for the hair and skin, and I also softened some areas of the skin with the Just Add Water blender.
Since the painting has a glamour model style subject, I was aiming for the effect of two-point studio lighting. Here’s how I envision the lighting setup:
On the right you have the elevated key light. On the left is a shoulder-high fill light pointed at a nearby wall so that it casts a little diffused light. The latter is just intended to define the form of the subject’s right arm and hip. I can see your point though, as there isn’t as much difference of intensity between the two lights as I had intended. Also the key is highlighting more of the hair than it should.
Pretty awesome overall, but the hand doesn’t really look right for some reson, it looks stiff and the hair doesn’t really ‘flow’ with it very well, so it looks a bit unnatural.
Other than that, it’s really good. Keep it up and keep getting better! :tup:
). Here you can see some more of the detail to the eye and hair.
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