Painting a Fantasy Portrait - Part 1

A lot of what I've learned about digital painting has come from artists sharing tips and techniques on the web. I try to keep up the tradition by doing the same.

My plan is to take this piece from sketch to finish, showing the process on this blog in a series of posts. The finished piece will probably get posted to a couple of sites, under my tag "digistyle," but the creation process will be a blogsclusive, only being posted here.

Step One:

I do some scribbling to get warmed up and then I'm ready to get started. I've decided to do a fantasy portrait. I look over some of the references that I've collected and choose three. Two are figures that have some of the elements that I want. The other is for background reference. After a few tries, I get a sketch down that I'm satisfied with. The sketch itself is just a reference for the painting, so it doesn't need to be perfect.

I should mention that I'm working in Corel Painter 9.5 and that the sketch and the gray foundation are on separate layers. This becomes more important as the painting progresses.

Step Two:

Next, I begin working on light and shadow. I decide on the direction of my light source and begin working from dark to light.

I work out the values in shades of gray, one layer for the figure, another for the foliage. These two layers are between the sketch layer and the solid gray layer. This becomes my road map for the painting. Its not as detailed as some other studies that I've seen, but stopping here works for me. I have enough values and "clues" to begin adding color.