Odwin Rensen's portraits typically use dramatic lighting, such as in this example.

Chiaroscuro refers to the use of dramatic lighting in a painting, usually with very dark (almost black) darks, and very light (nearly white) highlights. This high contrast adds to the three-dimensionality of a painting, and it adds drama. A painting employing chiaroscuro really catches the eye. Digital portrait artist Odwin Rensen, from The Netherlands, often employs chiaroscuro in his work with great effect. Odwin was kind enough to answer some questions about himself, and give us a detailed description of his working methods.

What is your art training and background?

I have no training for except maybe some training DVD’s I purchased over the years (Fay Sirkis, Brad Buttry, Scott Deardorff). I have always been a creative person and am blessed with drawing skills so as soon as I could handle a crayon I started drawing. So my traditional media would be mainly pencil. My working background has nothing to do with art. I’ve been a system administrator for many years, but right now I am without a job. This made my realise that I really don’t want to work in ICT anymore and I am following a course in Design, DTP and web design hoping this will allow me to steer my career in a different direction. I have always been interested in art and design so for me this feels like the yellow brick road to follow.

What made you decide to begin using Corel Painter?

I started out with photo enhancement and later on making compositions from all kinds of images into a new original image. So after learning to work with Photoshop (PS) I soon discovered the options to draw and paint with PS, but for me there was always something missing. I am not saying that PS in not a great product, because it is, but I think it is not completely optimized for painting. So I started to look for alternatives, beginning with all kinds of software that promised to change photos into paintings, but they all are useless if you want a traditional looking style.

How did you learn Painter?

I followed some DVD tutorials to get me started, but I learn the most by just experimenting, making lots of mistakes and learning from them. I took me some time to really understand all the different functions and tools inside Painter.

Please talk about your working methods. Do you use Photoshop and filters?

Yes, I definitely use Photoshop, since I do not like the way Painter handles color correction. Photoshop does a much better job for altering hue and saturation, dodging and burning, layer masks, etc. That is why I always save my files in PSD format so I can jump back and forth between Painter and Photoshop. I sometimes use Painter’s Surface Texture tool to create an impasto look.

What are you currently working on with Painter? Do you do commissioned portraits?

I do commissioned portraits, but I find it very very difficult to get my digital art business off the ground. I’ve been to fairs, have my work displayed in art galleries, I have some work published in the Official Painter Magazine as well as the Advanced Photoshop magazine, but in the 2-3 years I am making these portraits I have never had a real order for a commissioned portrait painting. The problem is I am a creative person not a business person. So mainly I make these portraits for myself just because I love making them.

Any advice for artists trying to learn Painter?

When I first started out with Painter I thought I would never learn it because it looks so complicated, but by sticking with it it became easier and easier. So my top 3 tips would be 1) just keep on going and experiment with it and you will get better. You maybe will never use 100% Painter has to offer, but you will find out what works for you and create your own toolset. The same applies to Photoshop. 2) try some kind of training, there are some good training DVDs out there or have a look at www.digitalartacademy.com where they have all kinds of courses in Painter and Photoshop. 3) Don’t be discouraged in the beginning, remember that all beginning is hard, but no one can make what YOU make as every person is unique in the way we express ourselves in art.

Gallery of Odwin’s Work

Following the gallery, Odwin describes his working methods in detail.

 

Working Methods

First I adjust the photo in PS, alter the color, rotate the photo a bit, resize it and finally sharpen the photo with a Highpass filter: duplicate layer, filter>other>highpass and turn the levels so you get some details of the photo back but don’t over do it. Next set layer blend mode to Overlay or Soft light and play with the opacity the get the result we want. Then I save it as a PSD file and open it in Painter.

The next phase is to get rid of all the photographic noise in the picture. For that I just use a slightly altered version of the Grainy Water blender. With that brush I repaint the whole skin (face, hands etc.), with a smudge technique, I use very very little pen pressure and follow the contours of the face, but keep in mind that the colors do not mix too much else it is going to look “dirty” and we change to way the person looks.
 The same procedure I use for the hair and eyebrows, but I use the Acrylic Captured Bristle brush and follow the direction of the hair. I use a small brush and also little pen pressure.

After I have done the whole head, I just roughly paint over the clothes with the normal Grainy Water blender, more pen pressure and bigger brush, just painting over the clothes in big loose strokes.

 After I placed the foundation, the next step is to dramatize the highlights and shadows. So first I bring in some hotspots on the nose, chin, cheeks, keeping in mind where the original light source is coming from in the photo. For this I use an Airbrush or a Chalk if you want a bit more texture and just blend it back in with the Grainy Water brush. I save the painting (PSD) and go back to PS.

I use Select>color range and put the eyedropper on one the hotpots and adjust the Fuzzy level to get a nice selection of all the lighter colors in the face, don’t bother about the background if it gets selected. If you don’t want that you can also roughly select all the skin with the Lasso Tool and then do a Select>Color range, so you only select from the lasso selection. Either way with the highlights selected I go to Curves and move the white slider to the left until I get these nice painterly highlights. I do the same for the shadows, putting the eyedropper on a dark (shadow) part of the face.



Now it already start to look like a painting. Going back to Painter and I just keep adding in more detail to the painting, highlighting shiny stuff, hair strands, eyes. For this I use the dodge/burn tool with a 3-4 px brush at 12% and just draw in light and dark hairs, reflections. For the highlights in the eyes I use the FX Glow brush (clone color and clone source set to painting). When I am done adding all the little details (which in the end give a huge effect) I make the plans for the background or better said, the foreground is becoming the background. So that is the next step : the background.



I duplicate the layer of the painting and select the Living Oils Oil Sponge Large HSV5 (this is a very painterly brush I picked up from the internet) brush and just start to “destroy” the duplicated layer with that brush. So I use the painting itself to create a nice raw painted background, already keeping in mind where the light comes from and where the shadow of the person should be. When you have done that you should not be able to recognize what that painting was, off course we still have the original layer on the bottom. After saving the file and opening it in PS, I put a layer mask on the top layer, which will be our background. Now with the mask icon selected, the foreground color set to black, I use a painterly brush (one of Richard Ramsey’s) with 60-70 % opacity and softly start to paint on the top layer. I start to bring out the eyes and center of the face, than I move to the rest of the head. When the face becomes visible I select a soft brush, opacity 20-30 % flow 20% and keep on bringing forward the face until it is nicely blended with background (if some of the original layer is coming through do not bother yet, you can blend that in later).

Now it is time for the magic trick. The painting will look soft, blurry, misty, blended so now, with the mask icon of the top layer still selected I use the soft brush 100% opacity/flow and make the brush size a bit larger than the eye is and start to paint over the eyes. By doing this the eyes will start to “pop out” of the painting. I follow this procedure for all other parts I want to pop out. 

Now the painting is almost finished and we need to bring in a little more drama. So open it in PS, make a new layer and fill it with the darkest color of the painting. Next make a layer mask and select a soft brush (opacity 20-30%) set color to black and paint back the face, starting from the light source all the way to the dark part of the painting. Set opacity to 50-60% and again start painting back the face, parts you want to keep dark you just don’t paint over. Finally you set the opacity to 100% and bring back those parts that should be in full light. The last step is a level and saturation adjustment, just adjust it to your taste.



So this is basically the structure I use for my paintings, of course I experiment a lot with different brushes etc, but for a guide I use what I just described. Hope you find it helpful and it is my way of saying THANKS!!!!

You can see more of Odwin’s work–and contact him for portrait commission work–at his website, www.studiowin.com.

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Create a traditional pastel drawing with a line drawing overlay. Painter creates the line drawing for you automatically.

One common way of creating a traditional pastel drawing is to start with a light pencil sketch on the colored pastel paper. Pretty quickly, however, the pastel covers over the line drawing. One of the (many) advantages of working digitally is that you can keep the line drawing visible until you no longer need it. You can even leave it as part of the finished piece. The method we’ll learn today uses three layers in Corel Painter: a sketch layer, a painting layer, and the canvas, which will serve as our colored pastel paper.

Step One – Start with a Photo

To begin, open up an image, such as this lily photo, from a stock photo disc. The size for this example is about 10 inches square at 72ppi.

Step Two – Create the Sketch

You can draw your own line art, of course, but I chose to use Painter’s sketch tool. To use it, go Effects > Surface Control > Sketch. This brings up a dialogue box. In case you can’t make out the settings, I used Sensitivity at nearly 4.0, Smoothing 2.6, Grain and Threshold Low at 0, and Threshold High at 72%. When you press OK, the photo is replaced with a line drawing on white paper.

Step Three – Your Sketch is Done

Here’s what the resulting sketch looks like. Notice we’re still on one layer, the original Canvas layer.

Step Four – Float the Sketch

I’d like to have the sketch be on a layer above my canvas. How you do this is something that took me years to figure out in Painter: you need to Float it! What the devil is that, you ask? It means taking what’s on the canvas and creating a new layer with it. (Similar to duplicate layer in Photoshop.) The reason this took me years to decode is that there is NO menu command to do this. You can’t duplicate the Canvas layer: you must Float it. Here’s how you float the Canvas: go Select > All, and then click on the “move tool”, which is right next to the brush tool in the toolbox. Hold down the Command key (Mac) or Control key (Windows) and click inside image area, anywhere. Bingo! Your sketch is now on a layer above the Canvas, and the Canvas is now blank. (Note: this is how it works in Painter X. They may have made it more user-friendly in Painter 11.)

Step Five – Fill the Canvas with Color

Now let’s apply a color to our canvas. One way to do this is Effects > Fill > Current Color. Pick a color you’d like for your pastel paper. If you choose a dark color, however, your line work will be hard or impossible to see in later steps. You can always go darker later. There’s another advantage of digital media: you can change the color of your paper even after the painting is done!

Step Six – Hey, Where’s my Color?

You told Painter to fill the Canvas with your current color, but the image is still white, right? What’s the deal? The problem is that the top layer is totally opaque right now. You can’t “see through it” to the Canvas below. Here’s where the magic happens. You will make the top layer into a special layer that you can see through, while retaining visibility of the linework. Cool, huh? I’ll show you how in the next step.

Step Seven – Change the Layer Blending Mode

In the layer palette, right up in the top left corner, you’ll see the word “Default.” That’s the Blending Mode drop-down. Click on the arrow there, and you’ll see all the available blending modes. Select the one called Multiply. Think of it as a sort of Add operation: it adds non-white pixels on the layer to the layers below. (That’s why I think they should call it Add, not Multiply, but that’s just me.)

Voila! A see-through drawing

Now you see your line drawing and the canvas color together. It’s like magic.

Step Nine – Insert the Painting Layer

Now we’ll create a layer to paint on. First, activate (click on) the sketch layer. Double click on the name, and a box pops up. Change the layer name to “Sketch.” Say OK. Let’s lock the Sketch layer so we don’t accidentally paint on it. With the Sketch layer active, click on the Lock Icon in the upper section of the layers palette. You’ll see a lock appear in the Sketch layer. Next, activate the Canvas layer, and go Layer > New Layer. A layer appears between Canvas and Sketch. Rename this one “Painting Layer.”

Step Ten – Paint the background

Making sure the Painting Layer is active, pick the Square Hard Pastel 40. Choose a good paper surface, like Artist’s Rough Paper. Choose a color for the background and paint away, letting the grain show through here and there if you like. You can just go with the Canvas color if you like, and skip this step. To be honest, I’m not sure why I did this step! I end up erasing it. Oops!

Step Eleven – Begin to Paint the Iris

With the Artist’s Pastel, begin laying in color for the iris. Notice how the magic continues: your line drawing remains completely visible even as you paint over it.

Step Twelve – Finishing Up

As I painted the iris, I decided I liked the near-black background in the original photo. To make the background black, here’s what I did:

1. activate the Canvas layer
2. choose black as your current color
3. go Effects > Fill > Current Color
4. activate the Painting Layer, and erase the background

As you erase, it will look like you’re painting with black, as you reveal the black Canvas. This is what I should’ve done in the first place, so I apologize. Sorry folks – we’re live here! When your painting is done, you can turn off the sketch layer, or leave it on and turn down the opacity to suit taste, as I did here. I included a lot of screenshots today, so that you could see everything I did. If anything was unclear, please leave a comment and I’ll answer it right away. Thanks for reading!

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With some simple adjustments in Photoshop, you can turn any interesting texture photograph (left) into a stunning background for a portrait. Texture photo by Kuschelirmel-stock. Ballerina portrait copyright by Chris Pike.

In a previous post, we looked at how you can create the look of a traditional studio portrait using the filters that come with Photoshop. Today we’ll show you how to get exciting results using a photograph of a textured surface as your starting point. As you can see in the above example, the final background can be quite different from the original texture. The method we’ll use allows you to adapt stock photos to suit the mood and color scheme of your portrait, using non-destructive layers. Let’s get started!

Our portrait is a live-action shot taken during a ballet performance. While the pose is near-perfect, the background is pretty drab. So the first step is to remove the figure from the background. There’s many ways to do this, and you probably have your own favorite way of masking out a figure, so I’ll just quickly give the method I used. Rename the main layer from “Background” to “Ballerina.” Then insert a layer below it, filled with white. With a soft eraser brush, carefully paint up to the edges of the figure. Select the remainder of the background and hit Delete. Your figure is now on a transparent layer with no background.

Separate the figure from the background, so that it is on a transparent layer by itself. Original photo copyright Pike Photography, Hattiesburg, MS.

For our background, I’ll use a stock photograph from deviantArt member Kuschelirmel-stock. You can see this texture at the top of the article, next to the finished portrait. I’m sure you’ll agree the final background is quite different from the original stock texture. This was achieved by adding a purple color fill layer below the texture layer. By turning down the opacity on the texture layer, the purple color shows through. Above this two adjustment layers are added. By keeping each alteration on a separate layer like this, you can continue to tweak all the parameters until they are working together the way you want. This flexibility allows your creativity to do its thing. Give it a try, and you’ll see!

Sometimes it helps to think of layers like panes of glass. Turning down the opacity, as we do here with the texture layer, allows us to “see” some of what’s below it. The mask on the Hue/Saturation adjustment layer is like a pane of glass coated with black, with a clear oval in the middle. This darkens the edges. Finally, the top levels layer darkens the whole “sandwich”. This helps our dancer to really pop.

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This week we look at some portfolio sites: places you can show off your work, often for free, and still look like a million bucks.

In a previous post from a year ago, we took a look at places to show off your work. I’ve recently found a few new (to me, at least) portfolio hosting sites, so it seemed time to revisit this topic. Herewith are some of the best places to create an impressive, professional-looking portfolio.

Viewbook

Viewbook is a classy-looking site, producing some very nice-looking portfolios. I was looking for a way to allow visitors to see zoomed-in high-resolution version of photos, but it doesn’t look like Viewbook has such an animal. Clicking on a photo in the portfolio just advances the slide, which I found counter-intuitive. The pricing options run from $48-$228 per year. Within that, there are albums, portfolio pages, and custom websites, though what these categories indicate remains a mystery. Like many of the sites listed here, explanations and good hard information is usually lacking. With some combination of price and portfolio-type-thing, you can allow users to download images, but how that’s done isn’t explained until (I guess) you sign up. There is no way to monetize your gallery. You can show work, but you can’t sell it here. If you’re interested in selling images, check out this post.

Coroflot

This free site is all about connecting freelance designers with employers. There are job postings, and member galleries (portfolios) are grouped by a variety of categories, such as Art Direction, Architecture, or Illustration. There’s no limit on the number of images you can store. Coroflot pays its bills by running ads (not many) and by charging employers for job postings. If you don’t mind having the Coroflot logo at the top of your portfolio pages, this site might just right for you.

Krop

Krop is sort of like Viewbook, but it offers a 10-image-limit free version, and it has a job board. The paid option, at $9.99 a month, allows domain name mapping, RSS feeds, embedded videos, and a range of templates. The free version, however, ain’t bad looking at all. The only help available here is a very nice intro video. As with Viewbook, there is no FAQ or Help link. I hope this isn’t a new trend. Deciding among all these different sites is hard enough without having all the facts available. By the way, Krop is well-named: it has a built-in thumbnail cropping tool that will save you lots of time. It also includes a nifty resume builder that does a nice job. For professional designers, Krop is pretty darn cool.

deviantArt Portfolio

A few months ago, the folks at deviantArt began to offer gallery space in the form of a portfolio builder. It builds a very basic portfolio, with only a couple of options to choose from. I can only assume deviantArt has plans to develop this thing further, because right now it’s only real advantage is that it’s free (though there is a paid option). Once again, there isn’t any Help information, just a sexy video to get you to sign up. There’s no way to browse through existing portfolios, even to view some examples. No one is going to happen upon your portfolio, so you’ll need to promote its URL elsewhere. I’d like to see deviantArt develop this into a “professional-level” side of their site, but we’ll have to wait and see what they come up with.

FFolio

Ever wish you could create a professional-looking portfolio using Flickr? Soon you’ll be able to, using FFolio. The idea here is to store your photos on Flickr, and then display them using FFolio. That’s about all they’re saying at this point, but if you’re interested, sign up and they’ll email you when they go live.

Carbonmade

Carbonmade, like Coroflot and Krop, is aimed at professionals seeking work. Galleries are called projects. Portfolios are grouped by categories, and within those categories, the most recently updated portfolios appear first. This sounds, at least at first, like a fair system. There is a free version (5 projects/35 images limit) and a paid version, at $12 per month. And thankfully, there is a Help page.

Behance

Of the sites listed here, Behance is probably the one chosen by most top professionals. Here you can find work, and then share files as you develop a project. There are a lot of big names here. You’ll need to fill out a request for an invitation before you can get started.

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The new watercolor brushes for Painter by John Derry do a great job duplicating the look and feel of traditional watercolor. Painting by John Derry.

As a long-time traditional watercolorist, I’ve never had much luck with Painter’s watercolor brushes. I just couldn’t get Painter to reproduce that characteristic look of watercolor, such as wet-into-wet, random areas of unpainted white peeking through, “happy accidents,” and so on. So I was very excited when I learned that John Derry (one of the original “founding fathers” of Painter) had developed a new set of watercolor brushes for Painter. Last week, John gave an online demonstration (a “webinar”) of the brushes. He created the painting above as we watched. John will be posting this webinar on his site soon, and I’ll add the link for it here when he does. I found it very helpful to see how the brushes are used.

A close-up showing how well the brushes mimic traditional watercolors.

The new brushes install as a brush category, and there are fourteen variants in the set. Half of these are “gel” brushes, and the other half are digital watercolor variants. It’s easy to tell which are which since the brush names begin with either “Gel” or “Wet.” All the brushes work best on a layer with a blending mode of Gel. This is the secret to how the brushes are able to mimic the translucent, glowing quality of real watercolor. They all work on default blending mode layers, as well, with somewhat different effects. I’d recommend doing a lot of playing at first, just to get a feel for the brushes.

You can use the Wet brushes and the Gel brushes together. Since the Wet brushes are Digital Watercolor, however, you’ll need to dry the watercolor before the Gel brushes will interact with color laid down. To do this, go Layer>Dry Watercolor Layer.

Let’s take a look at how each of the brushes work. The following illustrations and descriptions come from the instructions John Derry provides with the brushes. Thank you, John, for letting me steal your work!

Gel Diffusion (above, right) diffuses color on the current layer. Gel Diffusion is continuous: as long as pressure is applied, diffusion is continuously applied. The longer diffusion is applied to the underlying color, the lighter the diffused area becomes. Layer type: Gel

I’ve just begun exploring what these brushes can do, but already I’m quite impressed. No doubt you’ll find some brushes more to your liking than others. As they say, different strokes for different folks. Some of the brushes are meant to be used occasionally, similar to dabbing with a paper towel, or scratching with a razor blade to reveal whites in traditional watercolor.

You can order John’s Watercolors directly from John Derry on his blog. They are $35USD.

My first painting using John's Watercolors. This looks a lot like my traditional watercolor portraits. Brushes used were Gel Mixer for most, and a touch of Gel Diffuser to lighten areas. Also some Gel Opaque for details.

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A Special Reply, by Anthony Waichulis. Oil on Masonite, 8x10 inches.

I wasn’t quite sure what to call this best-of list, since it includes art hosted on online forums, commercial sites, museum sites, online galleries, and a portfolio site as well. I went with “25 Best Art Gallery Sites,” though that’s not quite accurate. Basically, what I’ve assembled here is a list of the 25 best sites for finding great artwork, both the traditional and the digital kinds. The amount of quality artwork available for viewing online is just staggering. The Art Renewal Center alone has over 60,000 paintings and drawings on its site. Then there’s the Smithsonian, the Royal Collection, the National Museum of American Illustration…there’s a lot of art here. You might want to bookmark this page for future reference.

If you know of a site that should be here, but isn’t, by all means please leave a link in the comment section at the bottom. Thanks! Happy gallery hopping!

The Royal Collection “e-Gallery Online” hosts a large number of works from the Queen’s own art collection. Searchable and well-organized. You can file reprint requests here, as well.

This is the site for studying the work of Johannes Vermeer. Every work by the master is here, along with information about the time period and the artist. High-resolution images. A beautifully-designed site.

The National Museum of American Illustration, whose collection is housed in a Gilded Age mansion in Newport, RI, hosts this site showcasing illustrators of the “Golden Age of Illustration.” The online samples are small and few in number, but it’s a good place to get started learning about N.C. Wyeth, Howard Pyle, Maxfield Parrish, and other greats of the period.

The Fantasy Fine Art gallery is traditional fantasy art by some two dozen artists, including Frank Frazetta, the Hildebrandt brothers, and Steven Stahlberg.

Olga’s Gallery hosts over 10,000 paintings, arranged alphabetically, by country, and by art movement. A simple site focused on presenting art (and some ads).

The Smithsonian American Art Museum has a large number of online exhibitions. Click on the logo, left, to check it out. The Luce Foundation Center for American Art page also has links to online artwork.

The Museum Syndicate site hosts over 28,000 works by 740 artists, and the numbers continue to grow. You can browse by artist, country, museum, or by a list of tags.

The Salmagundi Club, in New York City, has been around since 1871. They hold many exhibitions each year. Click on the logo, left, to go to a page with several dozen exhibition links.

The Athenaeum site hosts over 40,000 browsable works of art. Click on the image, left, to go to the full list. You can sort the list by artist name or artwork title.

The Art Renewal Center site contains over 60,000 art works, making it probably the largest repository of art images on the internet. Emphasis here is on classical works.

Stroke of Genius is a commercial site that features working professional portrait artists (traditional media only). The quality here is second to none. A great place to study portraiture.

As a painting medium, egg tempera predates oil painting. This site hosts works by members of the Society of Tempera Painters.

The Colored Pencil Society of America site has galleries showing works from past exhibitions. If you’ve never seen what colored pencil can do, this site will surprise you.

Jason Godbey is a brilliant young artist working in the digital realm. His architectural scenes are both complex and serene at the same time. A master of mood and light.

While you’ll find great artwork all over the forums at the CG Society site, the cream of the crop is here, at the CG Choice Awards galleries. Digital masterworks, divided up by 2D and 3D.

As with the CG Society site, Epilogue has an overwhelming amount of work to sort through, so again I’ve provided a link to the Editor’s Choice listing. Fantasy and science fiction only.

CG Gallery is very similar to CG Society, both in name and concept. There is a lot of work here, broken down by various tags (Photoshop, Painter, Cinema 4d, etc.). You could get lost for days here.

Art Squared is the new kid on the block, and they seem to be headed for great things. Less than a year old, the site creators have already published a Ballistic-style gallery book filled with submitted artworks. A second book is still open for entries (until October 31, 2009).

Check this site out for some of the best 3D still images anywhere. Raph.com has a large jury (all men, I notice) that must approve a piece before it goes up on the site. The result is very high quality.

Digital Art is another juried site, though in this case I believe it’s only one or two people doing the jurying. Because it’s not a free-for-all, like deviantArt, the quality here is pretty high.

Concept Art is much like CG Society, with one difference: there’s no easy way to find the best work. Even the “best of” page is covered with hundreds of icons (literally), each pointing to an artist’s work. Kudos for trying to give everyone equal exposure, I suppose.

3D total is another juried site, and the work here is just superb. You can browse by several different categories. The emphasis is definitely on quality over quantity. Highly recommended.

3DM3.com was started up in 2001, with a focus on 3D, but some 2D as well. There is a rating system that allows the best work to float to the top. Check out the “best of” listings.

CG Arena has juried submissions and an active community, so there’s some excellent work here. It’s broken down by 2D and 3D. Again, quality over quantity. Enjoy!

We finish up our list of 25 online galleries with The Waichulis Studio, an atelier in Northeastern Pennsylvania. There’s some nearly superhuman rendering going on up near Scranton. Check it out, and be amazed. Trompe l’oeil lives!

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Old Lady by Odwin Jensen

I’ve decided that this week’s article is going to be sheer eye candy. For one thing, I notice there hasn’t been an Inspiration article since July, and for another, I’ve got a bad cold. And for yet another thing, this is the 100th post to the Digital Image Magazine! So I’m just taking it easy today, posting some of my favorite work by some digital artists. It’s my pleasure to draw attention to these amazing up-and-coming artists. Enjoy!

PS – click on an artist’s name to go to his/her website or gallery.

Odwin Rensen

This Dutch artist has a phenomenal style. I’ve included one before/after example (top), so you can see how much he adds to the work. His portraits are very realistic, and yet they are also very much paintings. This is a hard thing to achieve, and Odwin Rensen makes it look easy. I’m hoping to get Mr. Rensen to write a tutorial for Digital Image. Stay tuned!

Tribute to George Carlin by Odwin Rensen.

Phil McDarby

This artist, from Dublin, Ireland, brings a whole new meaning to the term “photo manipulation”. McDarby does amazing things with crazy numbers of layers, creating some truly magical work. He also uses 3D software, such as Maya, his own photography, and a Wacom tablet for painting. From his website: “At the heart of his work is a desire to capture a sense of magic and wonder – that feeling of child-like excitement and discovery that we can lose touch with as adults.”

Magic by Phil McDarby

Imagine by Phil McDarby

Wonder by Phil McDarby.

Jeff Johnson

This painting came out of a tutorial in Corel Painter Magazine, issue no. 2. He’s really nailed that old Flemish style.

Flemish style portrait by Jeff Johnson.

Randis Albion

Albion’s work brings fantasy into the modern-day world. Click on the image to see a larger version.

Deep Diver by Randis Albion

Kobi McKenzie

Kobi is one of my favorite artists on the Corel Painter Magazine member’s gallery. She does wonderful portraits of children, especially playing team sports. Check out the marvelous background in the portrait of the football player. Click on her name to visit Kobi.

Somana by Kobi McKenzie.

Cetin Tuker

Turkish artist Cetin Tuker created the following image using 3D Max 7. It took over 130 hours! I love this image. It has a very painterly, old-world feel.

Sad Street by Cetin Tuker

Gilles Tran

Last but not least is Gilles Tran, from Paris, who is an agronomist by day and an artist by night. He seems to be less active in recent years, but in the early 00’s he was producing some of the most original–and sometimes hysterically funny–3D images to be found anywhere. I’ve got one of his posters on my wall. Couldn’t leave without mentioning the amazing Mssr. Tran. His site is a work of art in itself. Enjoy!

Elephants Standing on Mini Coopers by Gilles Tran

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Beyond Digital Photography - Transforming Photos into Fine Art with Photoshop and Painter (Peachpit Press 2009)

In this review, we’ll take a look at the new book from Cher Threinen-Pendarvis (author of the popular Painter Wow series) and co-author Donal Jolley. It’s called “Beyond Digital Photography – Transforming Photos into Fine Art with Photoshop and Painter.” In the Introduction, the authors state, “This is not a quick trick book, but a book where the authors take the reader by the hand and demonstrate the creative process in a conversational manner.” This is a fair description, with the added caveat: this book is NOT for beginners. The intended audience seems to be artists who are intermediate to advanced Photoshop and Painter users.

This beyond-the-basics focus allows the book to cover ground not explored in other books on either Photoshop or Painter. These two programs really complement each other, so it’s wonderful to finally have an in-depth book showing how Painter and Photoshop can be used together. Here’s a detailed summary of the book, to help you decide whether or not this book is for you.

Chapter 1 – Getting Started

The chapter provides an introduction to the interfaces of Painter and Photoshop, as well as the Wacom Intuos 4. This seems odd, since this is not a beginner’s book. Beginning with this chapter and continuing throughout, however, there is some good information about Photoshop Camera Raw. As the book’s title implies, each exercise begins with a digital photograph. Most chapters show how to use Photoshop Camera Raw prior to painting. As you’ll see, it’s very powerful, and you’ll want to include it into your workflow, if you haven’t already.

Chapter 2 – Painterly Techniques for Non-Painters

This chapter, the longest in the book, is all about how to achieve good “uncomputerish” results with filters and automation. It’s also your first look at a workflow that moves back and forth between Photoshop and Painter. Each section begins with the artist’s thoughts on the subject and style at hand, along with details of the initial photography. You’ll learn sophisticated use of multiple filters, combining effects via layers, layer masks, and blend modes. Similarly, Painter’s Auto-Painting and Woodcut tools use multiple layers to add extra finesse to the process. Sections in this chapter include:

• Creating Pop Art (Photoshop and Painter)
• Using Filters for an Impressionist Watercolor Look (Photoshop)
• Flexible Auto-Painting for an Impressionist Treatment (Photoshop and Painter)
• Simplifying a Photograph to Achieve a Hand-Rendered Result (Photoshop and Painter)
• Using Filters for a Realist-Style Oil Treatment (Photoshop)
• Creating a Bold, Graphic Woodcut Look (Photoshop and Painter)

Chapter 3 – Emphasizing the Subject

One way to help your subject stand out is by blurring or softening the background. You’ll see how to do this in Photoshop using a mask to selectively blur parts of the image, and in Painter by using the Restoration palette to bring back details after blending. This is followed by sidebars:

• Nondestructive Dodging and Burning – how to use an Opacity layer darken and lighten portions of an image
• Enhancing the Subject Using Saturation – copy part of an image to a separate layer to selectively apply an adjustment layer
• Sepia-toning a Background – similar to the previous step, but this time using the colorize option of Hue/Saturation

Chapter 4 – Adding Texture to Photographs

Composition and design are discussed throughout the book. Here, though, it gets special attention as you follow the artist through her thought process for cropping and retouching a complex snapshot, making it simpler and compelling. Then you’ll dive into Photoshop’s powerful Art History brush. Different brushes are used in combination with layer masking to move beyond a mechanical, computerized look.
Next, in Painter you’ll learn about Dry Media and texture, as Cher paints one of her signature pastels (the image on the book cover, in fact). The final part gives you an approach to a black and white charcoal look.

Chapter 5 – Emulating the Look of Watercolor

This chapter (my personal favorite) shows two completely different ways to create the unmistakable look of traditional watercolor on paper. In part one, Cher shows how to edit for composition in Photoshop. Then, she moves into Painter to use the Smart Blur and Hue and Saturation tools built into the Underpainting palette. She lowers the detail and raises the image to a higher key, making it more suitable to the watercolor style she is about to use. Cher then gives a very good explanation of how Painter’s Digital Watercolors work. The end result is just stunning. The second part has Donal Jolley using Photoshop alone to create a convincing hard-edged watercolor portrait. His main tool here is the Pattern Stamp with, of all things, a modified Dry Media brush. He gets a neat salt-resist effect by clever use of a layer mask, and finishes up with applying an Overlay layer containing a scan of an actual watercolor.

Chapter 6 – Achieving Acrylic and Oil-Painted Looks

Cher begins the chapter with a great demonstration of Painter’s Real Bristle Brushes. She paints a beautful late afternoon seascape with fluffy cumulus clouds sailing overhead. She then takes on oil painting using the Old Master chiaroscuro technique, using Painter’s Artist’s Oils. The third part is another favorite, this time by Donal Jolley. In Photoshop, he uses a separate layer each for large, medium, and detail strokes. The usual approach would be to use different size brushes all on a single layer. But by this point in the book you’re beginning to see the special advantages–and the added control–to using multiple layers. What I especially liked was how the three layers start out as blank (transparent). Paint is “pulled up” from a base layer, much the way cloning works in Painter. This works by use of the “Sample All Layers” checkbox. Very cool stuff. Jolley also explains the importance of noise for this technique, and a sidebar shows various ways to (excuse the pun) make noise. In the fourth part, Cher paints a virtuoso oil painting using Artist Oils. The conversational tone makes it seem like you’re at a workshop, listening as the artist explains what she’s doing–and why.

Chapter 7 – Creating Abstract Art from Photographs

As the intro to this chapter says, this chapter is about painting “in a simple, yet powerful way.” It’s time to loosen up and stop worrying about staying within the lines. The first project is a close-up large scale floral in bright colors, done in Photoshop. You’ll use layers to create loose lines and bold shapes of color. This might be a fun project to do as a warming-up exercise. The second project is another sky painting, but with a difference. This time, Cher is more interested in capturing “movement and emotion,” using Real Bristle brushes and even a Watercolor brush to evoke sheets of rain.

Chapter 8 – Compositing and Collaging

In this chapter, you’ll watch as these two master artists assemble compositions from multiple photographs. Donal Jolley takes the first part, showing how he pieces together a complex of layers and masks to create a “simulation of reality.” Eight images are used for this project! In the second part, Cher’s project emphasizes strong, simple composition, beginning with a sketch to plan her piece. This project uses scans of paper texture combined with photographs. The collage is painted with chalks and pastels in Painter.

Conclusion

If you work with Painter and Photoshop, and you feel comfortable working with layers and layer masks, then you’re probably ready for this book. You’ll learn a lot about workflow and process when using these two programs together. The projects in this book are substantial, challenging, and exciting. Even if you’re very familiar with these programs, you’re still bound to learn a lot (I know I did!). Highly recommended.

A couple of illustrations from the book. These are by Donal Jolley.

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Learn how to use this easy method to create a traditional-looking pet portrait in pastel using Corel Painter.

In traditional pastel portraits, a dark or middle-toned pastel paper with a sandpaper-like surface is often used. The color of the paper shows through the pastel when the paper “tooth” isn’t quite filled up with color. This is a big part of the characteristic look of pastels. We can duplicate this same effect in Corel Painter by using two layers: a transparent drawing layer on top of a pastel paper layer. This keeps the pastel colors from mixing with the paper’s color, allowing it to behave just like traditional pastel on paper. We’ll use the Sandy Pastel Paper texture for our transparent drawing layer. It really shows off the Pastel variants we’ll be using.

This method is fast. The secret is the first step, which uses the Digital Airbrush to clone in color from the original photograph. This forms the base color that you will add pastel line work to. The key is to not overwork it. You’ll paint just the major shapes in the fur, but it will look like you painted every single hair. Remember: in pastel, less is more!

Step One – Setup

On the cloned copy, insert a new layer above the canvas.

Begin by opening your pet photograph in Corel Painter. Go File > Clone, then Select > All, and hit Delete(Mac)/Backspace(Win). The Canvas layer is now blank. Choose a color for your paper. We went with a dark maroon that will show off the dog’s fur nicely. Fill the Canvas layer with this color (use the Paint Bucket, or go Effects > Fill > Current Color). Insert a new layer (click the new layer icon at the bottom of the layers palette).

Turn on tracing paper (Cmd+T(Mac)/Ctl+T(Win)), and adjust the tracing paper’s opacity to 80% (use the tracing paper icon in the upper right of your image). You should see the original photo faintly now against the dark maroon of the canvas. Make sure you have the New Layer selected before painting!

Step Two – Clone with Digital Airbrush

Choose the Digital Airbrush Variant, size 100, opacity 20%, resat 25%, with the clone color icon turned on. Paint with long, sweeping strokes, following the direction of the fur. Make sure you’re painting on the new layer, not the Canvas layer. Keep going until you have passed just once over every part of the dog’s head.

Here we're just starting to paint with the Digital Airbrush. The tracing paper is turned on with opacity set to 80%.

Don’t overwork it. You’re just painting a color base for the pastel. Here’s what you’ll have at the end of Step Two:

Here's what the painting looks like after the Digital Airbrush step.

Step Three – Pastels

Use these three brushes for the pastel stage.

With the Sandy Pastel Paper active, choose the Square Hard Pastel, set at about 18% grain, 43% opacity. It should fill in most of the paper grain. Cloning in color from the original photograph, begin stroking over the large areas of color. Forget about details at this stage. You’re just building the base for now.

We're just beginning to paint with the Square Hard Pastel here.

Step Four – Detailing

For the more detailed areas, like individual locks of hair, switch to the Sharp Pastel Pencil at 70% opacity, 21% grain. Use a fairly large size, somewhere around 30 or 40. Paint groups of hairs, not single strands. What we’re after is a feeling of fur, which is made up of shapes of color. Feel free to switch back to the Square Hard Pastel as needed. Here’s what it should look like about half-way through Step Four:

Step Four close-up, showing some detail work beginning on top of the Square Pastel on top of the Digital Airbrush.

Step Five – Finishing Up

In traditional pastel, a blending stump is used to blend colors together. This fills in the grain of the paper, too, covering up the dark paper color. We’ll do the same thing using the Soft Blender Stump. For this, I like to turn Clone Color off, and choose colors with the eyedropper from the original photo. With a small size Soft Blender Stump (20 or less), go over the grainy pastel marks you made earlier, smoothing them and adding highlights as needed. To make the eyes pop, use the Soft Charcoal variant and enhance the brown of the iris. Blacken the pupil, and refine the catchlight.

Finished pastel portrait of Yorkshire Terrier (Yorkie). Based on photograph by Dennis Gillette, Best Friends Pet Photography, Emmaus, PA.

Finally, with the Canvas layer active, apply the Sandy Pastel texture (Effects > Surface Control > Apply Surface Texture. You’re done! When printed, your painting will look just like a traditional pastel (without all the dust!). Here’s a close-up:

Close-up of the finished painting. Notice how I didn't paint every single hair, but it looks like I did.

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A quick painting with a custom-made Captured Grass variant, based on a brush from Photoshop. You can vary the color, size, and opacity, just as with any brush in Painter. Image brushes like this can save you lots of time.

As you probably know, Photoshop brushes don’t work in Painter, and vice versa. But it’s quite possible to “convert” your favorite Photoshop brushes and bring them into Corel Painter. Painter’s Captured dab uses a greyscale bitmap image, just like the brushes in Photoshop. To convert them, just create an image of the brush tip in Photoshop, save the file, open it in Painter, and “capture the dab.” It’s really pretty easy, so let’s get to it.

First, create a new file in Photoshop, about 6 inches square at 300dpi, with a white background. Choose the Brush tool (select the brush icon, or press B). Open the brush selection list and find a brush you’d like to bring into Painter. I’ve got a brush shaped like blades of grass, so I’ll pick that one.

One click of the mouse in Photoshop produces this greyscale image, using a custom grass brush found on the internet.

With opacity and flow both set to 100, click the mouse once in the middle of the image. This gives you one copy of the brush “tip”. Now save this file (either JPG or PSD will work fine), and close it. Open this same file now in Painter.

(The following steps come from Mr. John Derry, one of the original creators of Painter. You can read his detailed instructions here if you need more information. Thanks, John!)

Step One: Copy a variant

Before you make changes to a variant, copy it and make your changes to that copy. This way you won’t overwrite the default brushes (or one of your own, for that matter). To do this, click on the little triangle next to the brush selector (as shown below), and you’ll get a flyout menu. Choose “Save variant…” For our example, I’ll be copying the Captured Bristle variant of the Acrylics. When I click on “Save variant…”, a save dialogue appears, with the name filled in for me as “Captured Bristle.” If you’re updating an existing brush, you’d accept the name, but in our case we’re creating a new version. So I’ll type in “Captured Grass”. When I click “OK”, a new variation named “Captured Grass” is added to the Acrylics category. To see it, click on the brush selector drop-down, and there it is. Select it.

Step Two: Capture the dab

At this point, you have your Photoshop brush image open in Painter, and your brand-new Captured Grass variant is selected. Time to capture the dab! This can be a little tricky, so follow along carefully. Type R (or choose the rectangular selection icon). Click on your mouse and begin to draw the selection outwards from the upper left corner. While drawing the selection, depress the Shift key. This constrains the selection to a perfect square. (Warning: do not press the Shift key first, or Capture Dab will be grayed out in the next step.)

With this square selection active, click the brush selector triangle again. This time, choose “Capture Dab” from the flyout menu. (If it is grayed out, try your selection again, making sure not to press Shift until you are making the selection.) Nothing seems to happen, but it did capture the dab. Now let’s adjust our new variant.

Step Three: Adjust

Open the Brush Creator (go Window > Show Brush Creator, or type CMD/CTL+B). Click on the Size tab, and you’ll see your brush shape in the preview window. If you see a black circle, instead, click on the preview window. This will toggle the brush preview. Here’s what you should see:

Click in the practice area to see how your new variant works. We’ll make some adjustments so that each image is separate, like in Photoshop. In this case, we don’t want the images to repeat one on top of another, like a normal Painter brush. We want it to act more like the Image Hose. So click on the Spacing tab. Move the sliders for “Spacing” and “Minimum Spacing” all the way to the right, so there’s no overlapping. There are other adjustments you can make, as laid out in John’s article, above. But for now, we’re all set. Go ahead and exit the Brush Creator. Notice that there is no save button on the Brush Creator. Whatever changes you make are automatically saved upon exit. This is why I had you work on a copy right from the start.

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