tutorial paint dahlig

8/8/2019 Tutorial Paint Dahlig

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Workshops

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espite the passing of timeand constant technologicaladvances that change the

ways art is produced, classicalmasterpieces remain as captivating asever. They are, even in the modern dayand age, an ultimate source ofinspiration to succeeding generations

of artists, both traditional and digital.These old paintings possess a set of

unique qualities which, even thoughtheyre hard to nail, make them standout still among modern artwork.

And so, one might ask the questions:Whats the essence of this style? What is

Marta Dahlig shows you how to add classicalpainting qualities to your everyday works

MODERNCLASSICAL PAINTING

it that makes a classical painting?And how can this be achieved?

In contrast to modern realism,classical stylisation goes far beyondtechnicalities. Its secret is not to rely onthe brushes used, but instead to focuson the recognition and correctimplementation of all the key elements

that form the soul of old masterspaintings the subject and colourchoice, composition and understandingof anatomy.

Because most of the work is doneinside the head on the level of planningthe image, this workshop will be mainly

D

1 Getting startedThe first step is to choose suitable

content for your artwork. Theres a hugevariety of subjects that can be foundamong classical paintings and, for thisworkshop, I chose something Ipersonally find to be the essence of theclassics a female portrait, set in anatural environment.

2 Choosing coloursWhile its quite easy to think ofcolour themes in your head, its oftentricky to actually choose particularshades. I have, however, some trickswhich help me out in the process. Start

theoretical. This time, Ill concentratenot on how, but what to paint. Ill sharesome hints and tips regarding thementioned key elements throughout thewhole process of composition andrendering. Where applicable, Ill alsodescribe the differences between modernand classical ways of depiction of certain

elements, and Im going to explain howto simulate traditional techniques withdigital media.

As my study subject, I chose late19th and early 20th Century paintings,especially those of Lord FrederickLeighton and William Bouguereau.

by picking one main colour that will bethe skins mid-tone (1). Then, mix thatcolour with mid-tones chosen for theforeground and background (2). To grabnice hues for highlights and shadows,

Marta DahligCOUNTRY:Poland

CLIENTS: Complex Arts,

PosterLounge, Ballistic

Born in 1986,

Marta Dahlig

is a young

and talented

artist who has

been working with

Painter for years. Shes a

freelance illustrator.www.marta-dahlig.com

DVD AssetsThe files you need

are on the DVD

FOLDERS: Sourcefiles,

Screenshots.

FILES: MartaFinal

SOFTWARE: Painter X,

Photoshop CS2 (demos)

apply the colour of your light source

using the different brush modesavailable in Photoshop on top of theskin tone results from step 2 (3).

3 The sketching beginsOnce you have the basics defined,you can start the actual sketchingprocess. However, there are a few thingsthat should be understood beforehand.The definition of beauty has changedimmensely over the past centuries and

so women perceived as beautiful 100years ago had qualities significantlydifferent than the modern icons ofbeauty. Furthermore, over the past fewcenturies the actual anatomy of womenhas changed.

I will be mentioning these distinctionsthroughout the workshop, but for nowthree basic differences are needed forinitial sketching: smaller height ofwomen in the past, which directly affects

the proportions (shorter limbs), theirwider hips and general figure plumpness.In short, avoid painting slender, willowymodels and try to give your charactersome stereotypical feminine qualities.

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Photoshop

& Painter

In depth Modern classical painting


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Painting silky hairThere are two main things to

remember when painting hair: first ofall, it should always look combed andtidy, so avoid any messy freefalls, loosestrands or fancy hairstyles. Keeping it

simple grants the best effects. Secondly,its not excessive texturing and shading every strand that counts in this case, butachieving a general feel of softness. Thehair should seem silky and smooth. Inorder to achieve this effect, rely solely onthe airbrush tool. Start with choosingthe mid-tone of your hair colour andmark the shape of the hair. Afterwards,choose a lighter colour and mark themain highlighted strands.

8 Smooth strandtexturingGradually move on to smaller and lighterstrands. The more you draw, the morerealistic the hair will look. Rememberto constantly switch between hues and,if you work in Photoshop, brush modesduring this step.

Apples, pears

and tissuesWhile its important to mark theplumpness of the character, its crucialnot to go overboard with it (unless youreaiming at a more Rubenesque

Doing researchWhen trying out a new

style, be sure to study

the chosen subject

thoroughly. Shallow

understanding will

always result in poorer

outcomes and shallower

ideas, so it really pays

to spend a lot of time

beforehand gathering

and analysing various

references, and

preparing yourself

for the challenge.

PROSECRETS

6 Defining facial featuresNow, lets move on to the face. First

of all, refrain from portraying any boldfacial features such as a strong jaw line,

cheekbones, puffy lips or a big nose. Theface ought to be soft and subtle, so give ita round shape, full cheeks, little lips anda small, straight nose.

As for facial expressions, avoidportraying strong emotions and givingthe character eye contact with the viewer.The vast majority of classical females arestaring somewhere into the distance with

4 Still sketching!Sometimes, as it was in my case,

one sketch isnt enough my charactersimply seemed to be too bulky and notenough Bouguereau. This was caused bytwo factors: general pose stiffness andthe heavy body build its extremelyimportant for the character to remaingraceful and natural. A way to avoid

rounded figures looking unattractive isto paint a character of a delicate andslender build (longer neck, delicate armsand so on) with some excessive tissueover certain areas.

5 Blending and texturingA rather common practice inrealism nowadays is to replace carefulshading and blending with an excessiveamount of textures. These effects are still

stunning and make an artists workeasier. In the case of classical stylisation,however, I advise you to refrain fromsuch practices. The point of this style isto hint at the details with the typicalbrush set, just like the masters did, ratherthan actually paint them with anyshortcuts such as photo brushes.

As the figure constitutes the main focalpoint, our goal is to achieve a realisticskin texture without using any actual

textures. This can be done by balancingrough and smooth blending.Rough blending of the blocked colours

can be done with Blender, but mightneed to be smoothed further with an

airbrush or perhaps Painters Just AddWater tool.

Its important to use these methodssimultaneously. Limiting yourself to onewill result in either a blocky (Blender) orplastic (airbrush) shading. Plumper parts

(arms, thighs) should be underlined withmore blending, while parts with varyingconvexity stronger differences betweenshadows and highlights such as knees,breasts, feet and neck might benefit fromrougher blending.

either a calm facial expression or a shy,pensive look.

Theres one thing to keep in mind at alltimes: a popular modern style of leavingthe character s mouth slightly open waswidely avoided in the past!

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12 Sketching thebackgroundAs the character is our main focal point,the sole role of the background is to fillthe space around it. It shouldnt be toodetailed nor drag any attention away

from our female, and so a simple forest isgoing to serve this purpose perfectly. Ofcourse, painting trees and leaves is a verytime-consuming thing to do, but thepoint of the stylisation is to merely hint

stylisation). When it comes to largerbody shapes, we can specify two basic

types: apple and pear. The apple ischaracterised by excessive tissue beinggathered around the stomach, while inthe pear type the tissue is concentratingin the hip-thigh area, with waistremaining thinner. The pear is obviouslymuch more feminine, and thats themost advisable type to choose for ourclassical females.

Underline the softness of the stomachand the slight convexity of it with

additional shading (red arrow). Extratissue gives otherwise flat areas someconvexity and so adds some extrahighlights accordingly (blue arrow).To underline the general softness of thebody and, at the same time, enable it toblend with the background better, pickan airbrush of a skin colour and runwith it over the edges of the body (whitearrow), creating a glow.

10 B for better breastsThe classical way of paintingbreasts differs quite a lot from themodern trend. Instead of double D, stayat size A or B without underlining thecleavage. Breasts should also remain ofnatural shape (they are, after all, madeof fat tissue), so avoid that unnaturalsilicone-like firmness. Remember tokeep the nipples small, too.

11 Hands and feetThe feet should be kept small andthe hands delicate and slender, the baseof the palm being not too wide andfingers long and narrower at the tips.

at the level of detail, without goingcompletely overboard.

To render a painterly forest, choose a

dark green shade of your liking and makesome general colour blobs in thebackground, marking the depth. If youhave any trouble planning thebackground, study some classicalpaintings for inspiration. In my case,analysing Bouguereaus Biblis turned outto be a wonderfully educating experiencefor my work.

13

Leaf blobs

Now pick a lighter colour and withPainters Chalk or Charcoal brush, withJitter set to around 4, make somecoloured dots, which will simulateblurred leaves. Play with hues, anglesand brush sizes, constantly makingthose blobs. Once youre satisfied withthe results, lower the Jitter to 1 and, ontop of existing dots, make small dots of adifferent hue to enrich the green.

14 Grass made easyPainting grass is quite similar tothe technique we used for thebackground. First, do some non-contrasting blobs of various colours witha Jittered brush (just like in the previousstep). Now create a new layer (whichyoull need for the next step) and one byone, do some separate leaf blobs ofdifferent colours and brightness, someshort lines simulating blades of grass,

stick and so on.

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CroppingWorking with images

where only a part of a

character is shown can

sometimes be very tricky

an artist has to decide

what to show and what

to crop out of the

picture. It might seem

tempting to show as

much of a character as

possible, but sometimes

its much better to give

up some details for the

sake of composition.

For example, in the case

of bust portraits, its

more efficient to crop

the top of the head as

well otherwise the

image might lookcrammed and the

character stuffed inside

the painting.

PROSECRETS

15 Rendering waterPainting water is no easy task,

especially when it comes to colourchoices. When painting a stream, forexample, create a colour thats acombination of greyish blue and makeuse of the existing greens. For the latter,

create a temporary transparent strokeover the painted grass and use the EyeDropper to pick the colours.

To indicate movement, add somehighlights over the water surface with acolour lighter than the base. If you wantto create a nice texture over the water,copy the layer created in the previous stepcontaining the leaves and blades of grass(not the base colour blobs), drag it on tothe water surface and change the layer

mode to Soft Light. You might want toadjust the layers saturation and opacity.

16 Turning surrealIts always a good idea to add somenarrative elements to your painting inorder to enrich its meaning. Theres aunlimited number of ways to do so,ranging from depictions of intense

moods, original poses, to addinginteresting elements and so on. While

preparing this workshop, I wanted mypainting to retain a 20th century spirit,yet still be original and separate itselffrom the classics. This decision broughtled me to add a little surreal twist to theimage. My initial idea was a subject everyhuman being can relate to problemswith finding true happiness in life. Tographically depict this, you can see Iveadded a keyhole near the womans heartand a key in her hand.

If youre lacking inspiration, tr y to startby thinking about some metaphors thatyoud like your painting to carry andimagine ways of depicting them. If thatdoesnt work, start from the other end think of an element thats very unfittingfor the image and then associate somemeaning with it.

17 Expanding themeaning

If you havent already, try to consultothers about your ideas you might endup expanding your ideas further. In mycase, I felt the keyhole and one keywerent enough, as they didnt permitmuch room for imagination and

interpretation. I wanted to hint at asadder, darker side of my idea, for

happiness isnt easy and sometimesseems impossible to find. So, I paintedmore keys that my character haddiscarded because they didnt fit.

And were done!After youve got everything in

place the character shaded, backgrounddone, the narrative elements added take one last critical look at yourpainting. Is there anything else you

could do? Or anything to improve? Playwith your work: flip it horizontally,fiddle with saturation and check whetherPhotoshops Colour Balance tool canoffer any nice results.

May 200788

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