Beware of the nudity (NSFW) before you proceed!

Well, nothing fancy, just a sleeping girl:

Two or three hours paint session mostly from imagination. This way you’re more like suggesting things and let the viewer’s imagination “paint” the rest. To produce a tight illustration you need to shoot reference photos. I don’t have such luxury so I check my refs library trying to find something similar.

The irony is that you never can find an exact pose and lighting. So you just study the refs then fire up your imagination again and go back to painting.

I’ve posted in online to see the reaction and the results were so-so. Some 3D guys liked the texture but the whole character doesn’t fired up the emotions I need. For the character designer it means that (s)he wasn’t successful in translation of characteristics or design is really weak. It feels, well, not suck but more like you have to find a key that unlocks a flow. Each character concentrates and represents some energy so you feel sympathy or anger or crush or something else to him/her. If you don’t bother at all it means that there is no flow between you and character.

Even if you’ve years and years of experience under your belt you can’t avoid obstacles. Some younger artists may look at your work and think, dude this guy is awesome! but you don’t feel so. You constantly see new challenges and trying to deal with them. It’s not a big deal anymore to draw some superhero chick you’ve been dreaming 10 years ago (it’s all about chest and legs guys!), but your mind is working on puzzles like how to express this and that character trait and so on. This is where most of tutorilas fail because they focused on external side (how to draw) and not internal (what to draw). So you’ve to rely on your own, personal experience and try to express that character you’re looking for.

Oh my, I’ve to go back to my desk and start again!

There are solutions like replacing the Grip Pen or buying a new tablet however you can just adjust the screw located under the double-click pen button.

First, remove the button and you’ll see 3 holes. Ignore the side holes and take a look at central hole (see the image below). Originally the screw head is set parallel to your pen direction [|], to adjust just rotate it a few degrees clockwise [/] or counter- clockwise [\]. Be careful because it’s very sensitive. You may even lost the control and your tablet wouldn’t “see” the pen if rotated too much. Don’t worry, just rotate it back to original position. Mine worked for 5 months after that adjustment.

Now I’m back on track with brand new Wacom Intuos 4L and I would like to share some impressions. Being a wacom user for 10 years I can say the 4th incarnation of Intuos is really cool. The tablet get rid off of unnecessary buttons, it’s design fits both right hand and left hand users and it’s comfy. There are 2 USB ports on a side and removable cable. The tablet’s working surface fits perfectly widescreen displays as well as two heads setup. The penholder reminds an ink-well so for a visitor your paint sessions would look more like a traditional japanese calligraphy.

The only problem I saw with Intuos 4 is it’s pen nibs. Wacom have designed various nibs to emulate different tools like pencils or brushes. I remember I was drawing with the same nib with Intuos A6 literally for 3 or 4 years straight! Same counts for Intuos 2. And now, after completing just one image my nib is half-eaten. Looks like Wacom is pushing us to buy accessories more often and they aren’t cheap. Oh and while previous series have been manufactured in Japan, Intuos 4 are made in China.

And the final note, all Wacoms are expensive. I’ve paid for my first tablet (Intuos A6) around $200 and it was HUGE amount of  money for me back then. If you’re a pro and making nice figures it’s not a big deal at all. But if you’re aspiring artist or just a beginner you’ve to think twice before getting these black boards with Wacom sign.

So it’s great to see Jason Manley, ConceptArt.Org and MassiveBlack founder, kicking off a new training course covering that topic. The event is going live this weekend and you don’t need to travel anywhere because it’s online at Live Education forums on ConceptArt.Org.

You’ll be asked for tuition fee ($95) to get an access to the course and live broadcast. From what I’ve heard you’ll also be able to access these materials within next 30 days. For more information, please, refer to Jason’s post on CA forums.

http://conceptart.org/forums/showthread.php?t=164421

Digital painting is always fun because you don’t know how things would turn out. If you’ve some experience, chances you are already developed you own painting pipeline or working style. So first of all, I’m addressing this material to the artists looking for the fresh input and some creative thoughts.

Each painting starting with an idea or feeling. I worked on the barbarian image (that Diablo III guy) and stumbled onto the drawing from deviantart (usually I turn my network connection off while working). It was half-nude girl painted by French artist ~darax.

I liked the idea and decided to sketch quickly my approach. The results were quite surprising even for myself so I skip the barbarian aside and switched to the sketch. The next 2 or 3 hours were a total blast with me painting like mad.

The final result, as you see above is quite unusual for me. I often tend to polish things up to the very last bit and even higher but this painting is somewhere between finished illustration and etude.

The title says ‘Natsu’ which means summer in Japanese (the kanji is 夏). I think it suits the image quite well.

My primary tools were Photoshop 7.0 and Wacom Intuos 2 tablet. I started sketching on small canvas (even for commercial work I start from low-res files) in Photoshop 7.0 because it’s super fast comparing to CS3. First, I fill the canvas with solid color and sketched in a new layer using hard edge brush with varied opacity/size.

Some people prefer to work from accurate sketch while I usually think in big shapes, switching as quickly as possible to light and dark masses. In reality we don’t see lines – we see shapes, so from the very beginning you mimic the reality. Just shrink your eyes and you’ll see big masses of lights and darks around you. The monochrome palette helps you to concentrate on shapes and values first, without overloading your mind with color information.

Painting is a lot like playing music. There is a certain rhythm in your movements, so you have to prepare your brushes and memorize your software shortcuts, thus you won’t be distracted by minor tasks like changing opacity or switching tools. You can also plug in your iPod and listen to the music you like or the music that fits best to the current mood.

If you’re unsure about any detail(s) while painting, then create a new layer and try out your ideas. Digital workflow allows you to experiment in a non-destructive way. If something goes wrong or doesn’t work, just hit the undo or hide/clean the layer. And make sure to save your work in separate files. I add numbers to the filename so I can find the latest version easily. It also helps you to prepare making of’s features if you would be asked or desired to do it.

The most important thing in painting females is… who said breasts?! It’s the face actually! Great body features are, with no doubt, a big bonus to the character but they aren’t enough. We see faces everyday and we communicate a lot even indirectly by eye movement or facial expressions. We’re reading a lot of information by looking at each other faces.

I work on and refine the face until it emanates some interest on subconscious level. It’s hard to explain but I paint until I feel some sympathy and emotional, even romantic attachment to the female character.

I applied some local colors to the face, chest and background. I combine both hard edge brush and soft age airbrush as well as layers with gradient fills.

Since her face is the main point of interest, I focus on her eyes, nose and lips until it feels good. I don’t paint them to the finest detail – I suggest it instead. A lot of artists paint every single wrinkle yet the character looks artificial or stiff anyway. Same thing counts for the hair. I don’t paint every single hair, I just work with masses or hair. I put some little highlights here and there so her hairstyle looks alive.

I switched to CS3 and using texture brushes (Mathias Verhasselt, concept artist from Blizzard, shared a great set on conceptart.org website) quickly sketched out the environment. Again, I keep it loose since it would be out of focus anyway. I use a range of colors from warm tones to cold tones to create visual interest.

To highlight some areas I create a new layer, set it to overlay mode and apply some radial gradients. I try various colors and strengths until I’ve got the desired result. I looked for the dreamy, soft glow appearance so I put some light spots on her body and sofa. The background was knocked down with dark colors using the same method.

Her legs were giving me some trouble because they don’t look right. I spend quite some time until I figure it out. When you paint from reference you won’t be solving puzzles like that, you just refer to what you see. In situations like these I scan my reference library until I found something similar.

I’ve got huge collection of reference photos but most of them are the same in terms of poses and lighting. Fashion mags tend to use the same things over and over again. I tend to draw ‘unreferenced-able’ poses (can’t find anything that looks like I need) so I have to rely on imagination or look at mirror. Painting from imagination only is hard because there are many real-life nuances that help to sell the image to the viewer. By using references even indirectly you establish visual triggers so the image would look real in someone’s’ mind. In the same time with painting you often create a mood, not an exact copy of the reality.

Using pen tool I created a selection for her bikini and shaded it with some colors. Once again I don’t paint every fold or thread, I just capture the basic shapes. Think of impressionists while you paint.

At this point I realized that left and top parts of the picture are too dark. With such strong light there would be reflections from the sofa and environment would act as a secondary (indirect) lightsource. So I apply a few gradient layers using screen and lighten modes until I got that warm soft light around the girl.

The final image tells some story. Maybe she’s just take a shower, jumped on the sofa and watching TV (perhaps some Naruto episode?). Anyway there is something out of the frame that attracts her attention. She doesn’t look at you at all.

Well in conclusion, I hope you’ve enjoyed this little journey and I would be happy if it sparks some creativity or inspiration in your mind. Till the next artwork!

ps. If you have any further questions or suggestions, you can contact me at leo@leoartz.com