CREATING A COMBINATION PAINTING

I've been having fun recently layering one painting on top of another and seeing what happens!  Experimenting with blend modes in both Photoshop and Painter I've found that Hard Light and Magic Combine (found only in Painter) seem to work best.  Below are a few of my results, showing the 2 (or more) paintings that I combined:

this painting

 plus this painting

equals this painting:

 

this painting

                                           

  plus this painting

equals this painting:

this painting

plus this painting

plus this painting

equals this painting:

PAINT FROM YOUR IMAGINATION

Experimenting with digital brushes is something I always stress when I teach because it is SO important to know what your brushes can actually do!  Have fun, play around and see where those brushes can take you. Put down your photographic references and paint from your heart!

This painting SUMMER STORM evolved just from dragging a brush or 2 across my digital canvas.  First I painted.  Then I went one step further and added a canvas texture from my BOHEMIAN CANVAS COLLECTION which you can find on my website paintedtextures.com

Adding my texture And a few more brush strokes:

GET TO KNOW YOUR DIGITAL BRUSHES

Getting to know what your digital brushes can do and which one is best for which effect is EXTREMELY important when attempting to paint digitally.  Right now I am working with my digital oil brushes in Painter X3 in preparation for my upcoming workshop and I paint with them everyday.  Constant practice is important!  Just PLAY-GET TO KNOW EACH ONE before you even commit to doing a painting.  Create little miniatures where you just play around with one or maybe 2 brushes at the most.  Sometimes these little mini sketches will evolve into a little painting and sometimes they won't.  So what?!!  These exercises are for your learning and for gaining experience with your brushes.  Traditional painters have their favorite brushes-well digital painters can have theirs too... And digital painters can change the settings on just ONE brush to get it to create several different effects.  Below is a mini painting that I ended up calling BATTLESHIP.  It's only 3.33x3.33 inches at 300dpi-very small indeed-but it packs ALOT of information for me.  I used just one of my new brushes, but changed it's settings here and there to create a few different looks.

 

 

Here is another image that I created with the same brush called UNDERGROWTH:

 

 

PULLING AN IMAGE OUT OF THE BACKGROUND WITH DIGITAL PAINT

Creating a simple background and then pulling an image through is so much fun and relatively easy.  This will be demoed in my new workshop PAINTER X3 FOR PHOTOGRAPHERS coming in September!  Right now you can pre-order the course for $89 on my website:
http://paintedtextures.com/section729125.html


STEP 1



 



 

STEP 2

 

 

 

 

 

STEP 3

 

 

 

 

 

FINAL PAINTING

 

 

 



THE IMPORTANCE OF A VALUE SKETCH!

I'm finding it increasingly important to create a value sketch for my paintings before I actually begin painting.  This means that if I'm working from a photo I will turn it into a black and white image and then paint that first, so that I can see a light and dark pattern.  If I'm working from life I will do the same thing and create a monochromatic study of the scene, getting my light, dark and gray values in place first.  This is SO important!  Once you've got your values down you can then plug in almost any color into a particular area of your painting-as long as it reads correctly a far as VALUE is concerned. Ask yourself:  Is a particular color note that you're going to put down of a light, dark or medium gray value or perhaps really black?

The following is a painting I did using a photo as reference in Painter X3, entitled FOREST FLOOR.  First I've posted the original photograph, then comes the black and white oil sketch and then the finished painting:

 

ORIGINAL IMAGE

 

 

 

                                                              VALUE OIL SKETCH

 

FINAL PAINTING

 





DIGITAL PAINTING WITH MY NEW OIL BRUSH FOR PAINTER!

I am having way too much fun painting with my new oil brush that I created for working in Painter X3!!!  I could paint all day-it's really addicting...

Below are several paintings I've executed with this new brush:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

2 FOR $5 FRIDAY TEXTURE SALE FOR JUNE IS HERE!

My JUNE 2 FOR $5 Friday texture sale is on! Get 2 BRAND NEW beautiful textures from PAINTED TEXTURES, compatible with Photoshop and Photoshop Elements.  They are sized at 300dpi 9" X 11".

CLICK to purchase

Offer is good through Monday, June 9th at 10PM EST.