Photoshop Painting Process - Meadowlark

Meadowlark - Digital over graphite, 6" x 8" by Greg Newbold

I just finished up the bird book I was working on and I have to admit, I am loving my streamlined digital process. At least for this project, my working method proved to be seamless, fast and yielded consistently good results. I thought I would go over the process a little to show you how utilizing the flexibility that Photoshop provides, without sacrificing the look of hand done work can make a digital painting look like a traditional work. One of my biggest problems with digital work is that so much of it "looks" digital. When I look at something and it has that plastic "computer" feel or I can tell which brush or filter gave a certain effect, I cringe. Below I will outline a little about how I took my graphite drawing to a fully rendered digital "painting". Infusing the hand done nature of an actual drawing into my work has been a helpful starting point.

1- I start with a full value traditional drawing. This was done with regular old number 2 pencils on Stonehenge printmaking paper. I like the tooth of the paper for smudging, but it is not so soft that I can't get nice lines. It will tolerate a fair amount of erasure as well. After scanning, I isolate the drawing by using the following steps: In Channels, I make a copy of the red channel. With a black and white drawing, it doesn't seem to matter which channel is copied. At the bottom left of the channel palette, there is a dotted line box. Click it to select pixels. This selects the all the white pixels.  I then go to the "Select" tab at the top of the Photoshop Menu and "Select Inverse". Now all the pixels that are black or shades of gray are selected. I create a new layer and use my paint bucket to fill with straight black. Now I have a layer that includes only the pixels of drawing. I click the "lock transparent pixels" button at the top left of the layers palette (right next to the word "lock"). Now that layer is transparent but I can also paint those "locked" pixels any color I want without messing up my drawing. I usually paint parts of  the drawing layer to compliment what is going on in the overall color scheme. In this case I painted much of the bird brown as well as some of the grasses. I "hide" the original drawing layer in case I need it later.

2-  I add a layer underneath the drawing and do a tan to brown gradient fill. The above shot is with the drawing visible so I can see how the new background wash reacts with the drawing layer. If I don't like how things are looking, I adjust the colors or try again. I don't like painting against a white background because it is hard for me to judge values and colors against stark white. I prefer a mid value upon which I can contrast lights and darks. The hue of the mid value wash also acts to unify and make harmonious the color scheme as it will influence all the other colors you place against it. and if painted over transparently, influences the color yet again. Some people call it an illustrator's "cheat" or lazy color scheme, but it works for me. With the drawing and the background gradient in place, I now have my mid-tones and darks in place.

3- I now add the deep shadows of the grass. I have clicked off the drawing for this shot to show you what it looks like, but I paint "behind" the drawing on another new layer that is between the background gradient and the drawing. This allows me to erase or change things without disturbing the background layer or the drawing.

4- Adding yet another layer above the deep shadows above, I continue laying in the grass colors for the background. Here again the drawing layer is switched off just to show what the colors on this layer look like.

Here is how it is looking at this point with the drawing visible. I want to isolate the overlapping shapes from the background which will simplify things like painting around and behind edges. To do this, I create another layer for the bird and egg to sit on which is just one layer below the drawing

5- Here is the layer with the base colors of the egg and bird visible. I turned off the grass and drawing layers to make it more visible. I use the lasso select tool to get the shapes based on the drawing and then filled them with solid colors using the paint bucket. I then painted more tones over this selected shape. Selecting the entire shape lets you paint freely to the edge without running off into the background- another advantage that speeds up digital painting. 

OK- so here is what the painting looks like at this stage with all layers visible. I have now reached the point where everything is looking pretty good but it lacks depth and detail. The highlights, details and roundness of the shadows are missing. I purposely leave everything a little dark to this point, so I have room for my highlights, just as I would with traditional paint. 

6- Now I add what I call the "overpaint" layer which is the top layer so far, covering all other layers. I leave it in normal mode and paint over the top of everything. Here is where I add detail, texture and highlights, I fix, soften or sharpen edges and generally make sure I like how everything is looking. Here is where I add the bells and whistles like the detail and highlight in the eye and crisp details on the bird's head and feathers. I still want it to look like a painting and not a photograph, so I resist going into too much detail and I try to make my strokes visible. 

7- The final step is to add just a bit more to the shadows. I wanted a bit more depth in the core and cast shadows and wanted to add a cast shadow to the egg. This was done using a soft brush and warm gray on a multiply layer above the overpaint layer. I erased out shadows where I added too much and sharpened the edge of the shadow on the egg. At this point I am finished with the painting and give it the once over to make sure I like it. I usually end up fiddling a little with the layers and contrasts a bit to get it looking just right. 

I mentioned using organic texture to paint this and I think it is one key to making digital painting feel more natural and hand made. I did a previous post that details how I import and use hand made texture in Photoshop here.

Painting With Texture in Photoshop

I recently learned how to import my own gesso texture into Photoshop and paint with it (see previous post here for full image). Some of you Photoshop pros are now saying something like "well, duh", but for me it was a big step forward. It's also much easier than I thought it would be. I am working with Adobe CS4, so I don't know how closely the following applies with newer or older versions.
STEP ONE was to chose a gessoed masonite panel- the type I usually prepare for my oil and acrylic paintings. I took black acrylic paint and with a sponge, worked paint down into the textured surface. I wiped most of it back out with slightly damp paper towels so that the deep texture retained the paint but most of the high texture peaks were wiped clean. I then scanned this 8" x 10" panel on my flatbed scanner at 600 dpi.

detail of my gessoed texture

With this scan now open in Photoshop, I adjusted the levels to exaggerate the contrasts a bit, pushing the darks and lights further apart. Next, under the EDIT tab at the top of Photoshop, scroll down to DEFINE PATTERN and click it. A box will come up with a thumbnail of your new pattern and a prompt to name it. Click OK and your pattern is now saved in the textures section of your Brushes Palette. To paint with this new texture, simply open the brushes palette and check the texture box. Click the word TEXTURE and your current selected texture will show up. To the right of your texture thumbnail is a small arrow pointing down. Click it and the textures in this palette will pop open. Your newly scanned texture will be at the bottom of the list. Select it and you are ready to paint with it.

Things to keep in mind when painting with texture:
If you want your texture to echo exactly what you have scanned and mimic a real gessoed board, DO NOT CHANGE THE SCALE SLIDER after you begin to paint. If you do, the size of your texture will not be consistent across the canvas.
You can choose to paint either the highlights or the valleys of the texture by leaving it NORMAL or by selecting INVERT. Normal will paint the "high" points of the texture much as with drybrushing and if you select invert, the paint will fill in the low points of the texture and leave the high spots relatively paint free. I found this to be very effective when I wanted to "glaze the shadows" without killing my texture. Keep in mind that when switching back and forth between the two, it is easy to forget and you may end up painting your highlights in the depths and the shadows on the peaks of the texture. I decided that INVERT would be for darks and normal would be for lights, so I could keep it straight in my mind.
Also, the depth slider allows you to determine how prominent or subtle you want the texture to appear. I found I liked the texture depth at about 70-75%. Using the OTHER DYNAMICS setting in the brush palette also is incredibly useful in order to take full advantage of your Wacom tablet capabilities, as it allows for softness at the edge of brush strokes, but that is fodder for another post. I hope this makes sense. if you have any questions after having tried this out for size, just shoot me an email or comment.