Here's something I've been messing with in Painter lately. I'm half working on the painting itself & half just getting used to various brushes in Painter, so it contains a wide variety of mixed media right now, but that's fine with me. I like how it's taking shape so far, & I'm definitely getting more comfortable in Painter. I'm only using the "Essentials" version that came with my wacom right now, but I can see a future investment in Painter X for sure, I like it far better than PS for drawing/painting. I've used it for a few things before but mainly stuck with a small array of chalks & watercolors. I've been trying to expand my toolkit so to speak with this piece & I'm glad I'm doing it.
I used a lot of impasto oil brushes & palette knives for the ground, as well as some oil pastels on the trees (will probably use more of these to add definition to the ground). I also used some watercolors in various places as well, mostly with a very low alpha to help with the water. 
Anyway, this piece will most likely find a home as a BG scene in the Falling Rock project I'm working on . Would love to hear what you think as always, especially if you see something that looks drastically wrong, as this is still a WIP, please let me know so I can fix it before I get too far off on the wrong track.
Other than that, what do you think of the overall look? Does the combination of media work for you? Just curious as I'll probably take a similar approach to the other BG's I have planned. This one & the others are all from photo references. I took a bunch of pics at my favorite trout stream & based this painting off one of them. Didnt trace, but tried to keep it pretty accurate. Anyway, hope people like it, I'm very curious about your opinions, so please feel free to leave feedback.
Tuesday, March 18, 2008
Background WIP
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2 comments:
Wow it looks great.
I have question however how did you create custom brushstrokes to achieve some of the effect in your painting?
I'd like to know because I'm trying to create paintings myself in Painter IX or X.
I'm considering upgrading to ten when I acquire the funds to do so.
Hey there, Honeypearlem thanks for the comment, glad you like it. :)
I didn't actually create any custom brushes at all for this, just used a bunch of different existing ones. For the ground in general I used the think impasto brush from the artists oils category. Further back towards the horizon & for the sky I used watercolors, thought it gave a better sense of atmosphere & depth, as it helped make the foreground pop more. The trees I roughed in with a square chalk, then added highlights & shadows with a worn oil pastel.
For the water, I tried a few things, & the reflection is still very much a wip, but what I'm working with now I got from copying the trees & ground onto new layers, flipping them vertically, and lowering the opacity of those new layers. I put a layer of blue watercolors down underneath that as a base & that's pretty much it. I also put some brown tones in places with a low alpha watercolor brush. Now I need to get a blender & make the reflection look more wispy. I also may try out a program called Squirlz Reflections. It gives the illusion of moving water on a still shot. I'll play with it a bit & see what I can come up with. I've had mixed results with the few times I've played with the program so far, but this might be a good piece to use it on.
Keep checking back, I should have an updated version very soon now that I've got a nice long Easter weekend. Thanks again for the comment, if anything I explained was unclear let me know & I'll try to be more specific.
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