David and Goliath

Both are from photo references. Both are WIPs. The first made with Art Rage and the second using Painter. My comfort level is plain to see. The first is a bit more finished as I was able to blend the layers with a brush and knife. I tried to do the same quite unsuccessfully with the later. I have since discovered the blending brushes in Painter and will try them soon.

The one clear advantage that I see for Art Rage over Painter is the ability to get on with your art and not having to keep changing types of brushes, layers and what not. I’m sure in the next 2 months I’ll understand and be able to use Painter more efficiently and will probably like it more. But I will still love Art Rage for how easy it is to use and how simple they’ve kept things so that you can immerse yourself in your painting and forget about the rest.

Below is my first scribble in Painter and another piece where I’ve tried the watercolor brushes that they offer. Definitely need to do some reading. And there’s quite a bit of that available on their website and for those who’re interested in trying it Corel offers a 60 day trial version.

A study for a painting? I think it’s just procrastination :D

The current tools of choice are the painting software that I have. These WIP images show the progress made on Uma’s digital portrait with Painter IX.5. I’ve downloaded their trial version. It has another 58 days left. Two months is a pretty decent trial period. But Painter is difficult to use especially after using Art Rage. I was not able to blend as easily. Some reading is required to figure out how to do a few basic things.

Back to this post, I need to make a small portrait in oil of my neice Uma. It’ll join the others put up in her room that each member of the family has made. Work started on it a couple of months ago and should’ve finished then. I’ve made this in the interim and it too is incomplete My excuse is that there is another project which needs finishing sooner.

Siridhara

I’ve been wanting to make a portrait of Sridhar for quite a while now. This is digital, made with Art Rage II from a photo reference. I do not use the tracing option though I’m taking a fancy to the undo and erase functions I think I must’ve spent about 3 hours on this so far as initially I wasnt able to capture even a hint of him.

I started with sketching an outline of his face. When I was happy with it I added another layer for the oil paints. The different colors were too stark and so I used the palette knife to blend the colors and then merged them to allow me to make changes to both layers simultaneously. Finally settled for the scribbly effect over the first few layers which is the style I have been using lately for the pen & inks.

Now stepping back I can see the changes that I would like to make – like moving his whole mouth to the left . The nice thing about the digital medium is that I can easily go ahead and make changes after saving a copy of this attempt. Dont know when that will happen though

My father-in-law

A digital sketch of my father-in-law made to send to him on his birthday yesterday. Made with Art Rage II using a photo reference.

For this one, i took some of the colors from the original reference. I’m sure Photoshop and Painter have this option too but I wouldnt know where to find it! Here I just had to click on the photograph and I had the selected color on my palette. I would’ve used them for the whole portrait had I remembered in time.

My one crib after having used the reference image feature a couple of times is that the picture when imported becomes so small that it is difficult to see the details to paint and even to pick the colors.

Shereen

This was this morning’s efforts whilst with the art group. I had forgotten to carry my brushes and so spent the first hour flicking through a couple of books on art techniques that i’d carried along. Finally decided that Shereen, who was sitting quite still while making her drawing , would make a good subject for a sketch. Was not very pleased with the sketch. Borrowed a brush from Crystal to add in some color and I had hoped to  add shading and create some values but my subject left for home early

Another Modigliani copy

I have been trying to sketch but not as often as I would’ve liked and none that i intend to put up here. Used Art Rage 2 to make this one. It’s a copy of Modigliani’s Man with a pipe ( Notary of Nice ). I love the background in this one too. I found it easier to use the application today and i’m getting used to using the wacom too.

Got a couple of nice comments for this one on Flickr.

You can view my progress in Project Modigliani in a post on my other blog, draw the line.