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Deviousness `anmari has been spreading her infectious positivity throughout our community for over 6 years. Throughout this time Ana has been at the core of all things devious, passionately developing an eclectic gallery, helping organise devmeets, participating in chat events and also recently completed dedicating her time as a Community Volunteer. We are absolutely delighted to bestow the Deviousness Award for May 2013 to `anmari, congratulations! Read More
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Sta.sh
![[link]](http://www.deviantart.com/users/outgoing?http://www.tracyfineart.com/various/images/paintings/gret_digital_detail.jpg){kind=link}
Thank you.
Wait—all of the foreground is digital?! Wow, that looks like your oil work. I'm really impressed! (I just now checked the link you posted).
When I work in Photoshop, one of the hardest things for me to deal with is being overwhelmed by all the stuff it can do. Things I'd want you to keep in mind:
-What to paint: We know that reference of your daughter includes an eye, even though we can't really see it in the reference photo. If you squint your eyes even the slightest bit, the eye in the photo disappears completely! The dimensions of the face leave us with a beautiful shadow cast over the eye. This obscures details we know exist, but it also lets us think for ourselves, and in the end we get a cooler portrayal of a human face. The teeth also follow suit—they're about as white as the eyes. You pulled back the value in the shadows, but increased the values in the eyes and mouth, giving us unnatural symbols for facial features instead of what the actual features look like.
[link]
Any time you can go black and white first, I'd recommend doing it. Nothing undoes my ideas faster than working with colour first. I am not a good painter, in that respect.
-Texture:
You did a very impressive job handling the background. It doesn't look digital, cheap, or anything that lessens the mood of it (flying/freedom sensation is definitely there). The canvas also looks good from here. If you hate how it looks fit-to-screen, you could always lower the opacity of it, so it's even more see-through and softened.
Because of this canvas texture we're looking at, the whole image feels less like Photoshop and more like coloured pencil or oils (kudos!) Any time we see a soft blend (which is always going on in Photoshop) it has to look traditional, using a less-is-more sort of approach. In bridging your traditional experience with digital, your image will be a battlefield where two schools of thought are trying to kill each other, and you have to get them to make a truce. I can't offer too much advise on this, as I've only bridged the two once before. I only wish to remind you that it's super-tricky, and will make or break something like this.
Was I helpful at all? I'm always worried about wasting your time with a comment!
"The teeth also follow suit—they're about as white as the eyes." Which is very dark, not white at all. This is of course the way I work in traditional media. Imagine painting the whites of the eyes and the teeth with Titanium White. My whites in facial tones are products of an interaction between the background and the colors in the face.
"Any time you can go black and white first, I'd recommend doing it." The figure started out as a line drawing, working from both an old sketch I made and the reference photo of my daughter at age 16 (I guess you all know she's now 39--and she looks much the same today--happy, successful and heroic). [link]
"The canvas also looks good from here. If you hate how it looks fit-to-screen..." This is strange. The canvas texture is just right on my Macintosh. I send it to my PC and there it looks wrong.
For once, yes you have been helpful in that you have verified much of what I have found in my first serious attempt at a digital work. And for once I needed it in that I'm asking for what I never would have done in my own work--a critique. The thing I want to avoid is the sameness I see in much digital work. I do aim for a traditional look. My "teacher" (i.e., the best I've found at moving from traditional to graphic)--I have no teacher except myself--is Sasha Beliaev. I just stare at his incredible work done in Photoshop and ask myself how he achieved his results. Classically trained, his digital work I would have sworn was traditional. [link]
Thanks old friend,
Robert
If you want me, I'll be over here, trying to bridge ink, coloured pencil, and Photoshop. I can't stand super-clean lines and lens flares, and I'd like to get as Jeffrey Jones as I can without becoming a complete second-rate version of him.
Sarah
You have it all right. You see exactly what I had in mind with the freedom and flying.
Thank you very much.
Robert
You're welcome.
Sarah
You seem to always have time to look at my work and have something nice to say.
Digital work is hard for me, like learning all over again my self-taught traditional art. So I appreciate your encouragement.
Life here is getting on. Will be back in a few months fully healed.
Best to you,
Robert