Aly (Work in Progress)

I wanted to share a work in progress that since I haven't had a lot of time outside of school, is still in its early stages. Its good though because it really shows off the process involved.

The reference photo is underneath with low opacity so that it can be seen where I'm going with this.

Anyway, the process isn't so much hard as tedious. Its one of those tedious processes which is quite time consuming.
The first step I do is the background. Sometimes its just a solid colour but I wanted to have some cool atmospheric stuff. Starting with a solid colour I added lighter shades with the paintbrush tool and then did a gaussian blur. It makes a nice smooth surface and gives a starting point for the types of colours that will be used in the rest of the piece.

My pallet is the next step and I make sure I have all of the colours I'll use for my skin tones. (Its still visible in the upper left corner) Then taking the one that will be the bast I draw out the basice outline in the flat colour. With a size 24 paintbrush I began to add the highlights and shadows to the face. Its clearly visible. The rest is just a matter of smuding and blending with the blending tool. I always put them in the upper left so that its just a matter of grabbing the colour selector and getting the desired colour from there. It saves a lot of work with trying to find the right shades and maintaining the uniformity within colours.

So I'm hoping to get some time to do it. Although with school and other things I haven't had the time. Here's to hoping.