For the few who bother to read these, this is the latest watercolor (of NicoleLee)...
As I've found many many times in the past, I choose images for certain reasons and then sometimes when I get around to actually painting them, those reasons either now seem stupid or totally elude me. Originally, I was going to play with the competition of this image and have the botton edge that cuts across the legs be a little higher and then have the hand extend past that line and break that bottom plane. After I drew it out I kinda chickened out and worried about the masking issues of doing this and made a slight editorial change, dropped the line down below the hand, and just painted it straight with 4 edges and the painting contained within.
That being said, deciding not to do something different/special with it, I feel that this model would be much better served by a different painting where that awesome chestpiece of hers can be properly showcased. I will probably revisit this model and do just that with a second painting...maybe contact her and see what her favorites are and do one of her choosing...Not that there's anything wrong with this painting, and I think it actually came out really, I am very happy with it and it presented some unique challenges which I'll probably talk about below...
I got really detailed with this underdrawing, but I wanted to make sure that I had all of her tattoos in the right spots and the right proportions because its a lot harder to erase watercolors once they're put on paper than pencil. I already knew one of the bigger hurdles to get right was going to be her chest which has a lot of light reflection on it. So, getting it right in terms of not only making it look anatomically correct, but also accurately fading the tattoo in and out of the lighting was already in my head. Also, I made an editorial choice to not include her right arm which gets cut off on the side border and just imply that its going straight down and blocked from view behind her torso. I also did a lot more liquid masking in an attempt to keep a few highlight spots in her hair, face and bracelet free of color.
This time, I took a small risk and laid sown some light blue washes in all the areas that were going to be darker areas and to also set the tattoos on the page. This way I could erase a lot of the pencil, and my thought was that if I didn't start too dark that some of the tattos would look right under washes of varying skin tones rather than laid over the painting at the end. Then I started gradually working in some of the warmer tones. slowly working out the relationships between the cool and warm tones.
Each painting is different for me in terms of making sure I do things in the right order. I got to a point where I needed to start adding in the dark tones to make sure I had the right contrast levels throughout the image. Since that would involve blocking in the hair, I knew that doing the hair before the background would be a mistake and I would probably end up washing out all the detail edges when I did the background. So, I needed to stop and resolve the background tones first and then I could do all the fine hair details on top of the background color. As you can see, at the time I took the picture, the background initially (and inadverdently) looked like a sunset/sunrise or one of those fruity drinks you get at a bar with 2 different colors sitting on top of each other in the glass. Having it resemble either of those things told me it needed more work. Same theory applies with her bottoms where I had to get that painted in before blocking all that black area and risking some kind of bleed issue.
The finished image. I always think as I'm working on these that they're not coming out right and its usually during the last 10 percent of the work that it really starts to come together. I think I did an adequate job of getting the chest to look correct, and I think the colors and lighting on her face are good. I made sure to remember to work on the tattoos throughout the process so that they cooperated with the lighting of her figure. You can see I added some darker washes that faded out on their way up the background. That ugly fruit drink look turned more into the darker value below and between her legs. Also, it helped parts of her body stand out a little bit because the background ended up being a little darker...popping her forward into the foreground.
All criticism welcome...let me know if something looks wrong or if you have an opinon or suggestion regarding this one, another one or a future one. Also, if any SG wants me to paint her, I'll do requests first come, first serve. Please feel free to put me over with all of your friends and let everyone know that they can buy my paintings to hang in their homes!
Like this one, they'll all go on auction on eBay after I paint them so that I can afford to keep doing this. If you like one, feel free to PLACE A BID!
Commissions always available, so if you're interested in having me paint some great idea that will match your curtains, send me a message.
-BHT
As I've found many many times in the past, I choose images for certain reasons and then sometimes when I get around to actually painting them, those reasons either now seem stupid or totally elude me. Originally, I was going to play with the competition of this image and have the botton edge that cuts across the legs be a little higher and then have the hand extend past that line and break that bottom plane. After I drew it out I kinda chickened out and worried about the masking issues of doing this and made a slight editorial change, dropped the line down below the hand, and just painted it straight with 4 edges and the painting contained within.
That being said, deciding not to do something different/special with it, I feel that this model would be much better served by a different painting where that awesome chestpiece of hers can be properly showcased. I will probably revisit this model and do just that with a second painting...maybe contact her and see what her favorites are and do one of her choosing...Not that there's anything wrong with this painting, and I think it actually came out really, I am very happy with it and it presented some unique challenges which I'll probably talk about below...
I got really detailed with this underdrawing, but I wanted to make sure that I had all of her tattoos in the right spots and the right proportions because its a lot harder to erase watercolors once they're put on paper than pencil. I already knew one of the bigger hurdles to get right was going to be her chest which has a lot of light reflection on it. So, getting it right in terms of not only making it look anatomically correct, but also accurately fading the tattoo in and out of the lighting was already in my head. Also, I made an editorial choice to not include her right arm which gets cut off on the side border and just imply that its going straight down and blocked from view behind her torso. I also did a lot more liquid masking in an attempt to keep a few highlight spots in her hair, face and bracelet free of color.
This time, I took a small risk and laid sown some light blue washes in all the areas that were going to be darker areas and to also set the tattoos on the page. This way I could erase a lot of the pencil, and my thought was that if I didn't start too dark that some of the tattos would look right under washes of varying skin tones rather than laid over the painting at the end. Then I started gradually working in some of the warmer tones. slowly working out the relationships between the cool and warm tones.
Each painting is different for me in terms of making sure I do things in the right order. I got to a point where I needed to start adding in the dark tones to make sure I had the right contrast levels throughout the image. Since that would involve blocking in the hair, I knew that doing the hair before the background would be a mistake and I would probably end up washing out all the detail edges when I did the background. So, I needed to stop and resolve the background tones first and then I could do all the fine hair details on top of the background color. As you can see, at the time I took the picture, the background initially (and inadverdently) looked like a sunset/sunrise or one of those fruity drinks you get at a bar with 2 different colors sitting on top of each other in the glass. Having it resemble either of those things told me it needed more work. Same theory applies with her bottoms where I had to get that painted in before blocking all that black area and risking some kind of bleed issue.
The finished image. I always think as I'm working on these that they're not coming out right and its usually during the last 10 percent of the work that it really starts to come together. I think I did an adequate job of getting the chest to look correct, and I think the colors and lighting on her face are good. I made sure to remember to work on the tattoos throughout the process so that they cooperated with the lighting of her figure. You can see I added some darker washes that faded out on their way up the background. That ugly fruit drink look turned more into the darker value below and between her legs. Also, it helped parts of her body stand out a little bit because the background ended up being a little darker...popping her forward into the foreground.
All criticism welcome...let me know if something looks wrong or if you have an opinon or suggestion regarding this one, another one or a future one. Also, if any SG wants me to paint her, I'll do requests first come, first serve. Please feel free to put me over with all of your friends and let everyone know that they can buy my paintings to hang in their homes!
Like this one, they'll all go on auction on eBay after I paint them so that I can afford to keep doing this. If you like one, feel free to PLACE A BID!
Commissions always available, so if you're interested in having me paint some great idea that will match your curtains, send me a message.
-BHT
VIEW 5 of 5 COMMENTS
nicolelee:
I'm in pure shock. I'm in disbelief that someone would paint me, let alone something this phenomenal. Thank you. Simply, thank you.
troa:
Truly amazing work.