Digital Portrait of The Man

The following digital painting tutorial was done in Corel Painter IX. It was painted by looking at the reference photo as if the model was sitting in front of me. The result is what spoke to me at the time I painted him.

About 3 hours to complete.

Step 1: Linear Marks

In this portrait. I started with some loose linear marks just to get the feel of his features. I didn’t feel it was necessary to draw a preliminary sketch. I used a custom brush, the Big Wet Luscious from Jeremy Sutton.

Step 2: Filling the Big Areas

After finishing the linear marks, I started to fill in big areas with the Palette Knife at a very low opacity. At this point, I tried to block in the lights and shadow shapes.

Step 3: Coarse Distorto brush

I continued with the Coarse Distorto brush to move paint around at the same time I was adding paint.

Step 4: Soft Diffuse Digital Watercolor brush

At this stage, I used the Soft Diffuse Digital Watercolor brush to darken with washes of color the shadowed areas of the painting, especially the skin’s dark tones.

Step 5: Soft Diffuse Digital Watercolor brush

After finishing with the Soft Diffuse Digital Watercolor brush, I went back to the Dirstorto brush to define the eyes by moving paint around and adding some paint at the same time. To accomplish this, I set the brush to a small size with its opacity set between 20-30%.

Step 6: Defining Stronger Shadows

In this almost final stage, I kept adding more paint defining stronger shadows and some accent colors, like the light blue on his hair to match his suit to balance the composition.

Step 7: Detailing the Eyes and Chin

At this final state, I finished detailing the eyes and chin. (Click on the image to view it at a bigger size.)

I hope that you have enjoyed this demonstration. Feel free to post your comments.

All images are Copyrighted © 2005 Janet M Garcia.  All rights reserved.