“Donkey skin ” by Chris Beatrice
Sheep Close up
ONE
This is the pencil rough of the sheep on a multiply layer, laid over the roughed in color. I typically paint on one layer, so I can smear and bleed the edges of the different objects together. You can see here how I let the grass enter pretty far into the sheep’s area. That’s because with a texture like that, you can’t really go back and paint it right up to the sheep (at least it’s not easy…). So I paint the grass first, then the sheep on top. If I paint over some grass and need to get it back later, I just open an earlier save and paste it back in, then erase around it with a layer mask and merge down. Because of how Painter’s bleed and resaturation controls work, you really need to paint on a single layer to get this particular wet, smeary look.
TWO
I know it’s going to take a bit of work to get the sheep right. It’s not just a question of figuring out how it’s “supposed to look” in the given lighting conditions – it’s also about what kind of a role I want it to play in the picture. I don’t want the sheep to be too bright or white, or it will draw too much attention to itself. It needs to frame the lower corner of the picture, but also lead off the page as well.
The lantern is making a narrow edge light on the back of the sheep, but the sky is also illuminating the sheep from above. At this point I make my first pass at a basic wool texture and rough in the colors and values.
THREE
Here I darken the sheep a bit, and make the light on his back a bit more saturated. Then I add some detail to his harness. The lantern light hits the back of his ear, which is very thin, so it appears to glow with some pretty saturated oranges and reds
FOUR
When I should be done… I decide to tilt the sheep’s head down and completely change his stance, for more forward thrust. It was a bit tricky to settle on a stance that would also produce the particular shadow shapes I wanted. Московским студентам предлагается покупка диплома о высшем образовании, это значит – купить диплом и заиметь диплом университета!
A lot of beginning artists think this process is about deciding on a pose and picture arrangement, then just figuring out how the lighting and shadows would look for those conditions. But really it is a back and forth process of establishing poses and arrangements of lighting and objects in the scene that are going to produce the two-dimensional shapes you want for the compositional impact you are after
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