Figure painting workshop

“Figure painting workshop” by Joel Carlo

7. At this point I’ve already switched back to the original unfiltered reference. The majority of my shapes have now been established in my rough so I can use the original reference to continually pull color from and begin to establish more detail.
8. As I sit back and evaluate my work, I realize certain areas within my study have become distorted. A quick way of fixing these parts is by using the Liquify Tool under FILTER > LIQUIFY. The Liquify Tool acts a bit like silly putty and allows you to make subtle or large adjustments to an image without drastically affecting the quality of your brush work.

9. With my adjustments now in place, I begin to concentrate on refining the image by adding detail. As I continuously pull colors from the reference, I carefully lay them down on my image in order to create the more subtle differences in tonal values.
10. One trick you can use to check how well you are seeing and executing your shapes is by flipping your canvas. You can do so by going to IMAGE > ROTATE CANVAS > FLIP HORIZONTAL. Flipping the canvas allows to check for any distortion that may have developed but was not previously noticed.

11. At this point, I feel my study is close to completion. I will go back and quickly compare my image with the reference to look for slight differences I might have missed or that could have been developed better. Since this is just a study I’m not too concerned about getting everything perfect, but if time permits I will go back and make adjustments as I see fit.

I hope this tutorial has been helpful or at least opened your eyes to a different approach for creating digital figure studies. Remember, the human body is one the most challenging things for an artist to draw or paint and exercises like this are a good way to hone your skills at analyzing an image properly before you begin to lay down any work. 🙂
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(c) Joel Carlo, www.joelcarlo.net
     

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