Digital Painting – Creating Heirloom Wall Art
Most of my hybrid digital paintings are of one image. But sometimes when you are hungry to learn a challenge is in order. As I’ve only been using Corel Painter for 3 years I’m definitely still learning! For those who may not know, Painter is to painting like Photoshop is to photography.
There are many differences between a painting and a photograph. Paying close attention to the Colour Wheel is one of the challenges when thinking in art terms rather than photography. And, as my incredible painting instructor, Karen Sperling, keeps hammering into my head, tones, tones, tones!
I had some great images of these two sisters and I had already made a couple of digital paintings for them to see. I first selected one image of each sister. I then went searching through my many other sessions for a background. I wanted one of the window without a subject in front. These images are straight out of the camera with only cropping done.
I started working with the various images in Photoshop. Step one in this digital painting was to change the purple dress to more closely match the pinkish tones of the older sister. Step two was to remove the ballerina from the background as her placement was not what I wanted. Step 3 was to give the musician a longer dress so I had a more flowing dress for painting. Step four was to add more bricks to the wall so the musician would stand out a little more. Step five was to make the window wider. Step six was to make the steps in front of the window the same width as the window. Step seven was to combine the three images into one. The final step in the photography part of this digital painting was tweaking colour-correction, contrast, sharpness, etc. Now I was ready for Painter!
Painting images in the world of Painter is like using virtual paintbrushes. You get to make and use dry brushes, wet brushes – basically anything you can do with real paints you can do with Painter. Already I have my favourite brushes and techniques so I end up with the best of both worlds. In fact I can even argue that these handcrafted hybrid digital paintings are better than a traditional painting. Because of the photographic base image the final painted portrait is more lifelike but with the artistic soul and feeling of a painting. In fact, I can even add real brush strokes with clear acrylic on top of the canvas for texture. For those who love oil paintings there is the option to add real oil paint to this already incredible heirloom product.
Here is the final hybrid digital painting I created from the above three images.
