I took a few days from doing daily paintings and worked on this painting. This is from a photo that my good friend Jason Coobs took. He is an awesome wedding photographer and he graciously let me paint this photo. You can visit his site here:
www.jasoncoobs.com/blog
Here is the reference photo:
I also spent some time making a tutorial of this painting. I've been asked several times how do I do these paintings on the computer so I decided to put together a little tutorial showing the technique and steps that it takes to get one of these done.
For reference I use a Wacom Intuos Tablet for painting. The programs I use are Photoshop and Painter. Photoshop has a wonder brush engine, and can be used for more than photo editing/manipulation.
Step 1: In the beginning I keep everything very loose, making very broad strokes to get the overall feel and composition of the painting. The time I take here to get everything laid out will save me from having to repaint any major errors later.
Step 2: I liken this step to the great big scribble. I start to block in most of the shapes being careful to watch my values. Since this is a black and white photo I don't want to go to extreme in either the white or black just yet. I want to give myself some wiggle room to add in highlights and deep shadows later on. Plus at this stage, how is the picture reading, do I have the basic perspective correct, how are figures looking, etc? This is still the beginning so any changes needed can be quick and easy to fix.
Step 3: The figures are reading well, the composition is nice. Time to get rid of that "contrasty" look. I start to add values in, adding more white, getting a few deeper shades in there. Here is a great tip. If you want to know how well your values are registering all you have to do is squint. Yep thats right squint. Squinting helps to remove the mid range tones and allows you to focus on the highlights and darks. If you can "read" the image just by squinting you are making good progress.
Step 4: Time to take a breather, the hard part has past. I've got the figures, composition and my values are in good order. I can start to let go of the scribble and start to refine, refine and refine some more. At this stage I have a choice, do I stop and keep the image sketchy, or do I go on. I'll go on for this tutorial.
Step 5: Time to get some pure black in certain areas to bring out the figures some more. I also added in more detail to the wood and refined the figures some more.
Step 6: I noticed a few issues with the figures, also added in more detail under the bench and added more shadow and depth.
Step 7: Texture. Lots and lots of texture. There were big areas of flat tone that needed to be broken up. Unfortunately while adding in texture I lost some of the detail of the wood planks, so I'll have to go and repaint a bit of those.
Step 8: After another hour of refining it is finally finished. Time to sign it, watermark and post it!
If you have any questions feel free to email me. My email is located in my profile or in the watermark of my paintings.
