This work-in-progress was painted with Painter IX.

Tools Used:
2B Pencil (Pencil Category)
Tapered Conte 8 (Conte Category)
Sandy Pastel Paper

This is a digital painting I am currently working on. I am also recording the whole process as I paint it in Painter IX, showing at the same time my Painter’s selections and options as I go. This video will be available at the end when I finish the portrait completely.

I chose the Sandy Pastel Paper for this project because I’ll be using the Tapered Conte 8 from the Conte category of brushes and this particular brush reacts to the paper texture just as traditional pastel and conte allows you to show the paper’s grain through your strokes. I toned the paper with a mid to dark tone of grey because the whole painting will be fairly dark and will help me speed up when filling out the background. The exact grey tone used are of these values: R79, G79, B79.

Here is the reference photo I will use for this project. I shot this photo myself at a live oil painting session. (All pictures, graphics, and photos shown here are copyrighted material).

Once I setup my workspace, I start the process selecting my 2B Pencil with a dark grey to sketch the model. I sketched the model on a new layer that I kept on top of the Canvas to guide me. As part of this sketch, I also drew the shadow areas to facilitate later the application of color to the different areas.

I now started to block in the areas with different colors. The purpose of these combinations of color is to act as an under-painting or muck-up for the final colors.

Once I finished blocking in the shapes and covering the entire paper with basic colors, I proceeded to add additional combinations of color, paying attention to the light source. At this point, I am not worry about likeness yet since I will be adding lots of color over and over until I feel that I am ready to detail the features.

Notice the bold strokes and colors applied that still act as under-painting.

In this step, I felt I needed to add stronger colors to her dress in order to be able to judge the values and my color choices for her skin color and tone.

Now, I defined better the areas in shadow on her dress.

After adding the basic color to her dress, I continue adding color to her skin, this time being more careful while applying my stokes. At all times, I’ve been using very little pressure on my stylus. This keeps the colors translucent, just as they are with the equivalent Traditional Media. Notice also that I turned off my sketch (you can turn off a layer by clicking on the eye next to the layer’s name on the Layer’s Palette) and worked with even smaller brushes to better define her facial features; this time trying to have a better likeness.

I hope you’ve found this work in progress interesting. I will probably add more steps tomorrow.Thanks for visiting.