The angel was painted in the traditional
watercolor technique of glazing. By layering pure transparent colors,
the underlying paint and the glistening paper create luminous color which
are unattainable by merely mixing and applying pigment.
The angel figurine was scanned
directly into the computer. I separated the angel from the dark background,
this allowed me to better judge the fleshtones. I began laying thin layers
of watercolor (glazes) in Painter, building the body color and tone. The
original scanned image, having definite set values, became the underpainting.
Applying thin layers of watercolor (glazes) allowed the form shadows to
be seen through the transparent paint , they maintained their integrity
by remaining undisturbed.
My preference for this technique
is the Watercolor brush filbert selection, setting the opacity to 3%.
Values, Values, Values
As a traditional painter, I have found one of the most useful features in Painter is the Color Picker. Fine artists know that correct values are the determining factor in the successful painting. It is said that it doesn't matter what color you use, as long as the values are correct.( This was welcome news to one of my students who was color blind.) Painter allows you to easily choose the exact value by first sampling the value study, sketch, photo, etc., with the eyedropper tool. Once the value is established you can easily pick the color sliding the hue ring around the color circle, the value (indicated by the triangle) remains constant, giving you the ability to easily establish a color change, shift, or a color surprise while maintaining the values.
When I was satisfied with
the overall color and tones, the angel was cloned and rendered with the
Artist Pastels Clone brush. This was necessary in order to redraw the
face with an opaque medium which allowed me to obliterate the original
in order to make the features anatomically correct. Although the sculpture
reads correctly as a 3 dimensional piece, I wanted to gain more definition
in color and detail.
I brought the angel into Photoshop creating a background. I began adding lights and effects, these evolved into several version by adding reflections and shadows in all combinations which finally led to the animation on the previous page.
