Here's BJ. A charming young boy, and a wonderful big brother, who always looks after his little brother with care. He tolerated my wish to paint him, being a modest lad, but gave in as It was going to make a good Mother's Day gift to give. I find the boys harder to convince to pose for me as they get older. The girls tend to love to pose for me. I used Painter Classic to do this portrait and my wacom tablets & pen. I took about 5 minutes only to touch this one up with my updated version Painter IX software. This was painted using photos for referrence only, so I'd remember details, such as eye color, etc. I started with a blank canvas/screen. I used layers of airbraush, pastels, and water to blend to get the soft look of this portrait. I like to use a scanned photo on a split screen so I can work on an area enlarged on one side of the screen, and the same area on the other on the canvas. That way I get that area accurate and get rid of any of the wierd looking pixels chunks or distortions you can have with computer works. If you manipulate and enlarge a work, you can often see this, as it can blur or distort, or have speckling/ or noise like graining areas. I like to enlarge my work and scroll over it all at the end of the work to blend that all out, if there is any to find. Unless I want a textured look, I blend with various sized brush tools to soften areas and smooth. It helps to lessen the brush strokes, and make more realistic skin surface, and less hay hair as well. YOu can blend with fine lines to pull out details like eyelashes, and individual hairs as well. I hope this helps answer a few queatons on my techniques. It's layers, blending, often more layers, and blending on top of it/ I usually only use one current layer screen, not a build of of layers. I am referring to layers of paint and pastles, chalks,etc. not screens to merge. I do frequent saves in case I want to revert back to an earlier stage of work. I find it faster for me to do this, and guess to much of a hassle to merge layers the other way. I can tell if I like what I'm doing, when I do it, and for this type work, don't need the merging type layers. Still learning to do the other merging type. (I'm so lazy at times.)I used some lighter skin tones and values on this one. BJ chose more pastels for his when helping to decide how he wanted his portrait.
17 Comments
jamie winter 11 Feb 2007
Very very well done. Excellent. jamiemark jorgenson 09 Apr 2006
very natural and well done!Sara Deutsch 09 Apr 2006
Amazing realism and capture of his charm!Ginger Lovellette 09 Apr 2006
Excellent!!!Joke Schotting 09 Apr 2006
Gorgeous boy,Terry!!!Manuela Facchin Varalda 09 Apr 2006
He seems to be so good tempered, sensible portrait!Nelly van Nieuwenhuijzen 09 Apr 2006
what a nice looking gorgeous boy, Terry!! fantastic work!!!!!Nancy Woolweber 09 Apr 2006
What cute mug! Gotta love this one Terry!corry stuart 09 Apr 2006
very very nice work Terry I use almost the same method as you do..... but flatten the layers once I accept what I did in the work..... save it.... then I make a new layer to continue... Like you I only use photos as a reference.Loredana 09 Apr 2006
Super Digital work Terry :)Patty Day 09 Apr 2006
What a marvellous job, Terry!!!!thea walstra 09 Apr 2006
Cute, beautiful and awesome workPMyers 09 Apr 2006
Another hit. Love his comfortable look.Emily Reed 09 Apr 2006
You outdo yourself with each of these new child portraits. Just great!Hanna Stawska 09 Apr 2006
Great work as usual!Armando Salas 09 Apr 2006
Charming boy. A super splendid workAnne Vis 09 Apr 2006
Impressive how you created this, Terry! Very skillful work, great expression!