One of the great things about painting images digitally is that if one keeps different layers of their work, the progress can easily be shown.

Even in an old painting like this, it’s easy to see how it came to be. As such, I thought it might be useful to show the steps of painting this old piece I had done in 2009. I’ve glossed over technique and design decisions and to instead show how the image gets built. Here’s the final image I produced.

Trent Reznor Digital Painting

Step 1: Select a palette and create a rough sketch

The image is roughly laid out in three or four colours.

No detail is necessary at this stage. I like to pick the palette I’m working with from the start (and tweak it later on as I please) and then block out large areas of dark and light.

Step 2: Drop in the background and add more light and detail

The background is added.

Normally, I would have painted over a pre-selected background colour but in this instance, I’d neglected to do that. I filled it in as soon as possible. Note that the light sources had already been pre-determined even at this stage. Selecting a light source early is key as this is incredibly hard to fudge in later.

Step 3: More detail is added

More detail is added to the arm.

I then target individual areas to which to add more detail and light/shadow. Right now it’s the arm.

Step 4: Even more detail is added

More detail is added to eye, forehead and nose.

I continue by fleshing out the face. I paid a lot of attention to the eye as that’s where I wanted to draw the viewer’s attention.

Step 5: Sections are targeted and more details added

I have an ear!

The ear, left cheek and neck are fleshed out.

Step 6: Hair and Costume

Shape of the hair is laid down.

Here, I’ve now laid down what will become the shape of the hair. It’s mainly the base colour with a some light reflections; not a lot, just enough to to remind me where the light will be later on when I polish it up.

Notice the light on the shirt is also painted on. I’d usually go for something more detailed but in this instance it’s not the centre of focus and not a lot of light hits it. So instead, I just put enough light to define the small amount of his shoulder that’s in the image.

Step 7: Blending

The image is exactly the same as the previous one except it has been blended.

I actually like the image prior to blending but in the process of blending, I do change my mind and the image grows on me. Where I still want to emphasise hard edges, I do minimal blending (compare the minimal blending to the eye and the profuse blending of the bicep).

Step 8: Some detailed clean-up

Teeth!

At this point, I add tiny details that are of a different colour, such as the teeth.

Step 9: Background

Smoke: just slightly better than a solid coloured background.

If I’d thought ahead, I would have known what background I was going to put. The great thing about working digitally is that it’s relatively simple to add a minor detail (sarcasm) like the background. To do this, I used the smart selection lasso tool to select Trent. Then I inverted the selection and created a layer mask on a new layer. I could then pain the background on this layer without worrying about painting over what I’d done in the foreground!

Step 10: Final details

Final touches added to the image: hair, ear, mic and signature.

To finish it off, I add final details to the hair, the ear and the hand (and my signature :) )

And there you have it. It’s a fairly straight-forward (and fun!) process when you work with a little bit of structure. My process is by no means perfect but it works for me (though I do wish to improve on a few things given time and practice).

Comments and feedback are most welcome.

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