Arch
“Arch” Mixed Media; ball point pen, acrylic, gouache, digital
This painting was really just an exploration in mixed media. I had no planning when I started it, I just smeared paint around, hoping for something to come out of it. I think I got a lot of interesting colors and textures because of that!
✹ First Stages ✹
I started with a piece of paper that already had a colorful under-painting of random shapes and brush-strokes. You can see some of it on the edges of the painting and underneath the painting in the first image.
✹first Pass✹
I started by drawing a very rough sketch with ballpoint pen. I think it worked well in this painting, but I honestly wouldn’t recommend using ballpoint pen for the sketch. For some reason it bled through almost every layer of paint I applied in later passes. It didn’t bother me much, because this was an experimental piece, and I was able to remove the lines once I moved to photoshop.
I also painted a very rough idea of values using teal and pale green.
✹second pass✹
Next, I brought in some darker values to define the shapes a bit. I also brought in a some purple and a light pinkish color to contrast with all the teals.
✹third pass✹
I started to paint more precisely, using more darks, and bringing in some greens and light teals to add variation in hue and build depth.
I like to build depth by layering and glazing. It allows the textures and colors of previous layers to show through even in the finished image.
✹Final pass✹
For this final stage of painting traditionally, I added more details with an even darker teal.
I felt that the light pinkish color wasn’t meshing well with the other colors, so I decided to change it to a pale green. You can still see some of the pink coming through, which I liked!
✹ Adding details digitally ✹
First thing I did after scanning the image into Photoshop was to edit the colors. I wanted to make sure the values and contrast were good so that I would have a solid base to work on top of.
A little more color editing. This time using blending modes. I put a green-gold gradient layer and a purple gradient layer, both set to “soft-light”
I used a combination of the lasso tool and a large textured brush with pressure sensitive opacity to start carving out shapes and details.
More progress on the rendering. It’s a slow going process, but I find the results very rewarding!
I didn’t want to render out all of the textures from the original painting, so I was careful to keep the areas I liked untouched!
✹Also a little side note! You can use the spot heal brush tool in photoshop to quickly and effectively remove sketch lines! I used it in this painting in the areas where I thought the ballpoint pen was too heavy or distracting.
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