Supergirl

Click the Read More link to see work in progress steps.

Here are some steps taken to get to the final painting:

 This is the basic sketch with most of the detail I want but it will change as the painting continues. Just to add that I always use references that are close to what I want then change the sketch using transform, move, sketching etc.

 Here I have finished some of the sketch and whacked the basic colours in there. This is the same process I use every time because it means you can "lock" the pixels in Photoshop and then you cannot go out of line.

 Same basic shading in here simply using a soft round brush and the flow around 5%. There is nothing fancy going on here but it is just a lot of changing the brush size and using the tablet pressure to get it darker etc. I use only a few different shades of the colours at this point.

 More detail here again using the soft round brush but going zoomed in and a smaller brush. If you want to get subtle shading make sure you have the brush pretty big and the flow on low < 5%.

I paint the background with some big brushes and just get roughly what I want. I used a photo for the clouds but they will look nothing like that in the end. I use a lot of layered textures in the end to make the painting look more realistic. If you find your painting looks too smooth this is how to sort that out.

The final paiting has many different texture layers on it in various modes, overlay etc. I paint a simple cloak in but nothing too fancy because I want to keep it simple. Various other changes to the girl and costume but they are just a matter of messing about to see what works. As you can see everything has been blurred using motion blurring. The rocks  higher up have been blurred more because they are moving faster.

There is an orange to grey gradient underneath the background textures to give it the colour.Orange goes nice with blue but a light blue for sky would have probably worked also. I do play around with different colours before deciding on the best. A trick when playing with colour huw/saturation etc is to look at the painting in the corner of your eye so it is blurry and you can see colours without worrying about the details in the painting...works for me anyway :)

And there you go, signed on the small rock and onto the next painting.

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