Uploaded April 2016 | Updated September 2026, 2 weeks ago
Been a while since I did one of these! I don't actively peruse /r/redditgetsdrawn anymore, but I'm still subscribed to it so every now and then I'll stumble across a photo I feel compelled to paint. This time it was /u/softdiveofoblivion (reddit.com/r/redditgetsdrawn/comments/4euyus/a_photo_of_me_all_styles_welcome/). A lot of other people posted to that thread, so be sure to check it out.
Specifically in regards to this painting - a lot of beginners will hear the advice, "don't paint on a white background." Frankly, it's good advice, since beginners have a tendency not to be as bold with their value ranges. That said, it's not a hard and fast rule.
I've been playing around a lot lately with the approach I used for the first 50 seconds of this video (27 minutes in real time) - all of that sketching and rough rendering of light/shadow was done using a single brush with a single colour setting. The brush itself was pulled from one of the famous Kyle T Webster's natural media brushes (gumroad.com/kyletwebster) - which I haven't used long enough to recommend, but many others do - but really the interesting thing about it was just that it's got color jitter on, and I set my foreground to a very saturated red, and my background to a very saturated blue.
The result was pretty neat - if I paint lightly, I get a faded red, if I use a middling pressure, it comes out with a kind of muddy mauve, and if I press hard I get a very bold and vivid blue. The dynamism to it led to a lot of happy accidents, and its semi-unpredictability was rather refreshing. Once I got more control over it though, it had the benefit of giving me a range of tones without worrying about switching colours back and forth.
Anyway, as always, I leave you with some links:
irshadkarim.com - My Portfolio
drawabox.com - My exercise-based drawing lessons focusing on the fundamentals of constructional/analytical drawing
patreon.com/uncomfortable - The patreon campaign I use to support those lessons
Been a while since I did one of these! I don't actively peruse /r/redditgetsdrawn anymore, but I'm still subscribed to it so every now and then I'll stumble across a photo I feel compelled to paint. This time it was /u/softdiveofoblivion (reddit.com/r/redditgetsdrawn/comments/4euyus/a_photo_of_me_all_styles_welcome/). A lot of other people posted to that thread, so be sure to check it out.
Specifically in regards to this painting - a lot of beginners will hear the advice, "don't paint on a white background." Frankly, it's good advice, since beginners have a tendency not to be as bold with their value ranges. That said, it's not a hard and fast rule.
I've been playing around a lot lately with the approach I used for the first 50 seconds of this video (27 minutes in real time) - all of that sketching and rough rendering of light/shadow was done using a single brush with a single colour setting. The brush itself was pulled from one of the famous Kyle T Webster's natural media brushes (gumroad.com/kyletwebster) - which I haven't used long enough to recommend, but many others do - but really the interesting thing about it was just that it's got color jitter on, and I set my foreground to a very saturated red, and my background to a very saturated blue.
The result was pretty neat - if I paint lightly, I get a faded red, if I use a middling pressure, it comes out with a kind of muddy mauve, and if I press hard I get a very bold and vivid blue. The dynamism to it led to a lot of happy accidents, and its semi-unpredictability was rather refreshing. Once I got more control over it though, it had the benefit of giving me a range of tones without worrying about switching colours back and forth.
Anyway, as always, I leave you with some links:
irshadkarim.com - My Portfolio
drawabox.com - My exercise-based drawing lessons focusing on the fundamentals of constructional/analytical drawing
patreon.com/uncomfortable - The patreon campaign I use to support those lessons
