Tutorials
Navi portrait tutorial
- Details
- Category: Wednesday Tutorial
- Published on Friday, 21 May 2010 23:18
- Written by Char Reed
- Hits: 2442
An awesome tutorial by CharReed.com. This is an Art Rage tutorial, describing some of the features and uses of the tool. That being said all the principles can be applied to most other digital painting tools out there. A fantastic tutorial all in all.
Stay tuned for more tutorials by Char and don't forget to join and leave a comment, we are happy to answer any questions you might have.
I realize everyone is pretty well over Avatar, but I just saw it this weekend and felt the overwhelming desire to create myself as a Na'vi. A perfectly natural reaction for any artist after watching the movie, I'm sure!
I completed this image in ArtRage Studio Pro, using the oil brush and the pallet knife. I experimented with these tools as I haven't used them extensively in the past. I tried these tools in the couple of test pieces and found them a lot more manageable and fun than I originally thought.
I first prepare the canvas with a uniform green colour, as the world of Pandora was very lush and there was a lot of vegetation.
Next I started roughing out the initial face, neck and shoulder shapes. I used a reference photo for myself and screenshots of the characters to create a blending of the designs. I incorporated my expression into the Na'vi facial structure. When painting a piece, make sure to pay attention to the tones. You want to develop the structure of the forms through shadows and highlights rather than using linework.
I've continued to blend my facial expression with the Na'vi facial anatomy. I use a base gray-blue colour to start with, then add a darker and lighter blue depending on where the lighting is coming from. The oil brush by default is a thick, opaque brush. In order to blend, I used the pallet knife at different sizes. Depending on the amount of detail and the area I wanted to blend, I used a bigger brush to blend larger areas and a smaller brush for details. I kept the Na'vi eye shape to maintain a better likeness to the aliens.
I'm continuing to work on the tones of the face and to add details such as the eyes, hair, nose and mouth with the oil brush and blending the tones together with the pallet knife. I'm working the hair design in a way that keeps composition in mind to produce a balanced and interesting final image.
I'm continuing to reference my own picture and images of the Na'vi. Reference is extremely important, I can't stress it enough. Your imagination can get you halfway there, but your mind can only memorize so many details. It's crucial to have a refresher available so you can add accurate details in lighting, anatomy, markings, design and anything else that you may forget when drawing from memory.
I've also added a purple rim lighting to the left side of the face to help give more depth the image. I've blended the purple and blue together using a medium sized pallet knife.
I've continued the purple rim lighting around the whole piece. Usually the Na'vi have dark brown to black hair but I wanted to interject a little more similarity to myself and personality into the image by making the hair colour strawberry blond. I think it's important to keep a sense of originality about your work. Find ways to add your own voice so people will see the "signature" of your work beyond your name in the corner.
The final touches are added including costume design, the stripes on the face, my own shoulder spots and curly hair. I've added some light purple into the background to give a reason for the purple reflection on the figure. I added some punch to the highlights and a little darkened the shadows a little. I'm used to my trusty tricks from Photoshop, but I resisted bringing the image into Photoshop and tried to adjust everything "by hand," as it were.
I learned a lot from this program. This may be my "real media" simulator of choice and I'm definitely going to be using it more in my work in the future. I really enjoyed working with ArtRage and hopefully it's obvious how happy I would be to have my own Avatar!
Thank you for reading!
Char Reed
charreed.com
charreed.blogspot.com