Wednesday, April 25, 2012

So many brushes, so little time.


So many brushes, so little time. 
In the last piece (Snoop Dogg) we were talking 
about using gritty Spatter shaped brushes in 
one click to create the illusion of water color. 
Today I though I'd play with brushes that 
are(in some cases) like a 'calligraphy stroke' mark. 
I thought I'd 'one click' them and see what I could get. 
This is less about faking watercolor and more about 
making a fun image with some of those same techniques.


The other thing I have been playing with 
are smoke brushes. (I often say my art is all 
smoke and mirrors. The illusion of something is 
way more fun than painting the reality of it for me.) 
Anyway, smoke brushes are a great way to 
one-click yourself into some great hair, 
also you can use some of their gradient curves 
to do nice transitional shading in a click. 
Then erase what you don't need.


At one point I got really carried away on this piece 
and I almost gave up on it. I used so many of 
these little clicks on her face that it was overworked. 
(The danger of so many brushes is that you want 
to use them all.) But I was able to revert back 
to a midstate (thanks to a history brush marker) 
and sally forth.

Art is fun. You don't have to have everything 
planned out before you paint a piece. Often, 
good art is a series of happy accidents that you saw 
and then were able to capitalize on.








 

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