CGSociety :: Tutorial
24 October 2007, by Marta Dahlig Marta Dahlig takes us through the creation of the EXOTIQUE 3 cover image. Marta Dahlig’s gorgeous ‘Umbrella Sky’ image was unanimously chosen for the cover of Ballistic Publishing’s EXOTIQUE 3, and after submitting, Marta continued to improve on perfection. Here, she takes us through her process of building on a dream.
Palettes and brushes
When starting to work on this image I knew exactly what I wanted to achieve – an intimate and poetic mood, underlined by bold color choices and some surrealistic elements. I picked some general colors I would be using throughout the painting process and picked some
skin tones for the character, by choosing a few midtones and then mixing them with the first palette. The brushes I used are quite standard for me: a hard round with ragged edges; a spackled brush; a rotating brush for skin tone blending and an airbrush.
Color blocked, figure blocking
After picking the colors, I opened up a new file and generally sketched the color layout (keeping the character colors on a separate layer), spreading different shades throughout the canvas. This helped me balance the painting from the very beginning, avoiding over-saturating or filling the piece with too much of one color.
Afterwards, I dimmed the character layer and started blocking the girl in more detail. I don’t really do typical sketching but straight color blocking, as my line handling is extremely messy. :) Furthermore, color blocking gives me an early idea of how something will look in the future.
Background
Straight after I moved forward to slightly define the background. Usually, I just leave the background for the very end, but this time, as the majority of colors were placed in the sky, I wanted this base to be ready first. I didn’t define the background fully, but just pushed it a bit further to have a general idea of how it would work with the character later on. The whole background was done with the ragged and soft brushes in Photoshop, with some blending done in Painter.
Faces At this point, I started sketching out the character’s face, which was going to be one of the most important aspects of the image. I usually paint confident and provocative expressions, but this time I wanted the girl to be young, subtle and dreamy. At first I pushed the face I initially sketched further, but also sketched an alternative. The one on the left proved to be a bit too modern and concentrated, and so I decided to stick with the original. After choosing the face I polished it some more, smoothing the rough transitions in Painter, and adding fist hints of details, concentrating on the eyes, nose and lips. The final blending was achieved with “Just Add Water” tool in Painter.
Body
Once I had the essence of the piece completed, I moved onto the dress and the body. Still limiting myself to the mentioned set of brushes, I detailed the shapes I blocked in before – the body and dress. The dress stages were mostly done in Painter, as its oily,
slightly smeary brushes and blenders made it easier to create the bold look of the folds I aimed at. To paint the body I applied the colors with a Ragged brush in Photoshop and blended them with the rotating brush as well as an airbrush.
Fish
Now, after digging through tons of references, I moved onto the details – the umbrella and fish. The purpose of those elements, along with a little symbolism, is to add some magical depth to the piece overall.
I wanted the fish to be looking ghost-like to avoid any attention being taken away from the character.
