Wk 4 Digital Painting - Full Body Painting and Animal Heads

This is the fourth week of my digital painting course.  By this time, I'm already comfortable painting digitally. I'm gradually learning Photoshop tools while completing a painting.  Our topic for the week was to paint a full body figure with drapery.  From the different statues given to us, we're to choose one, or use the previous statue we did from the previous week 1 and 2 assignment.

I started with my previous Vienna Statue sketch from week 1, using the finished head painting of week 2 and reduced it to the right size to continue painting the whole statue. I blocked out the body for a day, and planned to finish it the following day.  But I got sick and wasn't able to finish it.  The day after, I was a little bit better and tried to resume working on it.  But I got tired and bored with it so I didn't finish it.  This is the farthest I went with it..... (click to enlarge)

Unfinished Vienna statue painting

 I need something new this time, so I chose this statue for this week's assignment.  A man for a change.

Rough sketch

This week we're encouraged to try some custom brushes we've downloaded from last week.  After I unsuccessfully tried out the Fur brushes during the week 3 assignment, I decided to give this Shaddy's Brushes collection a chance this time.  For this full body painting, I used the brush called Tyrion Lannister. 

Every now and then, I would flip the image to get a fresh eye, which really helps in catching any off-proportions.  I also made the background lighter in color, similar to the photo, as I was having a difficult time seeing the correct value. Once it is finished, I switched the background back to black.  Here's the Full Body Painting in progressive versions.

Later on, I found that the statue looks too pale on a black background so I adjusted the overall contrast to match the black background.  Here's the finished painting...

This took me 2 days to finish, Not counting the extra day I spent on the Vienna Statue. This is becoming the time frame it would take me to do one painting.  

The next half of my assignment was to paint herbivore animal heads - a horse and a cow or bull.  For the horse, I used the Khal Drogo and Tyrion Lannister brushed from the Shaddy's brush collection. Here's the painting in progressive versions...

 I still haven't figured out how to use the custom Fur brushes according to how I want it to, so I just used the brush no 5 and 6 for the hair and fur again.

Next was the cow head.  Same as the horse, I used the same brushes to complete this painting. Here they are in progressive versions...

Yey! I finished all of my assignment with still a day to spare.  I'm really pleased with my speed so far. One thing that I realized this week, is that the human and animal anatomy lessons I have been trying to learn over the years before, is paying off now, Understanding what's underneath those skins is really useful and actually helps me to be able to do the painting more quickly, and hopefully, more convincingly.

More paintings in the coming weeks.  Till then....

To see previous weeks, click here : Week 1, Week 2, Week 3