Saturday, February 6, 2010

Cosmic Glamor




Finally, something new for me. I've been wanting to try doing picture of a "glamor" nude in Photoshop, without any scanned and imported pencil sketch as a base. I have lots of model photograph books, and one of them has a lot of very nice pin-up poses done by a stunning model, someone that I would never have the chance to draw in a decade of life drawing classes. I drew directly into Photoshop, with the photo in sight, using my Wacom tablet and stylus. Then I built up the figure using a lot of layers, which is how you're supposed to work in Photoshop. There are layers for the drawing, the skin tones, face details, hair details, and glitter stars. The cosmic blue is the background layer, and I let some of the starry blue show through in the drawing, something which I have done before on colored paper drawings.

I'm not really pleased with the face, which I didn't draw from the photograph but made up. I left too much cosmic blue in it. I need to work on faces but I think I did pretty well with the body this time. As I was working on this a blizzard was raging outside, and there she is, naked in a warm nebula bath.

"Cosmic Nude 1" is Photoshop, 8 1/2" x 11".

3 comments:

Tristan Alexander said...

Well, even though I don't like digital, I have to say it does look very much like your traditional work. Also, the body is very good and while the face could be better, it's not a bad face.

Pyracantha said...

Tristan, digital art is just another tool, like a paintbrush or a palette or an airbrush. The personal quality of an artist will come through unless he/she has to paint in a pre-determined style for commercial purposes.
I was never an oil painter, only acrylic so the oil paint emulation on both Painter and Photoshop confounds me. But I am learning to emulate acrylic on Photoshop, building up forms and color areas and blends by many layers of semi-transparent soft brushing.
As for the face, I know it isn't very good and I am going to try to improve my rendering of faces, especially pretty women. I have never ever depicted pretty women well, but I can always keep trying.

Tristan Alexander said...

Pyra, while I understand that "it's just another tool" there is still something fundamentaly wrong with computer done art (to me). The really good artists can, on occasion, use the computer tools and have their true art show through, but most can not or do not! I know I am a purist and a ludite when it comes to
art. I will try in future to not mention my dislike of computer work when commenting on your stuff.