All these years, I am fortunate to be able to do what I love and get paid for it. This is the first time however, that I’m finally tackling the bull by the horns – that is painting the traditional way. Something I could never do before because I couldn’t afford to buy art materials. Now I can buy what I need and hope that what I am doing pays for itself.
I just find it funny – a lot of people do the traditional way first – that is, go to school, take up Fine Arts , the works. From the traditional arts, they’d shift to digital arts and make a career from there. I started on the job by studying desktop publishing on my own, then animation, 3D modelling and animation, digital video editing, web design and development, print and marketing collaterals. From there, I’m now going back to painting by hand. I never realized that it could feel so good.
I feel that this is the best time to teach myself painting too. With the internet, everything is available at the click on the mouse. Of course if to learn something in-depth (better videos) I have to pay. Something that I know I will have to do later on.
Without realizing it, I learned that I have to put a base color on my portraits as a first step. I thought before that a base color was like makeup, use the closes possible skin tone – then work from there by putting highlights and shadows. It didn’t work that way for me. I have to put in the lightest color first. Then I put in the darkest and work my way to doing the midtones. Once the midtones are done, I put in the shadows in layers.
I’m learning that shadows should be translucent, light should be ‘opaque’ – in this case, the closest skin color unless it is being touched by the sun.
I’ve started to experiment with colors. I’m still working on the likeness. 🙂
