Process

Francois L'Ollanais

So instead of going over the process of my other final pieces individually I find there to be not much reason as the process what exactly the same as my process with Black Beard however there are o course some differences. So I have decided to explain any other techniques I used for my three other final pieces but know that the main process was the same as Black Beards as they were all done afterwards and so I had the same techniques in mind.

Third Final Pieces

Francois L'ollainais was my second piece I did and was actually the most difficult for me as I faced so many issue when drawing him. I found it so difficult to actually master his face and below are a serise of the drastic changes I made spontanaously when I felt just didnt like him and had to change him. My problem was with him was that he was too feminime looking and as much as I tried to look at reference I just kept having difficulty with it, I felt like I was maybe overthinking it but you can judge for yourself below. Eventually I was happy with the face and you can see in the final image to the left that I really highlighted his jawline as this is one of the obvious diffrensiations between a male and female face, with the jaw made obvious to get rid of my idea of him being too femninime. To be honest now that I look back on them I dont see what I was fussing over so much.

Thebackground was actually very fun to do yet I did find parts difficult as it was as easy to blend in the background with my painting as it was with a clear blue sky with blackbeard as this background wasa lot more detailed and complex. First What I did was set the background to a dark green hue. Next I went online and found high resolution images of tropical leafs, I then imported these in and rubbed out all the areas apart from the leaf. With that done I simply duplicated the leaves and spread them around to form a leaf pile behind him. I did find though that at first they did not blend in well at all as they were just clear photos and their colours as well did not suit my ones of francois, the lighting was off. So I used the tools, Colur Blance, Curves and also a paint filter to fix this and it took a lot of editing but I managed it in the end. The Paint filter basically converted the photoimage to look as though its been painted so I'm so glad I knew of that as that saved a lot of time. For the leaves on top of his head I simple went online and serched for png tropical leaf and this came up with that type typee o fleaf which is kind of like a palm tree. Either way what I liked about it was it had loads of gaps inbetween so it was great to place over the top of my painting of Francois as it didnt block him out completley. So I imported the png in and it had a transparent background already so no effort really was required other than re-sizing it. However I did have to do all the same effects as before like I did with the other leaves behind him.

Bite Marks

Black Bart was certainly the most interesting piece to do as his one is set underwater which is actually something I've never done before so there was a lot of experimenting and hoping for the best. Below are the main references I used for creating this piece.

Batholmew Roberts (Black Bart)

Water Reflection

One of the most important details other than lighting was the reflection of the surface of the water above, as this is a key effect to make Bart look as though he's underwater. To be honest I acually didnt look at any reference at all and just using all my previus knowlege and experience, came up with my own methods to add in the reflection. I already had a rough idea of what reflection liunes looked liked as you notice these things if say you go swimming. Essentially they are just wave warped lines making up stretched circles, it's strange but the key is to make them all connect. So on a seperate layer I dew the relection pattern on his face and hat as you can see to the right in white using the default brush and airbrush. Then after wards I simply lowered the oppicity and done!

Adding Bubbles was really easy to do yet added so much more realsm and detail to the piece. It increased the belief and realsm that Bart was underwater jsut as drastically as the water reflection. To do this I went online and searched for Photoshop bubble brushes, found a pack easy enough and then loaded them into Photoshop. With the brush selected and my colour set to white I just stamped then in and done. Notice I didnt put any bubbles comming from his mouth as this shows he's dead, however I wonder if it would have been more creepy if I had, as it would mean he was still alive yet doomed to his fate.

Bubbles

William Kidd

William Kidd was my fourth and final piece to do and took me the shortst time to do but only because I worked so hard to finish him because I know I was running out of time. I feel like I still managed to keep him to the high standard as the others though and pluss doing the previous me has made me practice and full understand m y techniques maing me faster at it. Also William Kidd was the most simple to do apart from his wig which was painful but I managed it! Below are the references I used for this piece.

The wigg for William Kidd wsas the ahrdest bit to do as it was so complicated with all the curls that I needed to keep looking 3D not flat looking. This means a lot of shading and highlighting was involed and it had to be done individually for each curl which what made it take so long. I believe over 50% of my time doin this piece was on the wig. The only brush I used for it was the squiggly brush as that is perfect for hair but for shadng I would often use the airbrush on low opppacity. I'm glad I knew the character in the film pirates of the crribean whi wore the perfect wig I wanted Kidd to have and so he was great reference to have. You can see the image on the right above.

What was good with having the white wig taking up so much of the image was that the multply layer of the old paer teacture and cnavas showed up really well on it unlike my othe rpieces which I struggled with a they were very dark so the extures didnt show up as well., so this was very helpful.

Tar on face

The tar on the face I was a bit cluless on as it's not common to find images tar stuck to peoples face to use as reference. So I just simply looked at references of tar, andI understood how it work as I;ve seen tarr being place don roads. It starts off as a liquid whn hot and then when it cools i becomes rock hard. However I believe if its a thin layer and placed on the skin I feel like it would begin to crack and crumble if Kidd was to move his face, the tarr wouldnt be able to dry still, I mean he is still alive in my portrait of him. Pluss this is a good excuse to have his face showing, as it was a nice ffect to have the tarr crumbling off in the centre of his face to reveal his expression. It looks very dark on screen but I did try to add a more rough and gravely texture byt choosing my charcoal brush and with a light grey colour lightly going over the top of it.

For the highlights and to give it that 3D to look I used the default Photoshopbrush and drew in harsh white lines around the top edges as the light source was comming from above. I then lowered the oppacity a little bit and done.

To start of my piece I first gathered a collection of reference pictures to use in order to keep my artwork realistic and accurate. The three images below are the main references I used, some of which have been analysed previously as to why specifically these ones. To summarise however I chose Jason Momoa as my main facial reference for Black Beard as he has a naturally angry and intimidating look about him and I wanted that aura for my interpretation of Black Beard due to how he is described as being a "demon" and naturally terrifying. To develop on this I then decided to choose an angry expression for Black Beard of him shouting as this makes him even more terrifying due to the anger in his expression, so I found a powerful photostock image of a man shouting that is clear and great to reference off of. The most iconic feature of Black Beard is his Beard and I found the Dwarven Beards from the film The Hobbit especially the character Gloin’s Beard, to be very suitable for the style of Beard Black Beard had as they are very large and intimidating and styled with braids.

Black Beard

I drew out my final design on paper with a simple HB pencil, this was once I had completed all of my initial ideas which can be found in my sketchbook. I draw artwork from skratch a lot better with pencil and paper as it gives me more freedom to move around the page and doesn't make me feel limmited as drawing straight on Photoshp does with a solid black line. It makes me feel okay if it's a bit scribbly and not artistically beautiful, I'm just weird like that. Once the sketch was done for my final idea I scanned it into photoshop and then went over the lines with the pencil tool on Photoshop. I didnt use the brush tool as this draws smooth lines and I want to keep my drawing rough nd scribbly still to not limmit me and make it okay to scrap pieces and draw over lines etc. Once that was done I coloured in in the drawing in greyscale with very basic shadowing on where I want darker areas to be. By starting off colouring in black and white this allows me to focus completley on the shadowing and lighting of the piece and add colour later. I explain this more in detail on my Artists & Inspiration page under 'The Underworks'.

Looking back and forth at my reference pictures I began to add more detailed shading and lighting to the face using a rough brush which I call 'Charocoal Brush' as it looks and behaves in a similar way to black Charcoal just without the smudging. To help understand the lighting and shaidng more I did make my reference images grey scale as well and this helped a lot. Once more srough shading was added it was time to blend it all out using the second brush which I call 'The squiggly'. I went though a lot of experimentation with brushes previously and chose this to be my main brush to draw my final pieces with as it shows clear rbush strokes in my work which adds a traditional effect to my pieces. I explain more on my 'Learning' Page. So as you can see in the bottom right images a simply kept selecting all the different shades and spammed brush strokes blending it all together. I found that curving the brush strokes in the diraction of the shadow flow or skin made a more neat and realistic effect and when I wanted to add more smaller details I would cross hatch for example you can see around the eyes.

'Charcoal brush'

'The Squiggly'

The eye was one of the most detailed areas to do, and it took three brushes which were the standard default brush, the squiggly and a custom glitter brush I downloaded. For the eye brows and skin around the eye, I used the squiggly brush as it is perfect for hair as the brush is made up of multiple lines combined together. I did go back over the eyebrow with the thin standard brush just to add any more stray hairs and not make it so they appear to flow in the same direction. For the actual eye ball I used the standard brush on low opacity and this made a very smooth texture compared to the rough lines made by using squiggly which is very suitable for the eyeball. For the eye lashes I drew them individually using the thing standard brush, I turned the opacity down for the lower lashes to make them less defined as we still want him looking manly. The glitter brush was used at the end to add the highlights which you can see in the corner of the eye, I learnt this technique from studying the artist Sakimichan's artwork on Deviant art. She adds glitter highlight around the eyes which adds a strange sense of realism to her anime style and so I decided to use it here on this piece and it was very effective. (I don’t know why there is random glitter on the eyebrow in the picture below, I removed this later on).

Aging & Wrinkles

Reference

Initial Sketch

Shading

Details

Fixing bad mistakes and thinking deeper

After half-way through working on everything I zoomed out and noticed something awful, which was that his forehead was the size of the Great Wall of China. Its funny how I only noticed this once I flipped the image which made me see how weird his hair shape was it needed fixing straightaway. So I went online and found references of men with long hair and looked to see how long hair was supposed to flow round a man’s face. I realised that it starts off very flat at the top and if not tucked round the ears then it hangs very close in on the face if the hair is middle parted. It then flows out from the bottom; it's important to do this as if it’s straight and down then it looks very feminine.

Original - inaccurate, lacks realsm and looks silly (What was I thinking?)

Reference - I realise hair at top of head is very flat, then spreads out at bottom

Improved but missing something - seems lifeless

Added atmospheric changes of wind blowing! Adds a lot of realsm

'The Squiggly'

'Glitter Brush'

As right now Black Beard is looking in his early 20s with his smooth baby face it's time to age him up by adding creases and wrinkles. I used Kieth Richards as reference as his crinkles are strangley cool? He looked awesome as Jack Sparrows dad and I never forget his face and I didnt even know who he was then (my bad). I used the charocal brush to add wrinkles as well as the standard brush. To be honest looking at the wrinkles close up on my drawing I could improve them mor as they're not that detailed, however it does the job for now.

The Amazing World of Highlighting!

Now with the he piece over half way done and the lighting is sorted out using greyscale colours it is now safe to start adding colour. You can see in the first image below on the left, this what my piece looked like just before colour. All the highlighting had been done and pretty much the face was entirley complete. Adding colour is much more simple than many think, that is why the greyscale to colour technique is all I do now as it's so efficient. First I create one layer above all the others and set the mode to 'colour'. Now II usually start by choosing the base colour of the skin and using the default brush or default airbrush I simply colour in the areas. Following my notes from studiying previous artists such as --- and --- I made sure do add in blue hues on areas such as the temples, eyes and chin as well as pink hues on the nose and cheeks. Now I have the result of the middle picture below. However as you can see the colours arnt very accurate and dont go well together at all but dont worry its supposed to start off this way. Next what I do is open Selective Colour window and this allows me to change the hues of all the six main colours, such as red, yellow, green cyan etc. Pluss it allows me to change the whites, greys and blacks. Now what I do is simply play around with it until it looks right and to the best it can be. Its such a great method in finding the right colours insteas of induvually slecting the correct colours from the start. You can see the changes in the last image below on the right, the colours are strong and contrast well with eachother, plus the skin has much more realistic tones to it than in the image previous. What I need to take into note as well that if the background his blue then blue light will be reflecting off of the face, so the face will be more magenta/ blue than usual same with the hair. To do this I cn simply go back into Selective Colour and changethe colour white to be more blue hued.

I felt like the piece so far was missing something, it needed that extra detail to add to the realism as right now it was looking like a flat image and too cartoony almost. I got fed up with my piece and so for a day I did a personal piece to get me back in the creative mode again. I decided to draw the Joker and I wanted to draw him in the style of Saki-tecki as they are one of my top admired artists and I've always wanted to achieve their style. I watched their process video on YouTube and wrote down all their steps and techniques. The most interesting technique I found and one which essentially is a big part of achieving their style is the highlighting. I notices that she would add harsh white lines in certain essential areas such as the jawline, nose, upper lips, eyes and anywhere where there is liquid. Following the steps I did this for my joker piece and you can see how it turned out on the right, amazing! I was so happy with this piece and had learnt so much from it following saki-teki videos. So the next day when I got back to my black beard piece I decided to use the techniques I learnt and added in highlighting and it made a huge difference and added way more realism to the piece.

No Highlights

With Highlights

Adding Colour

Extra Details

Their were many side details which required a lot ofdifferent techniques which I havnt mentioned so far. I am well experience with Photoshop with having used it for over 5 years now and so I have naturally learnt these techniques over time. For the tattoos I simply drew the tattoo design on a seperate layer in black. Then I placed the design in the position I wanted it to be in and then change the layer mode to 'Multiply' this means that the layers underneath will show through. I then lowered the oppacity of the layer to the the setting I prefered, I decided to do it just low enough so that the skin texture was visible but the pattern remained strong.

For the feather flaoting in the air I simmply used the Squiggly Brush to draw in the rough base of it and then using the default Photoshopshop brush I drew in seperate lines for the feathers and middle. Its not as detailed it could have been but I was running low on time and was good enough to fit in ith the rest of the image still. For the birds in the sky it was a similar technique which was to simply use the default brush and I drew them in seperatley, I then lowered the oppacity as the rule is that when things become futher away they more fainter they become. I then also used the Airbrush as a rubber to rub out some of the birds as if they were behind clouds. Again this was also slightly rushed but still fitted in well enough with the image.

TTo do the metal braid charms (not sure what to call them) I went for a bit more advanced technique. I first simply drew the base of the charms using the 'Charcoal' brush. The base shape was basically a dark grey rectangle with a lone lighter grey line o the top and bottom, I made sure to curve them to show that they wrap round the braid. Then using the squiggly brush I added in the shine to get that realism. Now for the engraving pattern I simply used the default brush and just kind of made up a cool pattern, it was actually very Viking inspired. No since the pattern looked kind of printed on the charm I wanted it to actually look engraved. So to do this I went into the options for the pattern layer and went to emboss and selected pillow. This added an effect which did all the engraving for me and it's as simple as that.

Making it look more like a Traditional Painting

As you can see on the image below on the left this was essential my final piece of black beard finished and drawn however it looked out of place with my idea for it being like a traditional painting as it's missing details that painting would have, it is still too obvious that it is purely digital. So to fix this it was time to start adding in some effects and textures. The following techniques I have used in the past for my Danny Final Piece for a previous college project. So first I search for a 'canvas texture' and found on easily of high resolution. I then imported that in and made it the very top layer. I resized it to make sure the texture fitted across the whole canvas and then afterwards I set the layer to 'multiply' which instantly gave me a great effect of the image now having a texture as though it was printed on canvas. However this still wasn’t enough as now the image looked like a fresh new painting however I want it to be old and grungy. These pirates lived in the 1700s so these paintings should belong in their time and are over a hundred years old. So I went online and found old paper textures with spilt ink on them. I imported them into Photoshop and then set the layer to multiple. This then tinted the layers below brownish and greenish and was a perfect effect, of course I used the airbrush tool to rub out unneeded areas and so it merged nicely with the image. And below you can see the final effects, it’s such a simply task and makes a huge difference! My final piece fo Black Beard is now complete!

So when I started my Black Beard piece anyone who saw it would always comment on how white his teeth were and that Black Beard as a pirate would have rotten yellow teeth and this is true I just had yet to edit the teeth and so I was finally relived when I had done it.

So to do the teeth it was quite simple as the hard part had already been done previously when I drew the piece first in black and white and added in the highlighting.

First I created a new layer and changed the mode to 'colour' and then with the simple default brush just coloured in the teeth a dark yucky yellow colour. Since the teeth still appeared too shiny and clear although tinged yellow I decided to use the Squiggly Brush to just draw rough dark lines over them and this was just a quick way in adding muck and rot to them.

For the silver tooth I simply did not colour that one in yellow but instead went over it in a darker grey. Then to add the shine I got a default brush and just drew white lines in the same diagonal direction and done.

Background

For the background I may have cheated a bit since the background isnt really the main focus of the peice and so I simply got actual photos of a blue sky and theen using certain Photoshop tools converted it to fit in with my drawn image. To do this I first imported the image in and then with it selected opened the Gaussian Blur window and blured the images, this will make it seem out of focus and make make my drawing o black beard the centre focus. Aftwards I then simply used the curve to change the brightness and contrast to suit the lighting of my black beard drawn. Then after I also used selective colour to change the colour to aslo match with my drawing of black beard and in the end it turned out perfectly.

'Charcoal brush'

Background

The Wig

Peer Assessment

During my final pieces I asked for constant feedback on my work from my peers and even got them to evaluate my work so far. Bellow you can see two assessments done by my class mates reviewing my final pieces half-way through making. I took both of their views into account and used their critic to make changes and improve my work, it was very helpful.

Jack Gathercole:

My overall first impression of the images I am studying, is very positive. I enjoy looking at each individual portrait, but there are several elements of the work that does need improvement. The mouth/jaw area on the Francois portrait still needs some blending while the overall image is still quite intimidating. But the use of colour on other areas of the face is very strong. Whereas the Blackbeard portrait encourages the use of greyscale colours which is a very popular technique that is very useful to then progress onto the use of vibrant colours, while maintaining the detail on the skin and braded hair. The use of a textured brush helps to add lighting details to the hair and more importantly the beard.

Upon first glance, I am very impressed by the tonal details included on the skin of Black Bart, you can quickly tell that the use of lighting specifically on the cheek and eyes has been carefully planned. But I do think the use of a real background is an element within concept art that helps to keep the realism of the portraits, while maintaining the overall shape and shading.

Overall, there are several different elements that could be improved such as the skin blending on a variety of areas at this point, but also the use of colour could be slightly improved.

Connor Griggs:

With just a simple glance, you can tell that a lot of detail and care has been put into these pieces. The general style of the characters is cool; showing brush strokes makes the sense that these images have been created to look like paintings and it also shows how the artist has created them. It also allows us to see how the light is affected by the face. The expressions on each of the characters created show an aspect of their personaity and/or past which makes me want to learn more about the characters. However, there are aspects of these pieces that could do with some improvement.

Black Bart's is the most completed out of all these images. The background on that image doesn't really work. The colour ranges are in contrast with each other which makes it look pasted on instead of being part of the background. There is an interesting use of lighting on this image, it appears that the light is coming from the bottom which creates a cool affect. However, the sharp lighting on the collar suggests the light is coming from somewhere else which is confusing.

Black Beards painting is my favourite image. The level of detail is a lot higher in this image and its almost complete apart form some colour and background. The nose could add some detail as it is difficult to tell the shape and it seems to look smudged.

Francois's picture is still a work in progress but progress is good. a couple of notable improvements would be the nostrils and the cheeks. They need the same amount of detail as the rest of the image. One of the eyes contains a lot less detail (iris). The eybrows also need developing but as stated, it is a work in progress.