Again comparing my color version with the Wyeth color reference and my black and white version... airbrushing over the whole image with it zoomed out, with more saturated yellows, oranges and reds to bring it up to the saturation level of the Wyeth... it was just tooo pale:
Fixing back foot:
Changing horizon line in front of cow to descend, by scribbling with a yellow grey airbrush, also beneath her body and front foot, to silhouette them as they were getting totally lost in dark:
Addng in a few more darker shapes in the front horizon...
Using the lasso tool to select the bottom of the cow, so I can go in to mush up the airbrushing I did in the background without painting on her body, with brushy blending marks using the Sable Chisel Tip Water brush:
Going in and refining and brushing out with the Ultra Fine Wash brush, blending where I had used airbrush, pens etc:
Cleaning up and blending around the edges of the tail and the chainmail skirt so they don't look so pasted on to the background, and fit more painterly into the sky:
Working on the hoses on the milking machine:
Working on the drops of milk coming out of the milking machine hose:
Working on blending her eyeball:
Continuing to wash and tighten up different areas with the Ultrafine Wash Brush, esp in the milking machine area:
Here is where I am attempting to use the Dirty Marker brush that my prof uses so often to put in more dark and random colors into areas. It is totally just making a mess: I seem to get just wide flat swatches, too saturated, or narrow chisel-shaped swatches. What a mess!
Here I am attempting to put some scumbling into the sky (as we can see in the upper left corner of the screen on the sky of the Wyeth painting) using the Dry Bristle watercolor brush (having deleted all the Dirty Marker!). Again. Yuck.
Trying a Simple Round Wash watercolor brush to see if that is any better: nope.
Trying to see if I can do anything interesting to get the texture I want out of the watercolor layer I put down, by erasing some of it with the Watercolor Eraser Dry brush. Nope again:
Looking at the end results of using different Watercolor brushes and the Eraser Dry brush, zooming out to see if there is anything worth saving. Not really!
Here, I've chosen a French Watercolor Paper type, and upped the contrast to get an interesting paper texture, with the intention of rubbing Pastels over it to pick up the texture and get some roughness into my armour (I have lassoed the shoulder armour). Weirdly enough the pastel is going "pastel" (haha, ie like "pastel blue" instead of "deep blue") ie whiter and lighter, when I don't press hard on it. No idea why. And it only picks up the texture of the paper if I don't press hard. I only get the color I want when I press hard, but when I do, I fill in the paper texture with the pastel. Fail:
More of how this is NOT working!
I've managed to get what I want, saturated color, picking up the texture of the French Watercolor Paper (which I have played around with the resolution size as well as upping the contrast), by using the Square Chalk brush instead of Pastels.
Here you can see the results on the shoulder armour: using different chalk colors, and making different hard edges by removing some of the lassoed selection for each section of armour:
How it is looking zoomed out:
Doing the same texture thing with the paper and Square Chalk 35, on the armour of the neck and face. You can see here I have made the paper texture really fine by dialing down its size (upper slider on the paper palette window):
Working on the texture the same way on the stomach of the cow:
Here I am using Focus-Soften, to make the armour around the rear leg of the cow less "sharp" so it isn't equally as detailed on the back of the cow as on the face, and our eye will be less drawn back there:
Coming back to work on "highlights" now on the armour now that I have put in a lot of darker texture. Airbrushing in blue light that would be reflecting from her glowing eyes:
zoomed out:
That was the end of working on day 2 of coloring in the assignment.
Here I am starting on the third day of coloring in:
Coming back into the cow's tail and hair to mix it up, using the Real Soft Colored Pencils again, as well as refining the back foot and grass where they meet:
Taking a look at the illustration, I thought it looked like the milking machine hose and drops weren't between the two back legs but actually in front of them. so I copied and pasted just the hose, and moved it up quite a bit, so it would be going back:
Here I've painted out the original milking machine hose:
I also thought that they were so bright they are competing for attention with the cow's face and eyes, so I am adjusting the color and bringing down the saturation, and also making the hue a bit darker, less bright turquoise (which I had originally put in exactly TO match the eye color):
I also found that the udder was too turquoise and close in color to the background in front of the cows front left knee, so I am changing it to a more navy blue using adjust color: hue:
Happy with the new cow udder color, as I feel it doesn't get lost, and also doesn't draw attention from where I want the focus to be on the face:
Fixing the texture and shape on the front of the cow's brow, again using a lasso, and the square chalk:
Again, having trouble with the colors of a brush: again, like the Pastel brush earlier, on a new layer, the Real Soft Colored Pencil which I had used earlier directly on the canvas quite nicely, is going "whitish" when I don't apply heavy pressure. Why oh why?
At this point I again felt that the back parts of the cow were too sharply textured, so I repeated what I did to soften the focus on the rear hip armour, with the belly armour of the cow: focus-soften-gaussian:
Checking how things are coming along, with the blurrier areas further back on the cow. Also smearing around a bit with the Brushy brush (one of my prof's custom RyanBrushes, along with the Washabrusha). Looking at it I realized I still really hated the trailing milking machine and drops of milk which just are wrong and stand out too much.
Choosing the Washabrusha and just painting out all that part completely, using colors picked from the background grass:
Using the Real Soft Colored Pencils to completely redraw the milk machine hose and drops:
Painting in the new milking machine hose, in darker colors instead of lighter this time, to silhouette against the grass, and be BEHIND the back foot nearest to us:
Decided I didn't like that the skyline went up in the back and in the front: using a light grey yellow to airbrush over the darker bushes in the left horizon, and extend the sky down to give an angle:
Airbrushing a dark shadow under the cow to hold her to the ground, and make her less floaty:
Using the Real Soft Colored Pencils to draw in trees in the background behind the cow:
Further work on the trees:
Taking a good comparing look at my reference material and my painting, comparing the levels of color saturation, range of values, horizon and sky colors and textures... Not bad, compared to where I started with pretty mushy soft, undersaturated colors and textures:
Then before I hung it up for the day, I quickly put in another layer to try out putting in brambles in the immediate foreground in front of the cow, much like my prof put in cables in front of his robot in his tutorial painting, just to see what it looked like blocked in sketchily:
So, to compare, here's where I was at the end of day 2:
And where I was at the end of day 3, ready to put brambles in the front left the next day:
And a comparison of the end of day 3 with the Alla Prima painting I'd begun with at the start of Assignment 9:
Do click on the next post to see where I got on day 4, putting in the brambles and finishing up by adding canvas texture. (and if you are reading this and didn't see the first part of this step by step, do go back one post!) Thanks!
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