Mostly words, but a doodle too.

I'm trying to find a way to break out of the rut I'm in. All the stuff I'm drawing is feeling very samey, and I want to constantly improve and expand, so a departure of sorts was in order. I'm mucking about with the dry media tools in painter, and I think I found a bleed/resaturation setting that gives you an OpenCanvas like ability to blend color, but still a grainy finish, which I really dig.

I'm using the flattened pencil tool at it's default settings for the linework (which is really placeholder and throwaway - I intend to substitute for my inked lines eventually) and Sharp Chalk with a 50% Resaturation and a 80% Bleed.

My inks tend to have a strongly defined light source, so I think a method that works well for me is to throw down large swaths of color behind the pencils/inks in a seperate layer. I highlight certain areas that make sense within the context of the lineweights I've already created and then start to render from there.

I've never worked this way before. I always opted to paint in greyscale on a solid, 50% grey background. I've only done one test so far, and it took all of about ten minutes, but I'm liking the potential here for print/editorial work. I think my solid, spot hues work great for limited color pieces like tee designs, but for situations were more elaboration is allowed, I think something like the following test is worth pursuing:



Having a broadly defined light source sitting in the underpainting allows me to solve all my highlighting and shadow issues pretty intuitively. I'm really glad I decided to fire up Painter and doodle a bit.

My site is about to relaunch. When it does, I intend to post a video/sketch diary of sorts. Lots of videos of the working process, lots of lengthier explanations behind decisions I've made. I'll do the same here.