Work In Progress; Painting From A Photo

Advanced Satori Tutorial # 4 : Step by Step Painting
Using a Photo for Reference.

Written and Illustrated by Michael Hirsh. Page 1 of 2

This tutorial is based on a series of posts to Gallery section of The Satori Forum

The images and comments were posted as the painting progressed, and are reproduced here, mildly edited for clarity. There was a very tight competition deadline for the work.

Here's a painting I'm working on. The concept will form the basis of an oil painting, but in a different format.

What's being shown here will effectively become my colour sketch for the oil painting, and I'll be submitting the sketch as a finished piece to an online art contest at Animation Nation.com
The theme of the competition : "In a world you can only imagine"

The online art competition has given me a fillip ( by way of a deadline) to get on with my own work, so I thought I'd share here.

My normal way of working is to start with a line drawing that I scan and then clean up in Satori.

In this case, it's really dangerous to produce a hand drawn sketch ( you'll see why below ) so I've used a photo as my starting point and generated a drawing from that.

The finished piece is supposed to show a distopian view of a world no longer based on petrochemicals. Just enter the phrase:"Peak Oil" in Google, and you'll get an idea of what I'm trying to portray here.

Here's the original photo:

Now you see why a hand drawn sketch is, er, impractical. It's a really exciting and dynamic landscape painting subject.

First, the image needs to be rotated to give me a level horizon for what I want to paint.

So: Convert the original JPEG to RIR, Open, Layer / Transforms / Rotate, and ...

Now I use Satori's Paint tools to get rid of the vehicles. I just sample neighbouring colours and paint onto a new layer. On a separate layer ( shown later ) I draw in some human figures scaled to the size of the cars.

I also use the Smudge brush to crudely extend the image to the edge of frame.

What I'm aiming for next is a black and white line drawing of the entire scene. Although the scene appears quite simple in terms of volumes and shapes, when you come to break it down into its constituent layers, it soon gets complicated.

Just look at all those legs, or piers, in civil engineer speak. It's hard to figure which decks they belong to.

So, I make a workflow decision. Rather than produce a flat black and white line drawing, I decide to split the picture into layers straight away, with each of the parts of the cloverleaf flyovers on its own layer.

This means that I can later copy these layers into the progressing stages of the final painting and use the Replace brush to paint into the shapes without having to redraw the shapes.

Don't worry if this sounds complicated, the method will become more understandable as we go through the next few pictures.

So, just to get to my B&W layout I decide to use a rough greyscale colour coding for the decks and the legs, so that I can more easily see what the hell is going on, and then when everything is in its proper layer, convert them all to black and white.

Here's how it works:

Again, don't worry about the colours, they just act as guides to show which elements belong with which deck.

After a few more hours work and much switching layers on and off, my tracing looks like this.

Here's a picture that shows the complexity of the junction.
My view is from the bottom right.

This four stack junction is 210 feet high !

Now I edit each of the layers and change the colour of the shapes to white.

My tracings mostly consist of solid fill irregular polygons, which I then copy and convert to black outlines that sit on top of the original polygons. Some details within the big shapes are drawn using the connected line tool.

This gives me my black and white layout and all the parts of the painting in editable form.
It is worth my while putting in this effort at an early stage of the piece because it makes the painting iitself much quicker when it comes to the fun bit: Colour.

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Advanced Satori Tutorial # 4 : Step by Step Painting
Using a Photo for Reference.

Written and Illustrated by Michael Hirsh. Page 1 of 2

This tutorial is based on a series of posts to Gallery section of The Satori Forum

The images and comments were posted as the painting progressed, and are reproduced here, mildly edited for clarity. There was a very tight competition deadline for the work.

Now you see why a hand drawn sketch is, er, impractical. It's a really exciting and dynamic landscape painting subject.

First, the image needs to be rotated to give me a level horizon for what I want to paint.

So: Convert the original JPEG to RIR, Open, Layer / Transforms / Rotate, and ...

Now I use Satori's Paint tools to get rid of the vehicles. I just sample neighbouring colours and paint onto a new layer. On a separate layer ( shown later ) I draw in some human figures scaled to the size of the cars.

I also use the Smudge brush to crudely extend the image to the edge of frame.

Again, don't worry about the colours, they just act as guides to show which elements belong with which deck.

After a few more hours work and much switching layers on and off, my tracing looks like this.

Here's a picture that shows the complexity of the junction.
My view is from the bottom right.

This four stack junction is 210 feet high !

Now I edit each of the layers and change the colour of the shapes to white.

My tracings mostly consist of solid fill irregular polygons, which I then copy and convert to black outlines that sit on top of the original polygons. Some details within the big shapes are drawn using the connected line tool.

This gives me my black and white layout and all the parts of the painting in editable form.
It is worth my while putting in this effort at an early stage of the piece because it makes the painting iitself much quicker when it comes to the fun bit: Colour.

The second part of this step by step tutorial is on the next page >>

Main Page

Software Page

Tutorials Page

Page 2 >>

Main Page

Software Page

Tutorials Page

Page 2 >>

Advanced Satori Tutorial # 4 : Step by Step Painting Using a Photo for Reference.

Written and Illustrated by Michael Hirsh. Page 1 of 2

This tutorial is based on a series of posts to Gallery section of The Satori Forum

The images and comments were posted as the painting progressed, and are reproduced here, mildly edited for clarity. There was a very tight competition deadline for the work.

Now you see why a hand drawn sketch is, er, impractical. It's a really exciting and dynamic landscape painting subject. First, the image needs to be rotated to give me a level horizon for what I want to paint. So: Convert the original JPEG to RIR, Open, Layer / Transforms / Rotate, and ...

Now I use Satori's Paint tools to get rid of the vehicles. I just sample neighbouring colours and paint onto a new layer. On a separate layer ( shown later ) I draw in some human figures scaled to the size of the cars. I also use the Smudge brush to crudely extend the image to the edge of frame.

Again, don't worry about the colours, they just act as guides to show which elements belong with which deck. After a few more hours work and much switching layers on and off, my tracing looks like this.

Here's a picture that shows the complexity of the junction. My view is from the bottom right.

This four stack junction is 210 feet high !

Now I edit each of the layers and change the colour of the shapes to white.

My tracings mostly consist of solid fill irregular polygons, which I then copy and convert to black outlines that sit on top of the original polygons. Some details within the big shapes are drawn using the connected line tool.

This gives me my black and white layout and all the parts of the painting in editable form. It is worth my while putting in this effort at an early stage of the piece because it makes the painting iitself much quicker when it comes to the fun bit: Colour.

The second part of this step by step tutorial is on the next page >>

Main Page

Software Page

Tutorials Page

Page 2 >>

Advanced Satori Tutorial # 4 : Step by Step Painting
Using a Photo for Reference.

Now you see why a hand drawn sketch is, er, impractical. It's a really exciting and dynamic landscape painting subject.

First, the image needs to be rotated to give me a level horizon for what I want to paint.

So: Convert the original JPEG to RIR, Open, Layer / Transforms / Rotate, and ...

Now I use Satori's Paint tools to get rid of the vehicles. I just sample neighbouring colours and paint onto a new layer. On a separate layer ( shown later ) I draw in some human figures scaled to the size of the cars.

I also use the Smudge brush to crudely extend the image to the edge of frame.

Again, don't worry about the colours, they just act as guides to show which elements belong with which deck.

After a few more hours work and much switching layers on and off, my tracing looks like this.

Here's a picture that shows the complexity of the junction.
My view is from the bottom right.

This gives me my black and white layout and all the parts of the painting in editable form.
It is worth my while putting in this effort at an early stage of the piece because it makes the painting iitself much quicker when it comes to the fun bit: Colour.