The Amulet - Part 2 Detailing

Final Pass

Adjustment Pass

 

During detailing I switched played around with the Pencil tool and tweaking opacity and size to push the color around. 
I used the liquify tool to adjust parts of the painting that needed to be moved around.

The Painterly Blender is used on everything at a small size and I use it to either get rid of the hard edges of the color transitions created by the pencil, or to soften a shape edge.

Edges: I thought carefully where I wanted hard edges, soft edges and lost edges. The front skeleton and the background one have been left rough. This contrasts with the more polished central figures. I wanted the focal point to be the knight and the sorceress, so I spent most time just polishing them. 
On the skin of the sorceress I used the normal blender as it is softer and though it flattens the color, the blending becomes entirely smooth. By using it at a small size I can keep the color variation but blend the color together while hiding the brush strokes.
Since there is no outline edges are created by contrast in either value or color. The sharpness of an edge is created by layering smaller and smaller brushstrokes that turn into a sharp change. 

One quirk of this painting is that until the very end I was not happy with the skeleton interacting with the sorceress, So I blacked out that area and completely repainted it from scratch directly in color, without going through the black and white pass first. I hope that one day I will be able to paint directly in color like that.

The Amulet - Putting the things that I have learned so far to the test

 Two rogues entered a tomb and sought the Amulet. Once they found it, the dead came back to reclaim it.

This time I didn't even put it in the AI. I can see that there is polishing to do, but I wanted to see where I was at on my own. The colors are muddy and clearly extracted from the black and white. 

I wonder if I can give it another pass and really push it to final.

Thirsty Dragon - Working on details

Final Painting

This time I had a strong idea on what I wanted the painting to look like. Once I got it to a point where I though I was done, I put it in the AI and asked it to cleanup/polish it. That made me realize that mine was quite blurry and unpolished. 

I asked my friends side by side what they thought and they agreed that mine was just not polished. 

So I put in the hours and painted all the details. The thing I learned is that once you pick a size of the brush for your details (that is small) you will realize how rough your painting still is. But then I didn't want to detail every inch of the painting, just the focal point, which is the dragon head, the kids and the lady.

My friends also gave me good feedback: 

- Remove the boat, it's not important to the story,

- It looks like the dragon is drooling... yup... until they said it I didn't notice it.

- Looks like the lady is sleeping - I used the liquify tool to rotate her head up a bit and made her look less sleepy and more like she is looking down.

- Simplify the foliage in the FG

- Clarify that pot.

Using the AI picture as reference, I also did some color adjustment, and used it as reference for the level of detail that I wanted. I also changed the color of the clothing of the lady. I think I liked that blue-green better.

Thoughts

Working on this painting, made me think about art in general while using AI.

There are I think 3 scenarios:

1) You ask the AI to make a picture and you use that as final... I don't think that really counts as art... even if you use it to adjust it. The only thing you put in is a thought... but there is nothing of your experience in it.

2) You ask the AI to make a picture, and then copy it. That's what I did earlier in the painting of the sorceress. I think that's a great way to learn the technique. I would count this as a Study... not as art still...

3) You make a painting by yourself, or do the initial idea with thumbnails and put that into the AI and get a picture back. This can spark your imagination further and can lead to a better painting. I think this can be considered art, as it is your idea, your work and technique, and the AI is used more as a reference rather than the medium.

The way I see it AI can give you a mirror. It's like looking at your picture from another perspective, and that I believe can help you turn your painting into more of what YOU want. 

I have not experimented with taking pieces from the AI and paint on top of it.... but that would be cheating, and that is not why I study how to paint.

My Initial Painting

The AI Picture generated from my painting.