Continuation from week 6 – this week is about practicing the later stages of painting.
Time to zoom in, use smaller size brushes, smooth things out with a light blender at low opacity and add edges and other details.
The problem at this stage is to always remember to zoom in and out to preserve the larger relationships between structures in the figure. The ‘thumbnail test’ is a good way to make sure the painting is on the right track – reduce your image through smaller and smaller sizes. It should be working at every level. If it doesn’t, the areas to work on will just jump at you.
Similarly, flipping the picture horizontally helps to uncover issues in the painting. It’s amazing sometimes how well these tricks work.
Still, the goal at this point of the workshop is not to recreate the exact same image. Creating skin tones with a limited palette is a good way to force yourself to create a painting that works on its own and not necessarily a perfect copy of an original scene.
There will be plenty of time after the workshop to either push the realism further or just experiment with more abstract techniques.