Tag: Basalt

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Basalt Island Digital Painting Study Part 4

BasaltIsland10B

Tonight I’ve finished off this study by doing the water.  Again the Shaddy Safadi tutorials gave me a real boost here.

  1. On a separate layer with just the water area selected, I brushed in the water highlights: BasaltIsland7B
  2. Then I created a water accents layer and brushed in the accents (darker areas): BasaltIsland8B
  3. Using Gimp’s Bristles 01 brush for painting in and erasing out, I built up the wave details: BasaltIsland10B

I learned some really useful techniques for rendering rock faces and water in this study:

  1. Block in with a solid brush.
  2. Use separate layers for block-in, highlights and accents.
  3. Use textured brushes to then refine the highlights and accents.
  4. For doing waves, first put in strong confident strokes and then chop them up into individual waves.
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Basalt Island Digital Painting Study Part 3

BasaltIsland6B

I wasn’t happy with the basalt rock so I watched a few tutorials by Shaddy Safadi (this guy is awesome) and then went back to the blocking in stage and started again from there.

  1. Initial block-in: BasaltIsland1B

2. Blocking in the accents:  BasaltIsland2B

3. Using Lock Alpha Channel with a textured brush (Acrylic 2) to give the accents some texture: BasaltIsland3B

4. Blocking in the highlights: BasaltIsland4B

5. Locking Alpha Channel and using a textured brush on the highlights: BasaltIsland5B

6. I tried to add a bit more texture to the accents layer with a large textured brush and a selection around the rock island only: BasaltIsland6B

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Basalt Island Digital Painting Study Part 2

BasaltIsland6

I’ve added more detail to my basalt island study.

I tried different techniques to getting in the myriad imperfections on the rock face – from using a textured brush to putting on each imperfection one stroke at a time.

I found that putting on one stroke at a time gave more realistic results but was really time consuming!

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Basalt Island Digital Painting Study Part 1

I wanted to learn how to paint basalt so I’m doing a basalt island study using this photo from Getty Images as a reference.

I am deliberately not using the eye dropper tool to sample colours from the photo reference but instead I’m practicing guessing the colours myself.

  1. Using the trick of starting out on a small canvas, first I painted the sky: BasaltIsland1
  2. Then I blocked-in the water: BasaltIsland2
  3. Then the basalt island: BasaltIsland3
  4. At this point I viewed the image in grayscale to check the values (brightness) of the various components: BasaltIsland4_ValueCheck
  5. This looked OK to me so I scaled the image up by 300% and started painting in more detail: BasaltIsland5_Scaled300pcent

I’m determined to be in bed by 11pm so I’m signing off now.

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Dark Temple Sketches 4

DarkTemple2_Sketches13

I tried to make the temple look like it was made of basalt (a dark volcanic rock apparently).

I experimented with a new texturing process:

  1. Using a textured brush (one of Gimp’s built-in acrylic brushes), I painted onto a separate layer.
  2. Using the eraser tool on the texture layer, I cut the texture down to fit the shape of the temple.
  3. I then switched on Lock Alpha Channel for the texture layer and painted light and dark areas with a large brush.

Not sure I like the design of the windows – I was wanting something more gothic.

Anyway I think I’ll leave this one for now and get on with some landscape studies next.