Wacom Cintiq – Page 2

Portrait Painting – Geisha

Posted onApril 29, 2013June 2, 2014

Here’s my latest soft-airbrushing painting. Referenced from a subscriber (Kay Dawkins) to my Facebook page. I love the look on the photo. The make-up and hair style had a Geisha feel to it, so that’s what I called it.

You can click on the image for the actual resolution that it was painted at. This was painted in Photoshop with the Wacom Cintiq 22HD.

Painting Step by Step

Here is a series of snapshots from my painting video. It’ll show you the basic steps of the soft airbrushing technique for this Geisha painting. I love this simple painting technique because it’s quick to paint, and the portrait seems to get lifted from the paper as it progress.

Steps 1 and 2

Start with a grey background in Photoshop (or any other painting software) and set your brush and flow opacity to 25%. The first step is to lay down the darks. Don’t go too dark, just enough for you to see the form. Then go in with the whites and pull some of the major shape and highlights out. Again, not too light.

Steps 3 and 4

Now we’ll switch back to black and add in more details. Usually, I start in the eye as those are generally the darkest areas. Repeat with white. These steps are similar to the previous steps, we’re just pushing the lights and darks to another notch and using smaller brushes to add details.

Steps 5 and 6

At these later stages, you’ll start to see the forms come alive. It is also here that I’ll start to see where I’ve make mistakes on the values. Most of the correcting happens here. Keep repeating the process until you have what you like. When you want to stop and call it done is your choice. That’s really more of an expression of your own. I tend to like to leave some surrounding areas undone in order to add more focus to the crucial areas in the face.

Just remember, the whole painting process from beginning to the end is similar to seeing an out of focus image through the camera lens and you slowly turning the dial to put the image into sharp focus. Hope this helps.

Speed Painting Video

To see the video, please check into my youTube channel page for this Geisha Portrait Painting.

Pretty Girl Portrait Painting

Posted onJanuary 14, 2013

Soft Airbrushing a Pretty Face

This is my latest portrait painting using the soft airbrushing technique. I’ve consecutively painted about 5 or 6 of these types of paintings and usually I would have been bored already. But somehow I’m drawn to this painting technique. Because the painting process goes from large details to smaller and smaller details, it feels like the portrait is emerging from the grey background that I start with. It’s a neat feeling. Just check out the speed painting video below.

There are endless ways of creating digital paintings. Before this soft airbrushing technique, I tend to paint with hard edges and then use the smudge tool to blend the two areas. That works well too, but feels mechanical at times. I like this free-flowing airbrush technique better, especially for portrait paintings.

I’m learning something new every time I do a painting using this technique. Once I have the technique nailed down, I’ll create a more professional and instructional video for this soft airbrushing technique for anyone interested in learning to paint this way. It’s a simple painting process and I think you can pick it up with ease. There are just some major points that needs to kept in mind when painting this way. I’ll talk more about that later on. But for now, I’ll just show you the captures of my painting process.

Sexy Girl Portrait Painting Video

Korean Singer Ailee Painting

Posted onDecember 27, 2012December 27, 2012

Ailee Painting (Amy Lee)

Here is a soft airbrush painting of another Korean singer. Her name is Ailee and she can really sing. With so many singers out there today with just a cute face, Ailee is a standout with her great vocals. I didn’t know that until I saw some of her youTube videos. It’s rather refreshing.

Like my other soft airbrushing paintings in Photoshop, this one took about an hour to complete. More to come, thanks, -Wei

Ailee Portrait Painting Video

Gangnam Style Psy Portrait Painting

Posted onDecember 13, 2012

When you have almost 1 billion views on a single youTube video, you’ve got something phenomenal. It might be stupid and cheesy, but Korean Pop singer Psy has hit the jackpot with his Gangnam style song. Approaching 1 billion! That just blows my mind. So in a cheap attempt to try to get just a tiny slice of that, I’ve painted Psy! Most likely it will fail, but it’s worth a shot and I need something to paint anyways.

Technique is the same as before, Just more soft airbrushing in Photoshop. Check out the video as well. I’m almost at one millions views right? lol.

Psy Painting Video

Pretty Face Painting – Video Tutorial

Posted onNovember 27, 2012

Finally compiled the videos for the pretty face painting that I did recently. You can find the video tutorial below.

The Painting Process

I start out with middle grey, and working with a large brush, I put in the dark areas first. Once I have some darks in, I bring out the highlights with pure white. My brush opacity is set low at around 25%. This helps to ensure that I build up the forms slowly. I don’t go too dark or too light at the beginning.

From middle grey, I expand the values to both ends of the spectrum, alternating between the darks and whites, until I finally reach pure black in the shadows and pure white in the highlights. Some artist like to work in the darkest area first and go from there. For me, I like starting from the middle values. Hope you like this.

Tag: Wacom Cintiq