Yesterday, I did a quick review of what I have been up to in the past three weeks. I have had many realizations and one of them is that I am ever so slowly finding my own style and process. Finally. I am no longer quite second-guessing everything I do.
At this point, I thought I should try doing some sort of realistic digital portrait paintings (that's a mouthful). I have tried doing colored portraits before with colored pencils. In fact, I'd been playing around with MediBang Paint for some monochromatic ones. I thought it's time I try a colored one with MediBang.
The reference
I was searching my phone and cloud galleries for interesting portraits. I couldn't find one that had:
- good lighting
- vivid, interesting colors
- high resolution
The reference I found was a photography portrait by Ilaria Taschini called Diletta. The many photos under the "Tried this pin?" were so overwhelmingly good I was starting to doubt if I could do it.
But hey, I wouldn't know without trying!
Diletta
Diletta was perfect -- she was really pretty, and Taschini did a really awesome job capturing her beauty. Even her eyes were captivating. For a while, I was scared I wouldn't do her justice.
The sketch was difficult! It took me quite a long while before I was able to get her proportions properly. I had particular difficulty with the eyes and nose this time.
Colors. I chose the colors intuitively. Which best fits, I thought. Which was, admittedly quite wrong. I did enjoy slowly adding depth to the portrait, and I gave my shoulder quite the self-pat because I ended up liking it.
Freckles. The charming point of Diletta lies on her freckles (besides the eyes, of course). They were beautiful! And I couldn't capture that. I ended up not drawing in the freckles on her cheeks and forehead (a bummer).
Over all, the digital painting took me just a few minutes short of three hours, I think, spread over two days. I wasn't planning on recording a timelapse video, but when I was liking where the work was going, I started recording. There were quite a few jumps, however (I kept forgetting that I was supposed to record).
At any rate, you can watch it here:
Details
- Device: Samsung Galaxy Note 10+
- App: MediBang Paint for Android
- Brushes: watercolor (80%); blur (100%)
Final thoughts
I enjoyed, again! When have I haven't? There are, still, many rooms for improvement. Coloring wasn't always my strongest suit, but I think I did fairly decently this time.