Portraiture

These are a couple of examples of portrait style digital work. They’re developed from flat planes of colour in Adobe Illustrator and ‘painted’ up in Adobe Photoshop.

Design Process

This is typically how the image is produced...

Step 1. Flat planes of colour; shape defined


Step 2. Further colour, background

Step 3. Modeling on the girls face begins; the dimensions begin to develop, starting with her eyes.

Step 4. More Modeling, light direction and "truer" colours are rendered (eg the 'blonde' hair becomes a genuine blonde colour), the blouse/shirt takes on volume, the background is begun. The girls face is modeled further, individual features are embellished and given volume...

Step 5. The trees are rendered, with blurred photographic-depth-of-field reference, the grass in the medow is modelled, her hair is modelled, the rough 'straw' effect suggests random clumps of individual strands. The hand is added and modeled, light shining on the trees, and and little drops of blue suggest the sky behind the trees.

Step 6. The image is flipped to run from left-to-right, and purples and blues are introduced to the background to create subtle shadows and the illusion of vollume within the shade. The images is cropped to 'tighten' it, losing a little of the modelling on the twig in the hand, and the sky.

Other minor tidy-ups are performed...

The illustration is finished