Painting in Photoshop: Style painting: 13/1/19 - 14/1/19:

Recently I had watched a video on artists finding their own style in art, by looking at the work of other artists. So I decided to approach a similar principle and revisit what I'd learned from my Art and Design course at Trafford College. I decided to look at some of my favourite artists/illustrators, draw in their style and then hopefully gain inspiration for my own style.

I decided to use some sketches from one of my sketch dumps as test subjects.

My first two pieces looked at realistic skin painting, similar to the style of Spiderman into the spider verse and of Loish's work. One would be my own illustration and another was a fan piece featuring Spiderman from the Spiderman PS4 game. To begin each piece I decided to colour underneath the original sketch with the base colours. Then including the shadowing and highlights on the face hair and clothing. I took inspiration from the art of Spiderman into the Spiderverse for elements such as the hair, as I wanted it to look more realistic. I noticed from a style art frame of Gwen Stacy, the hair seemed dark in the middle and gradually gets lighter as the strands go out.

So I painted over the line art to do a similar thing. I felt rather amazed at how it looked when I finished that section of the piece. The hair looked very realistic. For highlights on the Spidey illustration I did the web patterns on the suit in a separate layer and then add white highlights to show the sun shining on the suit followed by the orange highlights on the red suit.

I felt some improvements would be needed on these pieces such as the shape and texture of the book that Spiderman is sketching into, as well as, the shading, shadows and highlights on the girls leather jacket. However I feel my more effective elements would be the hair, pants mood colours and the brick artwork in the Spiderman scene.

I began studying my favourite artists styles, starting with Karl Kerschl. I was interested by his work after reading several volumes of Gotham Academy. What I liked about his work was the anime like shading and the line less painted backgrounds something I've never seen in a comic book that wasn't inks or gradient colours.

I followed a reference image from a copy of Gotham Academy for things such as shading and painted effects.

I did the line art using Clip Studio Paint and then painted the piece using Photoshop. I began with flat colours, then on a separate layer I applied the shadows of the hair and the eyes. In the face I noticed the nose looked darker than the rest of the piece and the cheeks had a rather textured brush feel so I applied this with the bristle brush tool and a highlight using the base colour and the colour dodge layer.

In the hair I decided to add my own touch with the highlights using the bristled brush tool set on colour dodge. I did like the look of the finished illustration and it looked a lot like Kershcl's drawing style especially in the eye and lips. I may take inspiration from some of these painted elements.

My next style study was inspired by the lineless art style of the upcoming Netflix series, Carmen Sandiego. I have long admired the line less style of digital art from series such as Tangled the series as it seemed simple and rather interesting to work with be it hard or soft cell shaded.

In this case I was working with flat colours and shading. So I coloured in separate layers. One element was in the lips as they were dark colours on top and light colours below them. This was something I could look into for my own style.

One other element I liked about this style was the eyes as they were simple and round with no highlights although I do like it when the eyes have some trace of highlights. When finished I did like the finished effect I had captured the art style and colours of this new Netflix series.

Art of Laura Price (inspiration) 

My fourth piece was inspired by the work of another of my favourite artists Laura Price. I follow her blog on tumblr and she's a concept artist of Tangled the series. What inspired me the most about her work was the use of the bristle brush tool. Since I was getting more acclimated to Photoshop I decided to try it out. I used it for the line art of the piece then added the base colours and some shading as I progressed. I used the sketches shading as a guide when doing the shadows on the skin and jacket.

I liked how the brush made it look like a book illustration rather than an anime based piece. I was beginning to wonder if I could use this in my own style.

I was feeling rather surprised by the finished piece, it looked like I'd captured the influence of the artist, as well as my own sense of artistic style. I especially liked the highlights on the face and the flat colours in the eyes.


Looking back on all these pieces I would say this was rather useful. What I've learned from each artist I've looked at is what shading and appearance of the human characters I should consider in my own art style be it painted or simple lineless artwork. What I learned from Laura Price's work is the use of the bristle brush tool in the skin shading and from the style of the Spiderverse that I should look at the start of the hair strands and how light and dark they should be going out from the head.

In hindsight I should've done something like this sooner and remembered these aspects of looking at others work from my days at college. However now I know this again its made me consider a new perspective on my work.

In conclusion I have learnt a lot from this exercise and hope it proves useful in the future. In future I shall look back on old methods I learned from my art and design course to see how best to improve my work.