And here he is. Based on the sketch I posted earlier, this is my first digital portrait. I decided earlier in the year that I needed more practice (especially with colour and shading) and who better to paint than the most influential horror writer of the 20th century?
I kind of wish I’d completed this in time for his birthday, though.
Oh, and if you follow me on Twitter, you’ll probably have seen some work-in-progress screenshots of this, which I meant to post here earlier. I was going to take more screenshots along the way, but I genuinely forgot all about it.
The Windows 8 split screen came in handy for this.
So, this was me just beginning to add some finer shading after the ‘blocking-in’ stage. You’ll also notice the background’s a sort of flesh-tone gradient – just like grounding a canvas!*
Also, note the layer with the original photo. Don’t worry, no tracing was done; I simply realised at one point I’d made his eyes slightly uneven and used the original to check once I’d fixed them. It’s always a pain when you get reasonably far in and only then realise you’ve made a mistake.
Now, believe me when I say his tie was originally crimson. This seemed a reasonably austere colour for the old gent, until I stumbled across a Lovecraft biography (the one written by Frank Belknap Long, I believe) which stated that he preferred either black or navy blue ties with little or no pattern.
The shirt gave me problems. I’m never quite sure how dark to make the shading on white objects…
So that’s that. I’m still working on the worm and it’s reasonably close to completion, so look out for that later in the month. And I’ll try to blog more often, even if it’s just me banging on about a book I’m reading, a film I’ve seen, any games I’m playing, etc. I may even post my crude attempts at writing fiction!
Now where did I put that Lovecraft anthology…
*Incidentally, anyone who says digital painting is easier than traditional painting has no idea what they’re on about.
Stacey Ireland 