Hey guys and gals, it's that painter chick again with another paintish thing.
This one is Chuck Liddell. I read Chuck Liddell's book a number of years ago and it was a really good read, I didn't know much about him other than the fact that he was a dominant champion and quite entertaining to watch. Recently I have been quite lucky in that cable TV has started playing old UFC events (around the 40s and 50s) and I have had a refresher course in how awesome he is. The most recent fight they showed (that I've watched, I have a couple more taped) was the first fight against Tito. He threw like, a bajillion punches in a millisecond, it was just amazing to watch and caused me to want to do this thing that is below these paragraphs.
As always, let me know what you think. And also as always, happy to give and take advice. I know I am pretty slack with backgrounds, I just tend to put the work in on the faces and... I just do what I enjoy doing anyway. I am a bit lazy that way.
Here it be, including progress shots below:
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Just slapping on paint to work out where things go here. I asked boyfriend if it looked like Chuck Liddell at this stage, he said it looked like a combo of Mr T and a safari hunter.
Adding in details, still not sure about the colour palette at this point. The shirt is purple there which at the time looked all kinds of wrong. The end result for that is mainly cobalt blue and black. Sometimes I will make a painting significantly darker or lighter than the original image in places the make it look bolder. I really don't like it when I am in the middle of a painting and there is not much contrast.
Actually starting to look like him here. It's a bit of a mess, but the features are starting to be in the right places.
As you can see here I use a stable table. I don't have an easel because I am not a fan of standing up for long periods of time. I pretty much just sit down in front of the tv and half watch things while I am painting away. Full credit to the source image creator, who's photo you can see here...I found it on Google and can't seem to find a link to it now.
I wasn't happy with the colours so I started adding a lot of yellow for the highlights. It's a cool yellow, mixed with a bit of green. I just don't like using to right colours for things, I want to test out different colour combos and see what happens. The end result was super green with blue, purple and black for a bit of spice.
Lots more yellow here.
Added some red to the background to fix the skull shape. I could never have a perfectly white background because my paintings always start out as such a mess. Added dabs of white here and there to highlight the hairs on his face. It doesn't hurt to embellish really, I am more of a loud painter than a subtle one.
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A couple of basic tips for anyone who wonders how to paint realistically. I tend to paint to the size of the photo I am using. It is much easier to get things right. This also helps me in another way, because every now and then I will overlay the reference image to see if the features are in the right position. It's a bit like what traditional animators do. You move the reference up and down and see what needs to be corrected, then move it away and start painting again. For me, realistic painting (I know the colours are different but the positions are basically in the right place) is very much about memory. It's like... I look at the reference and try to quickly memorise the position then move back to the painting and paint what I remember.
I hope this helps anyone interested in painting, and I also hope you enjoy my work.
Thanks for looking people!
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