So I wanted to do a short tutorial about the
importance of reference photos.
Now a reference photo is an image you find from
Google, Pinterest or online. You can take these images
yourself too, with a camera.
You can find them in books, etc. Reference images
are just images based off of real life that you use to influence the work that you do.
I use a lot of reference photos in my work, and you can see from this file
I'm a little bit disorganized when I use reference photos-
they're scattered all over the page,
and I put the drawings that I'm working on in the center of the page. For me,
It's scattered this way because I'm not quite sure what direction
I want to take the piece in so I am going to have different kinds of
Reference photos in the image to influence the direction I'm going to go. For instance you can see in this one. I have images of
cats
putting their face
against another animal
Why do I have six images?
It's because I'm trying to figure out the pose
that this cat is in. And this one, let's see...
I like this image because it shows the perspective of the cat's legs. The tail had a nice curl to it-a cool shape, and
Can see the cat kind of in profile view.
I think I definitely tried this pose out. At one point, I'm pretty sure the cat tail was like that
You can see how that can give the piece a different feel to it. Our eye kind of goes out of the piece
this way
That was something I didn't like about
the reference image that I had there. I don't want the eye going this way
And I don't think I liked the fact that the cat was in profile view. I felt like - I could see more emotion on the cat's face
When it was in the full view. Something I do is I keep my edits on different layers so I can toggle
Back and forth to see which one I like more. And this case I can tell
that I like this version better because her eye goes this way and our cat's face goes down.
But I feel like it kind of directs our eye back up towards the witch's face.
Yeah, and this one- because the cat is looking this way- kind of directs our eye down. Sometimes
There's no right or wrong way. It's just figuring out which option works best for you
There are some other versions where the cat is off the ground
And it's forms kind of this
triangle shape here
Well that's great for leading our eye straight up into her, I wanted a more overall interesting
Composition shape that would kind of slowly lead our eye up into her. With this bump right here.
So that's why I didn't choose the version with the cat leaping off of the ground. Here, I looked at a reference photo with a tiger.
A tiger isn't a cat, but they have similar facial features
so if I really wanted to use that pose, I could have just
Drawn a cat in kind of the same pose because I'm understanding what the tiger is doing. The whole head is tilted this way
So that means if I draw the other ear it's going to be a little smaller there. I didn't that reference photo either.
So
let's see. Not using this, not using this, not using this.
Not really using this because the cats feet are on a ledge back here
And I wanted the witch and the cat to be on the same plane
So while it is a helpful reference photo and kind of gets across the same mood, the head wasn't tilted in the right direction.
And the plane of the feet wasn't exactly right. Over here,
this is kind of the same picture as this, so the cat would be like this
and it would be kind of sitting down. What I wanted in the piece was
for it to feel like the cat had just walked over to the witch and had just settled right next to her.
If the cat was sitting, it feels like its been there for a long time.
I think I just had this in here because it was cute. Not actually because I was using it. This one, this pose was
too active
this witch girl, who's feeling
sad, so the cat needs to kind of comfort her. And this cat is kind of wanting to play,
would not actually comfort the witch girl. So it needed to be a less active pose. This one
was the one I used the most. The direction of the tail is there,
the feet are on the same plane like I wanted,
and the cats face is tilted which I did with this cat as well. You can see in the final version
I added spots because the cat in this story has spots.
I also, you can see that I was influenced by the color of the pants from this reference image over here
These pants however had this kind of crotch issue,
but I changed it so the crotch was a little bit higher. And these shoes in particular (or well socks in this case) are influenced by
the patterning on these shoes that I found what I was googling shoes from Bhutan. For instance, let's google Bhutan shoes. shoes
and,
There are a lot of different types of shoes that come. This is where you get to choose
the kind of reference photos you want to for your piece.
It's definitely not an easy task because there's so many different kinds, and it's not like there's one right way to go. In this instance,
I mean, I know I'm not getting modern shoes because the witch lives in a kind of more traditional aesthetic. And these are a little too..
sexy (maybe?) for the witch because they're kind of high. She's more of a casual type of
person so she wants something she can just slip on. So, that's also why I have to think of the story behind the character. These boots look cool
But they're basically what I used in the first piece, so I didn't want to repeat that again
You can see this is actually the image that I chose to reference- it's this one
So it wasn't even in the first panel of search items. I came up- I kind of scrolled down,
figured out the options that I had and then I went back- ha, not asics (sneaker brand)-
and then I went back and I chose this image to use. So basically when I just use an image I just copy the image and
Then paste it into my document for reference.
I don't like to
copy the image one-for-one. Meaning, I would not lasso the item, cut it out, and then put it on my witch.
That to me is one-to-one copying, and I think that
influences your piece and makes it look more like a photo bashing even if you paint over it.
It's just really easy to lose your voice in there. Maybe you wouldn't draw a shoe exactly like that
It wouldn't be so straight. I have this little subtle thing going on over here
Where one sock overlaps the other sock. And if I had just copy and pasted this in there, she'd have just been kind of boring.
Like her feet would have been twinned.
Twinning in animation is when two sides of a person are too symmetrical. Two feet would be doing the same thing here
Just compositionally. it's also better too because
the overlap
of kind of how
the feet is going down gives depth to the piece.
This is kind of a basic perspective overlap lesson.
overlaps!
When you don't have a perspective grid or, like, you know very geometric shapes to show your perspective grid, overlaps
are kind of the way to show the perspective. You can see I do it over here
with the cat overlapping her,
With her arm overlapping her.
Hat overlapping her, that's kind of how I showed the depth in the piece.
Just remember- twinning, no!
So I started off with the blank socks and then when I researched the witch's shoes
I realized I wanted to make it a little more interesting so I added the same thing
to the sock. And with her pose and found several poses of the girl kind of just kind of looking sad.
I can't remember exactly what I googled. Was it girl..
depressed?
Oh I think it was, oh I know what it was.
"Girl holding legs".
No.. it was "sad"....
See there are a bunch of different search options that you can do that will lead you to
the right image
And you have to figure out which search term is the best. "Girl
holding legs" kind of led to a lot of yoga, happy poses
Which wasn't exactly what I'm looking for. But "girl sad",
adding an emotion to it.. Yeah this might be more along the lines. You can see this pose is kind of similar to what I'm looking for,
except her legs are crossed.
I wanted to see the girls face as well
So this was the reason this image wasn't picked. Oh before I even search for images,
I had a line drawing in mind. The way the witch
should sit overall
And how her hat should bend,
And I didn't quite figure out what the cat was doing. That's what I needed to find lots of reference images for the cat- right now
just he's just like playing with a ball of yarn. I mean in the brown, you can see the cat is calling out to her
But I didn't think that was a pose either so that's why the black image was laid top of it
And you can see I had other poses here, other witches. I don't know, she's stretching,
the cat's playing with her,
she has magic, and I just decided to go with these two because I felt like they had the most
movement in them and the emotions I wanted to portray.
and
Another thing I wanted to point out was, see here,
that in this reference image the post is really similar to what I
wanted to achieve, but
There were some wrinkles
on
Here that I wasn't quite sure how they worked because in this reference image there are no wrinkles there.
So what I do when I usually have a problem that the reference image I find on Google can't solve,
I open photo booth and I take a picture of myself in the pose in order to figure out
how it looks in real life. So in this one you can see I took several reference photos-
of me holding my leg. And I decided it was better to have the actual yellow shirt that I was basing it off of, which
I already had in my closet
So I puy on and kind of took an approximate image to figure out how the wrinkles would work
Photobooth is so simple to use. You can just pose it out..
Make sure the camera is at the right angle, pose it out,
and then here's the timer so you can kind of just take the photo.
And that's pretty accurate to the process in which I take reference photos.
So, to sum it up, the process is
Starting with a black and white line drawing. And then filling that in with local color or finding the composition
Finding reference based on that composition
Defining the piece even further, and then adding adjustment levels on top of that to fine tune the colors
Because usually I paint a little too dull, so
it helps to have on top that levels layer, where I up contrast of the whites
over here, and then I have a color balance layer too. In the midtones I
emphasize the Magenta in the piece because she's a warmer character. Emphasize the red, +7 red,
+3 Blue in the mid-tones, I guess oh because
it was going kind of green so I wanted to increase the blues here and the highlights, +7 red,
Because it's a little too green if it's that way. +10 Green,
Oh because in the highlights, I wanted- it's like a yellow light shining on to her and then in the highlight area again
Just adding it a little towards yellow. Usually very small adjustments
Don't make a big difference, but at the end
I just like to fine-tune everything. I wanted to open up the shadows by making them more yellow and
Changing it to be a little more red and sometimes, and not in this particular case, but I go to new
Adjustment layer, and I do Hue Saturation as well. So in this case
It's already pretty saturated from the color balance levels in the original painting so I just leave that at zero and don't touch the hues
at all
And.. that's the end of the video! Hope you guys enjoyed my first process tutorial. The upcoming videos will
continue to improve. I will be get a microphone, please subscribe and see more art on my
instagram: kelseyeng32, my Twitter or my personal Facebook
Feel free to email me artwork that you want critiqued because in the future
I think I want to do a CritCast where I give helpful feedback on people's artwork and post that on YouTube
so everyone can see
so...
Feel free to do that if you want. Have a great day!
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