Bad Weeks Happen

Hey everybody, had a crappy week this week. For whatever reason I couldn't get into the grove, so my productivity and learning suffered a little bit. It didn't help matters that a family friend passed on Wednesday. So that was a bummer.

On a positive note, I sat down to do a practice / photo study of the human eye. I really wanted to push it, see how far I could go before I didn't know what to do next. I learned a lot from this just alone. This coincided with some lessons from Dan Luvisi on how he renders out the eye. Without that I probably wouldn't have made such an improvement.

I still suck at eyebrows. Unfortunately I blew it on this one by merging it down too early and not giving the layer a drop shadow to give the hairs more depth. Whoops. Otherwise pretty happy about it! 

Remember that Fortuneteller lady from last week? Well I caught wind of a guide / tutorial on how Stanley "Artgerm" Lau handles how to add colors to a greyscale painting. I had a basic idea on how I might approach it beforehand, but it's nice to have someone clearly lay it all out. I somehow knew that gradient maps would come in handy in the process! I love this approach, it makes it where changing colors is fast and clean, allowing me to save time and nail what a potential client would want. I look forward to incorporating this into my workflow.

The color addition was done extremely quick! If I really wanted to take this to a finish I'd paint over some areas, but I'm happy with it as a test.

Thanks for reading! I'll be making up for the failed week by working through the weekend. I have some killer ideas for full on compositions. I may start working on thumbs as soon as tonight or early tomorrow! So keep an eye out!