zen's gallery

Thank you Tartan and Lemi! I appreciate your kind comments and support!

Ok, here is update of the process.
I simplified design and repainted features (this time using more F6 ). I also soften brush strokes to give her a warmer feeling. This image I'm using as reference, as a model (design, tonal map etc.). It's great that image is black and white so I could totally ignore colors. This painting I'm using for style and color inspiration. I'm also playing with composition, not yet sure where it will end.

[Taron]

YEAH!
You've really captured the essence of the girl, making her quite recognizable.
You have made her look a little more angry than she had to be, but that would be an easy "fix". Just slightly life the eyebrows toward the center, almost rotating them, if you know what I mean. But just compare that specific area a little more and see what would make the difference. I'm sure you'll spot it!

I'm very excited about that style choice!

Also, I'm not sure, if you have experimented with that, yet, but a hidden feature in Verve is "Oversampling of fluids"! To toggle that on/off you hit [y]. This is not always a good thing, because often the coarseness of them helps for some blending, but it can be fantastic, too!

Thanks for the eyebrows note!
Yes, I should revisit those and adjust tiny bits. It is hard to see all at once
What can I get with oversampling? More smooth or more accurate fluids?
btw. I minimally smudged (maybe just few strokes at all), even had blending at 0% all the time for the painting.
I discovered accidentally a feature, if you want to reveal canvas structure just reimport exported png .
It may sound harsh but it helps to get rid of accumulted fluid layers (if you're aiming for that).
I had to adjust nose position in PS before I repainted it in Verve. Using brush #0 for copying it didn't worked well as it copied almost redish appearance of the nose, not usable. Even though, it works for copying/moving line art.

[Taron]

Oh, I don't mean "blending"(parameter), but smudging! Actually all vector motions get oversampled, meaning that the gaps that would happen at vector length greater than one pixel will get four extra steps in between.

What do you mean by "copying"?
Anyway, if you want to warp, activate the warp mode, use brush #0 but best temporarily turn of canvas texture!
Also, you can hold [Ctrl] while warping to unwarp!

Aha, thanks for clarifying that! Will give it a try!
Uh, I used create brush [i] to copy and paste part of the painting with brush #0.
Need to try warp mode!

[Taron]

Ouuhhh...I...I... huh...I haven't even thought about that, hahaha!
Hmmmmmmmmmmmmmm.... <that's me thinking>
Two things you might find interesting:
- do what you were thinking about, take the image of what you want to "copy".
- go into a new layer, activate [i] again and then hit [ctrl]+[i]. This will paste your image onto the layer exactly how and where you took it.
- then erase around it what you do not want to keep.
- then delete the brush image (if it's the only one, just hit [shift][i])
- now hit [i] again to take that new image
OK, now you have your piece isolated as a brush image.

- use your mouse now and brush #10 [0] (I should really say 10...my fault for keep calling it #0, I apologize).
- the only tricky part is setting the size "correctly", but definitely turn off pressure based size!
- hit [a] to lock the rotation
- use white color
- with the mouse you can now place the image in the new location. You could even hold [Ctrl][a] (or [shift][a]) to rotate it differently, if you wished.
- In the Brush Image GUI you'll see the yellow buttons along the bottom of it [col][= ][ ]. The empty one in the corner is your image mode. With it on, it will use the material amount, but if you turn it off, it will flatten the image. You can use that, too, to get your canvas texture to poke through, by the way, no need to reimport your png.

So, yeah, with a bit of inventiveness you can get a great deal of options with what's there already! I really didn't think about using brush images for that purpose. I was going to write a whole transform section and all that, which I still will, but this gives already some opportunities to get a bit of that, including scaling and rotating, of course.

Can we image to reccord a list of command ? (Macro)

[Taron]

Coming later! (but will be pretty easy for me!)

As I understood, you made this as a template for further experiments?
I just wrote down my thoughts comparing both pictures as they are

That's the miracle about painting in this style.
They need the virgin spirit of first touch to create magic.
Which is absolutely in your first pic there.

This one - OK. you took a lot away with flat eyes, which are probably not ready yet? But overall brush flow and even colour choice is looking much more refreshing and innocent on first one.
Specially left part of face - from viewers point - is so much more vivid and expressive.
I personally think for this kind of paintings, a strong clearly visible brush strokes spends live.
Even unfitting proportions made first one a better, a more brave painting if you know what I mean.


Just my thoughts about a style I would love to have