CATURDAY ART ~ SKETCHBOOK

 SKETCHBOOK

Once upon a time I'd sketch with pens and India ink, using a photograph for my subject or even a live subject before me, but now my preference is to sketch with all the wonderful tools to be found in Adobe Creative Cloud.  

The image above: LEFT, original photograph, RIGHT, final sketched image.

Both then laid onto a clip art "sketch book pad" to appear as if originally sketched there, shadowed and cropped.

To do the sketched image, many tools were used, some that I've forgotten, but basically first step was to silhouette (outline) June from the background, quite easy as the background was a solid tone, done through masking and a magic wand tool, plus a little eraser clean up.  Next: convert image to black and white, desaturate.  Next step: use different pen and sharpen tools to intensify her furs, and/or erase some furs, highlight others; add a small amount of "noise" (very small dots) onto her nose; soften/blur inner ears; erase tool for more white space around chin, cheek and neck.  

All of this is kind of a "rinse and repeat" process.  If it looks acceptable, the layered PSD file will be saved; if not, there is a "undo" command and one can try again.  The layers can be saved as separate images to work on later, add or not add depending on whether you like them or not.  

I always felt there was some similarity to painting with oils or acrylics in that you could "layer" over what you had done before if you weren't happy with it.

Nearing the end of developing a black and white image with enough detail to have a sketchbook look ~ the layers can be merged and saved.  A single layer now.

Now, add color (or not).  Percentages of sepia, pinks in her ears, light sage green in her eyes ... rust and rose to the nose. Color is often applied with the "normal" tool, but here you would use the "multiply" tool (in a % of your color code) because normal applies a solid color, whereas multiply in any percentage allows all the detail of the image below to show through.  How long did this take, perhaps 2 and 1/2 to 3 hours, all of challenging fun and learning.  Most of which I forgot promptly after finishing and could not repeat.  Each time the final image is new and different from any other done before, that's the way art is, at least for me.