Making of Golden panda by Kirsi Salonen Hello dear reader. This is a quick tour to one of the recent personal digital paintings I did. If anyone notices something familiar with the character, then I should say that it's actually from You sang to me -piece. It's also found here in Cggallery. I liked the figure in that so much that I wanted to reform a kind of similar person again. It took four days from this stage to the finalized piece you can see in the end. Bare with me as I explaing something about this weird process that was hardly planned from the start. Phase 1. I was not farsighted enough to concider how smart it would have been to save the original start-off sketch, but this was the best I could find. But overall it doesn't differ from a typical profile portrait image and figure drawing. Each key element (eye, eyebrows, heir, mouth, water and tears) are on their own layers so they can be modified later. I used black background just because I wanted to highlight the figure and colours as clearly as possible, and black served the purpose best. The water on his face is a soft-edged brush used in screen-mode with a very faint blue colour. Then the transparency's achieved with erasing a bit of the center part of water and adding bit of dodge to it instead. The dodge has to have a rough texture in it so the water looks like it's shimmering.
Here's some traces of the large normal pallette knives I used for the skin. The tone is simply picked as one colour in Photoshop, then used large soft brushes as in Soft light -mode to determine the
green and purples of the shady sides. Highlights are made using dodge-tool with very light and barely unvisible texture and also painted with light tones of yellow and green to the shoulder and cheak with Screen-mode on the brush. Background's interesting circles and forms are from photographs I took a few days back, then added loads of contrast and colour layers to it, so it looks soft and less like a photo. It nicely represented the sadness and melancholy that I originally wanted this piece to deliver to the viewer. But I still wasn't sure if it was enough... Phase 2. So, here's the second essential phase that took place during the second painting day. As I mentioned before, the work was finished in four days and so in that time ideas can easily change from simple to less simple. Of course I didn't paint all the time, took some reasonable breaks from the work. But as you come back to it, you can always see something more or less in the painting as you look at it again. You know what I'm talking about. The red panda? Saw an adorable nature document from tv just a moment before, and the subject
was the endangered pandas. It ached my heart that these animals that were my favourite ones since I was just a little girl, are nowadays cut down to extremely low numbers. So there came the panda along with that boy, who had nothing more left in this world to care about but this kind animal. First I only sketched the panda from my memory to his lap, as you can see there is hardly much resemblance to the real animal in this point.. But it's all about generating the idea first. Then, about the mask.. I've had a lot of stuff about masks before, and I think that it's very good way to communoicate in artistic way. You can hold your thoughts to your own, and also express the way you are through your actions, and not with an open, vulnerable face. That's what I thought in this case. Animals appeal to our hearts, and the key of this piece is the face of the panda, not the boy. Phase 3. In this phase a lot of things have happened with the lights, details and mood. I added another photograph to the background, put a green layer on it so it would reflect like a flush rainforest
behind them. Then I used Painter's smeary palette knives to the panda's fur. Brushsize being no more that size 3 to 5 px. Still, in Painter used Smudge and Blender with very tender pressure to make the skin smooth and fleshy. Then after these were done, switched to Photoshop again, where the final touches were made. All the very slim hairs and panda's whiskers are made with pen-tool and then just added the stroke to it, with the pressure simulation ability of course. The nice light is using a new layer on top of the whole pic and adjust the highlights and shades with the overall light's colour. The direction where light comes should look clear, and head and blond hair has the most highlighted areas, so they should also appear clear and bright. Shady parts are very importand to keep visible, so the image woudln't get too dark. The colours of the shadows depend the volume of the light and the surface from they are reflected from. Skin is like a brilliant rainbow of colours, but they are so softly blended together so it's hard to get a clear perception of the right tones. So in order to help determing that, I only use the tones that are more to browns, greens, purples and yellows, nothing more. Nothing of those colours should be exactly like a primary colour, but very very muted and mixed. Then after you've figured out how the colours blend together as layers, then the right tones of light and shadow are also much easier to figure out. You just have to practise, as I do still for many years to come. Same goes with the panda's colouring. You see how bright the head is now? Although it's in bright light, there is also a LOT of hairs that have the darker colour that has to be visible. The boy's sharp hair is also made with freeform pen-tool. With brushsize as 8-12 px with screenmode and a rather light pressure, the fine hairs can look quite transluscent. Phase 4. Alright, below is the final refined image. As you can see, textures and that soft spotlight play a huge part of the piece's overall appearance. They are mostly sprinkled to the points where light touches the skin or hair most. The idea is to make it alive, not filled with something that just looks nice. The hand is also quite different than in the previous stage. I asked my boyfriend to pose with the arm and hand so I could get a sense how an animal should be held gently. The tear on the boy's face came as a sugar on top.. it was something he asked me to do spesificly as the final touch. It ws simply made with a small 5 px brush in colour dodge-mode, with of course a texture on it. You are probaply curious about the textures I use, but I can only say that they are all found in CS2's asic texture library. I'll use custom textures rarely, but custom brushes a lot.
Thanks very much for taking the time and effort to read this. Now go and pat a cute animal. Kirsi Salonen Making of Golden panda, for Itsartmag.com