Digital Painting 3 Big Questions Every Painter Must Answer

About This Class
One of the hardest questions a painter has to answer is: “How do you know when the painting is finished?” This is particularly puzzling when you’re painting from imagination, and do not have references to help you determine when the painting is complete.

In Digital Painting III, Marco will show you how to reliably answer that question, by way of many important smaller questions you should have in mind as you progress through a painting. He’ll go over how each consideration greatly shapes the way your image communicates to the viewer, and how that, in turn, affects how you’ll use the fundamentals to paint and capture the subject matter as well as the overall story, emotion, and brushwork.

What you’ll get out of the class:

• Learn how to tell a powerful story with a single picture
• Insight into how to design a picture from the most general to the most specific
• An understanding of how the fundamentals of art work together toward a singular goal
• A method of study that will accelerate your ability to design shapes and values
• A way of highlighting the most essential elements of your pictures, while editing out the non-essential elements
• Insight into what makes pictures read well, and how to go about achieving clarity
• Various applications of light and shadow, color, edges, shapes, and more

Marco does two paintings from start to finish, each focusing on how simple early decisions can guide your creative flow from beginning to end. In the process you will not only learn Marco’s various digital painting techniques, but gain a broader understanding of visual communication.

Difficulty rating: Digital Painting 3 is targeted to the intermediate/advanced artist, or anyone who is already familiar with art fundamentals such as drawing, shapes, values, edges, color temperature, etc. These fundamentals will be discussed during the workshop, but not explained from the ground up. For instance, instead of explaining how light and shadow works, Marco will demonstrate his use of it in a given painting, and tell you how and why he is using it that way.

Project Description
Challenge 1: Find an old, black and white photograph with lots of grain. Open a new canvas, set up a grain layer as seen in the demonstration, and begin to replicate the pattern of shapes you see in the photograph. Do not think detail here; instead, think about classifying each shape into a category of big, medium, or small, and arrange your pattern in a way that mimics the photo. Like a jigsaw puzzle, you’ll need each piece in place before this study is finished. Compare your result in the end!

Challenge 2: Find a message you can communicate in a single picture with a single focal point. It can be something on the surface (eg. “Cool forest”) or something more profound and emotional. Take the idea through a planning phase with a list of the items that will be in the frame, denoting each one’s importance (tip: start with the focal point and work out from there). You can do this before you paint, or you can discover it as you work (if you are a beginner/novice, I recommend mapping this out first!) When you go to paint, be sure to remember the lessons learned from Challenge 1, keeping your pattern of shapes and values interesting and varied. Then use the other two fundamentals (edges and color temperature) to ensure that each fundamental is serving your message and focal point.