Approaching Storm

Much of the time I’m unsatisfied with the outcome of what I’m drawing or painting. I’m rarely unsatisfied with the process of practice and learning, just unsatisfied with the result. I think this is natural for a student of any age, and I consider myself a student.

However, every now and then I paint or draw something which I think shows progress in my study, and this digital study is one of those times. It’s subject is a bird, but thematically it’s about much more. As a minstrel poet of our times once wrote: “You don’t have to be a weatherman to know which way the wind blows.”

Art details: The crow and stump were painted freehand in Photoshop, using a photo as a reference. It is not a paint-over or a photo manipulation, nor do I trace. I start with a rough sketch, black on white, just like with a ‘real’ pencil or brush, and build up the layers with semi-transparent brushstrokes, bit by bit. The Photoshop file was opened in Corel Painter, where the background was painted on other layers using customized brushes. The whole thing was brought back into Photoshop for final color correction, watermark and jpegging. I am working on a non-digital version of this also which may be available for sale. For this digital study I used a small Wacom tablet that’s about 5 years old, nothing fancy.