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Judith Walkthrough

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    Ialways found Judith to be one of the most fascinating characters there arent manystrong women characters in ancient history and she is definitely one to remember. Heresa shortened version of her story:

    My first attempt to depict this character took place around four years ago and

    I never managed to finish the work. During the following years I kept coming back to the

    theme and right now I cannot even count the number of times I battled with the subject.... The

    image you see I started somewhere in December 2008 and it took me a very long time to finish.

    Being silent for the past 1,5 years, I thought it would be a cool thing to come

    back with something special. I therefore decided to document the whole paintingprocess. Making of Judith consists of a pdf step-by-step tutorial as well as nearly

    6 hoursof video recording, which you can view at my blog: http://dahlig.blogspot.com

    I hope you will these materials helpful, inspiring or just plain fun to watch! :)

    Marta Dahlig|The making ofJudith

    In the second century B.C., as the powerful Assyrian army invades the Near East, the town of Bethulia

    is besieged by the cruel and domineering Holofernes, foremost general of the Assyrian

    emperor Nebuchadnezzar. If Bethulia yields, the whole country will fall into Assyrian hands. Discouraged,

    the citys elders agree to surrender the famine-stricken city if they are not rescued within a few days.

    Judith, a young widow and most unlikely savior, challenges them to take responsibility for the future of

    their community. She enters the Assyrian camp where Holofernes, smitten with her remarkable beauty,

    invites her to a banquet. When he retires to his bed in a drunken stupor, they are left alone in his tent.

    Judith takes up his sword and decapitates him. With the Assyrian army thrown into confusion, Judithinspires the Israelites to launch a surprise attack from which they emerge victorious.

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    Marta Dahlig|The making ofJudith

    There were many depictions of Judith throughout art history

    but one that I found especially fascinating is Klimts take on

    the theme, as it is much more sensual and erotic from what

    you might expect to be a depiction of a historically glorified

    character. I wanted to get the same mood across, and that is

    why my interpretation is rather loose I concentrated more

    on achieving a certain atmosphere rather than on composing

    a historically bel ievable depiction.

    1 Theme interpretation

    Summary:Soware used: Adobe PhotoshopBrushes used: Ragged Hard Round, Airbrush and occasional

    custom brushesTime spent: 35-40 hours of basic work + 5 hours for touchups.

    My whole working process, starting

    from the very first sketch is rather simple

    - I apply colours on a very low opacity,

    gradually putting more and more layers

    2 Starting out (Video 1)

    of colour on top of each other. This lets me control and model the whole outlook from the very beginning

    but, as you can see on the video, it does not exact ly look too attractive at f irst ;)

    I usually start from painting the character, but in this case, since I planned a lot of details for the

    background, the first thing I started working on is the surroundings simulating objects even with a

    few messy strokes will make it easier for me to merge the character with the background later on.

    3 Brushes and layersTo paint this piece, I basically used two brushes only: a

    regular airbrush and an alteration of the default hard round

    with slightly ragged, blurry edges. Custom brushes are

    great and I use them excessively, as they let me easily texture

    bigger, uniform surfaces. In cases like these, however, when

    I need to use small diameters in order to paint a multitudeof small, detailed objects, I tend to stick to the basic choices.

    Moreover, I avoided using a huge amount of layers in the

    piece, limiting myself to 4-5 at a time in order to avoid any

    artificial copy-paste looks.

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    Marta Dahlig|The making ofJudith

    4 Marking the character (Video 1)

    At this point when I had a naive sketch done, it was

    time to start defining the objects. For the purpose of this

    written version, I marked the planned lightsource on top

    of the sketch, so you can see what I was aiming for. I have

    one chosen directional light and a very neutral ambient

    lighting to complement the effect.

    6

    While I have to admit that I lately treat

    the colour palette composition process

    rather loosely, here is an example of anexercise I practice for shade picking

    perhaps some of you will find it useful.:)

    Basically, I start off picking a character

    midtone as well as the main lightsource

    colour. What I then do is simply play

    with those hues, applying the lightsource

    colour on top of the midtone using

    different brush (not layer!) modes.

    5 Composing colours

    Before I moved onto detailing the most

    important part of this image - the face, I had

    to push the whole body a bit further. Using

    the same ragged hard round, I ran over the

    areas picking and applying colours as well

    as marked in the basic colour blobs for lips

    and eye sockets of the character.

    7 Basic character (Video 2)

    Okay, coming back to the painting: I took a Ragged Hard

    Round brush and sketched in the character very roughly.

    For now I did not care of the shading nor lightsource

    interaction I just wanted to have some basic proportions

    marked in. This process let me compose the general colour

    layout and get a vague idea of how things are going to

    look like when finished.

    Dening lightsources (Video 2)

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    Marta Dahlig|The making ofJudith

    Working on a face can sometimes be a hideous task. One

    exercise I find especially helpful to model a character

    correctly, is painting a very naive wireframe on top of

    the face (red lines). After you have such a model, you can

    easily distinguish the most convex, i.e. highlighted places

    (light blue lines) and the shadowed, concave areas (darkblue lines). Such sketches are super helpful and I used to

    do those for every painting when I was still feeling unsure

    about my modeling. Right now, I seldom use them, but I

    thought some of you might it inspiring :)

    Minding the convexity, I applied some basic

    shadows and highlights on top of the face,

    as well as defined the key features: lips,

    eyes and nose. Using low opacity brushes

    while continuously switching between

    an airbrush and the Ragged Hard Round

    granted me a rather smooth look from

    the very beginning and so I did not have

    to worry about blending throughout my

    working process.

    Having a basic look of the face somewhat ready, I moved

    back to detailing the body. Constant switching betweenpainted elements might slow down my workflow, but it

    prevents me from getting bored and, most importantly,

    lets me control the composition of the piece from the very

    beginning. To define the flesh and give it a feeling of

    depth, I applied some shadows and highlights especially

    to the legs area. The colours I choose are very spontaneous

    and on the video you will see me eyedrop and block in the

    colours from one object on top of the other (for example

    from textiles on top of the character and vice versa).

    8 Convexity & cavity maps

    9 Basic face shading

    10 Pushing it! (Video 3)

    Having my character somewhat painted,

    I immediately moved onto defining the

    surrounding textiles. The clue to successful

    fabrics painting is knowing exactly what type

    of material you want to portrait, as each of

    the types has their specific way of depiction,

    both in terms of texture and modeling.

    In this case, I wanted the surrounding

    pink material to become silk, the lightbrown hanging material satin and the

    11 Discussing silk

    blue and orange cloths organza-like. Painting silk is quite tricky in terms of modelling the textile, as

    there should be a multitude of small, soft folds. In terms of coloring, since the material is shiny and

    smooth, the color and highlight-to-shadow transitions should be rapid, condensed over small areas.

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    Marta Dahlig|The making ofJudith

    Having some background and foreground details marked

    in, I proceeded to finish the character. I added some last

    minute shades to the characters skin, enriching the palette

    with more pink tones to add to the liveliness of the flesh.

    Not to disturb the current smooth blending, to the hip

    I applied the hues with a spackled brush brushes like

    these are absolutely wonderful when you want to apply

    colour and blend it in effortlessly at the same time.

    For painting hair, I lowered the diameter

    of my default brush and ran with it over

    the sketched area. To give the strands some

    extra texture, I applied a few strokes with

    a regular three-dot brush. After creating

    such a highly textured basis, I went back

    to painting several strands by hand, to

    avoid having an artificial feel. Aside from

    shading particular strands, I also shadedthe whole curls together, adding some

    general shadows and highlights. Later,

    I enriched the face in some pinkish and

    yellowish shades as well as textured the

    lips and added eye lashes.

    13 Carpeting (Video 4)

    14 Character polishing (Video 5)

    15

    Somewhere in the middle of my work, I always flip the

    image horizontally to see, whether there is something that

    still needs fixing. Quite often the new perspective looks so

    tempting, that I keep the flip. In this case, however, this

    is absolutely undoable. The composition was created in a

    way to guide the viewer through various elements of thepainting - starting from the left, leading the view through

    the hip to the characters face and later, at the very end,

    guiding downwards to the key of the piece, which is the

    cut off head. As you can see on the image, flipping the

    piece destroys this logical sequence: the most interesting

    areas are shown at the beginning, and thus the right side

    looks simply uninteresting...

    12 Some notes on composition

    One of the most complicated elements

    I planned for the painting is the carpet

    hanging from the bed. After searching for

    various references and knowing exactly

    what design I wanted, I started sketching

    the primary shapes with my regular

    brush on a very, very low opacity. With

    this technique the beginnings rarely look

    attractive but, as you can see the video,

    applying layers of paint on top of each

    other soon results in more clarified shapes.

    Beautication (Video 5)

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    Marta Dahlig|The making ofJudith

    Finishing the silk was a really tough process. As mentioned

    before, two things that have to be minded are the structure

    (folding) and the texture (highlight placement and

    smoothness). I had the folds in place but the sketch was

    greatly dominated by highlights and shadows, and so, the

    polishing process was mainly a matter of strengthening the

    midtone. In order to do so, I simply ran across the areas

    with a highly saturated crimson colour and applied it

    between shadows and highlights on top of the folds. To

    boost the realism some more,I added small highlights alongthe borders of the textile to underline its edges.

    Moving on, using the same low opacity stroke technique I

    defined the light brown satin on the corner of the bed.

    The biggest difference between shading satin and silk is the

    structure satin tends to be thicker and thus the folds are

    more solid and rough looking in terms of colour transitions,

    which basically means that the highlights will be spread

    along bigger areas and the transitions between shadows and

    highlights will not be as rapid as it was with silk. Having the

    basic satin shading done, I painted some blobs simulating

    embroidery. To quickly smooth up messy blobs, just like in

    this case, I used a median filter on my strokes this creates a

    slightly blurry, but solid enough basis to place some further

    strokes upon. This trick is good for basically any element

    but is especially effective in case of backgrounds.

    18 A silky touch (Video 6)

    17Overal detailing (Video 6)

    Having done the core of the image, I now

    moved onto the arduous part of the job

    polishing my characters surroundings.

    From the very beginning I decided to push

    myself quite far when it comes to polishing,

    so I worked much more on the detailing

    than I usually would have had. At the same

    time I did not want to define every bit to

    the last pixel I much rather hint detailsthan paint them precisely. This lets me

    retain a painterly feeling of the image. As

    you can see on the video, for the pillow, as

    16 Geing pillows done (Video 6)

    it was the case with other elements, I started with huge, transparent shapes gradually

    moving onto smaller and more opaque brushes. To avoid overdetailing I hinted some

    light colour blobs to simulate embroidered patterns and highlighted convexities.

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    Marta Dahlig|The making ofJudith

    To be honest, getting the details of the hanging carpet right

    was one of the most tedious tasks I have ever had to face.

    The recording doesnt really show how hard and slow did

    the whole process go I have made various preparation

    sketches to try most successful techniques and came with a

    solution after a few hours of trying. In this case, I also tried

    to hint detail instead of painting everything too closely.

    Gradually lowering the diameter and rising the opacity, I

    put in the blobs on top of each other. As shown on the vid-

    eo, doing so quite often forced me to define the borders by

    painting in darker blobs around lighter patterns in order to

    raise the contrast and overal realism of the design.

    19 Paern frenzy (Video 6)

    20 Thoughts on organza

    21 Closing comments(Video 6)

    One of the more tricky elements of the

    painting was the organza curtain. The

    logic and process of painting transparent

    textiles is completely different from regu-

    lar fabrics it is not a matter of texture,

    but color placement and coordination.

    The key to painting a successful trans-

    parent fabric (like organza or muslin) is

    underlining its transparency by overlap-

    ping consecutive layers of fabric on top ofeach other, simulating folds. A good small

    touch that greatly adds to the realism is

    defining the actual edges of the textile

    with a thin highlighted stroke.

    The process of preparing these materials was very challenging, yet still fun for me,and I hope you found it interesting. In case of any questions, feel free to drop me ane-mail to [email protected]

    So, this is basically it. After taking on last look at the piece

    I added some last minute textures to the background with

    my texturing brush as well as some golden jewelry to the

    character to underline the richness of the scene. Whew, after

    hours of working, I can finally consider myself done!


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