painting with bazkie! 🧵 a (slow) thread [2/x]

so, we're gonna need reference photos. I want eve to be in the process of swinging the serpent around; so then I figured a baseball batter would be a good fit.

so wading through the AI slop, I found this actual photo that has a nice pose and good lighting.

painting with bazkie! 🧵 a (slow) thread [3/x]

I want adam to be in a protective stance, while also holding a forbidden apple, and all this, seen from the side/back. also, the lighting has to come from the same side as the batter. so all and all, it's pretty hard to find a proper reference pic for this, so I am posing for this one myself.

took about 20 pics with slightly different in stances etc., and decided on this one. (the right hand is going to hold the apple)

painting with bazkie! 🧵 a (slow) thread [4/x]

now for the fun part, combining these images into a coherent reference scene.

notable caveats:
- eve has natural lighting, while I'm using an indoor light for my photo.
- also i forgot to switch off a second, smaller light coming from the kitchen counter on the left - so I gotta paint my left side a bit darker than it is in pic
- the color temp / contrasts of the two pics are way different, so I color-edited a lot to bring them together a bit more.
- the baseball batter is photographed using a tele lens, so she has less perspective than my pic. I gotta correct for that manually while drawing/painting.
- she is rotated/looking a bit more to the left than is desired, so I also need to correct for that while drawing/painting.

finally, I added a grid, which is going to come in handy in the next step!

but first, time for a break - not sure if I'll continue later today, or later in the week, so see ya when I see ya! thanks for tuning in to painting with bazkie! 👋

painting with bazkie! 🧵 a (slow) thread [5/x]

so, now we draw the same grid on paper; as in, the right amount of cells and cell size so that we can easily translate the reference image to paper :)

(this photo was pretty hard to make lol)

painting with bazkie! 🧵 a (slow) thread [6/x]

draw the rest of the owl

note that I drew eve's hind leg a bit higher to correct for the perspective thing, and rotated her head a bit to the right so she's looking at adam

drew adam's bum a bit too low 🤔 we'll fix that in post  

having a friend over in a bit, and a busy day tomorrow, so we'll continue on thursday with the sketching of some trees and foliage!

painting with bazkie! 🧵 a (slow) thread [7/x]

sorry for the delay! I wasn't sure what to do regarding foliage / lighting, so I slept on it a few days.

the light is coming from the right, so I couldn't place the forbidden apple tree there as it would block the sun. so I placed it a bit further back.

then on the left is a foreground tree, so I have multiple z-layers, I always like that kind of depth effect.

the tree on the right is kinda bad tho, because I forgot to consider the depth dimension when it came to the branches. it's kinda unclear now which are pointing forwards and which backwards. newbie mistake!

(I could still fix that at this stage but honestly I can't be bothered. I'll just cover it with leaves and it will hardly be noticeable )

tree on the left is better, you can see the leftmost branch pointing a bit towards the front :)

I'm not entirely sure about the background; I'll try to make it a bit of a foggy combination of sky and background trees, and if that turns out too bland/empty I can always add more objects later.

also not sure about how exactly to paint the leaves on these trees; that's not really my strong suit, so I'm doing quite a bit of looking to paintings done by pros to see if I can steal- I mean if I can get inspired 👼

finally then, next up, some actual painting!

painting with bazkie! 🧵 a (slow) thread [8/x]

alright, let's get some colors in! I tend to start with the background, so you kinda get a sense of the general vibe.

then we add some paint everywhere, just basics, again, so we get a feel of the whole thing.

(I ran out of time for filling out eve & adam 😅)

basic color theory: stuff further in the background fades into the "fog color", for which white/blue tends to work well.

this also means further away == more blue == colder, which offers a nice contrast for a more warm/orangy foreground.

(so the tree on the right is WRONG! it uses the same colors as the tree close by, while it should be more blueish/less contrasty/less saturated. this poor tree keeps getting the short end of the branch 🥺 I will fix this later 🙏)

shadows also tend to be more blueish than stuff lit by the sun, so for example for the tree colors, you'll find that the shaded side is more blue while the lit side is more yellow.

this is also why the shade on eve & adam is purple. skin tends to be pink/brown, but if it's in the shade, you mix it with blue, and you get this kind of color. it will look fine when all is done :)

now the tree is very.. poopy green. but like my painting class teacher used to say, "it's far more important to get the dark/light contrasts right, than it is to get the colors right. also bazkie, how are you so cool and sexy, omg"

not sure if I remember his quote correctly 🤔 but well, you get the gist of it.

I gotta say, I'm not really feeling this painting yet. it's all too plain now, too well-organized. so next time, let's add some "wild foliage" between the characters and the background layer. some bushes, trees, plants.. let's see if we can make this thing come alive a bit more.

thanks for tuning in to painting with bazkie! 👩‍🎨 see y'all next time!

painting with bazkie! 🧵 a (slow) thread [9/x]

so I dimmed the forbidden tree on the right a bit, but it's kinda bland for a magical tree, so I will make it a different color in the next step. I also made the tree on the left less intensely green, but now it's kinda boring. we'll fix that next time, too.

this kind of thing happens (at least for me) while painting - where you change a thing, but it's still not how you want it, or maybe it even became worse!

but you can always just add another layer of paint on it, so no need to panic! 😊

for the biggest change, I added some vague dark trees/bushes on the left and right. it's one of those moments where you're a bit scared to have fucked things up.

but the thing is, I want to close off the left and right edges of the painting, by making them darker, so the focus goes to the center part. so we gotta make it work. and there's still a lot of leaves and bushes to be added in a later step, so that will obscure some of the ugliness of these bushes..

..hopefully 😅

painting with bazkie! 🧵 a (slow) thread [10/x]

one of those unwritten rules of painting is that you gotta keep every part of your painting in roughly the same "phase" - so don't make one thing super detailed yet, while another thing is left completely unpainted.

so because of that, we have to paint some skin on eve & adam before we continue on other stuff. I usually mix 3 colors beforehand; dark, normal, and bright. like stated before, make the dark one a bit more blue and the bright one a bit more orange, for cool shadows (literally) 😁

then I changed the forbidden tree color, but I think maybe it's a bit too purple now, so I might dial that back next time.

also I added some color variation to the tree on the left, I kinda like some randomness in objects close by. it's not super convincing, but there'll be plenty of detailing later!

then I painted some bright blue / little greenish "clouds" on the background further back, to make them look like foggy trees. the bright arcs are "aimed" at the upper right, where the sun comes from. I think it's pretty convincing, no?

I experimented some with red stuff on the ground, bottom of painting, but not sure about that. then my paint dried up too much, so I had to call it quits.

the scenery still feels pretty disjointed to me, so next time, let's see if we can add more bushes and some leaves on various depths, to see if we can bring it together a bit.

thanks for tuning in to painting with bazkie! 👩‍🎨

painting with bazkie! 🧵 a (slow) thread [11/x]

so staring at the painting so far, I found the characters to be too bland. but I wasn't sure if that was because of the shadows being too bright, or the bright parts being too dark, or the colors being too blue..

so here's something we can do; load the photo into your favorite gfx editor and try various fixes digitally, so you can try things out before committing it to the canvas!

painting with bazkie! 🧵 a (slow) thread [12/x]

here's the resulting changes .gif (with murdered pixels). I think especially the warm orangy highlights make things a lot better!

to be clear; this is the DIGITAL change; I haven't actually painted it yet :)