Marta Dahlig|The making of Judith

Marta Dahlig|The
making of Judith
I
always found Judith to be one of the most fascinating characters – there aren’t many
strong women characters in ancient history and she is definitely one to remember. Here’s
a shortened version of her story:
“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 city’s 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, Judith
inspires the Israelites to launch a surprise attack from which they emerge victorious.”
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 painting
process. “Making of Judith” consists of a pdf step-by-step tutorial as well as nearly
6 hours of 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 of Judith
Summary:
Software used: Adobe Photoshop
Brushes used: Ragged Hard Round, Airbrush and occasional custom brushes
Time spent: 35-40 hours of basic work + 5 hours for touchups.
1 Theme interpretation
There were many depictions of Judith throughout art history
but one that I found especially fascinating is Klimt’s 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 believable depiction.
2 Starting out…
(Video 1)
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
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 exactly look too attractive at first ;)
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 layers
To 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 multitude
of 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.
Marta Dahlig|The
making of Judith
4 Marking the character (Video 1)
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.
5 Composing colours
While I have to admit that I lately treat
the colour palette composition process
rather loosely, here is an example of an
exercise 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.
6 Defining lightsources (Video 2)
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.
7 Basic character (Video 2)
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.
Marta Dahlig|The
making of Judith
8 Convexity & cavity maps
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 (dark
blue 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 :)
9 Basic face shading
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.
10 Pushing it! (Video 3)
Having a basic look of the face somewhat ready, I moved
back to detailing the body. Constant switching between
painted 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).
11 Discussing silk
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 light
brown hanging material – satin and the
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.
Marta Dahlig|The
making of Judith
12 Some notes on composition
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 the
painting - starting from the left, leading the view through
the hip to the character’s 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
(Video 4)
areas are shown at the beginning, and thus the right side
One of the most complicated elements looks simply uninteresting...
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.
13 Carpeting
14 Character polishing (Video 5)
Having some background and foreground details marked
in, I proceeded to finish the character. I added some last
minute shades to the character’s 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.
15 Beautification (Video 5)
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 shaded
the 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.
Marta Dahlig|The
making of Judith
17 Overal detailing (Video 6)
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.
16 Getting pillows done (Video 6)
Having done the “core” of the image, I now
moved onto the arduous part of the job
– polishing my character’s 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 details
than paint them precisely. This lets me
retain a painterly feeling of the image. As
you can see on the video, for the pillow, as
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.
18 A silky touch (Video 6)
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 along
the borders of the textile to underline its edges.
Marta Dahlig|The
making of Judith
19 Pattern frenzy (Video 6)
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 doesn’t 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 video, 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.
20 Thoughts on organza
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 regular fabrics – it is not a matter of texture,
but color placement and coordination.
The key to painting a successful transparent fabric (like organza or muslin) is
underlining its transparency by overlapping consecutive layers of fabric on top of
each 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.
21 Closing comments(Video 6)
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!
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 an
e-mail to [email protected]