This digital painting was a blast to work on in CS2. Talk about primal therapy. I blocked everything in using a custom brush that was ugly grainy—I mean just plain ugly. I used this to work out the big shapes. Then I started to define forms—basically light and shadow using cross hatching. After that, I blended the hatching with my larger grainy brush. The background was ambigouis so the entire head would be the over all focal point. The detail close-up shows how free the brush work was—just indications of detail in the right places. This painting is really a study of edges. The frontal face edges (although they vary) are sharper than the backside of the head and helmet. I've been studying Velázquez lately for edge work and shadow patterns. Simply amazing. Anyway, this painting gave me the opportunity to have a lot of fun playing around with the shapes and edges.
