The Painter from France Flats Process - WIP 3
- GenreChowderStudios
- Jul 7, 2017
- 3 min read
When I prepare the flats, I like to put a solid block of color beneath everything. It's the base for a clipping mask. Makes coloring cleaner, faster, more efficient, and more fun somehow. It's not just paint bucketing the base colors in and being done with it. I get to be loose and haphazard with painting the general area. I actually feel like more like I'm actually painting, actually. And it doesn't make how nuts it gets. After all, when I apply the clipping mask, all the stuff directly outside the clipping mask just goes poof.
I start by selecting the main lineart and all the additional lineart elements (pieces like the roses on her dress and the ribbons lining her dress are on separate layers for more flexible editing). Then, on a new layer, I fill in the selection areas. Take a look at the first image for an example. Then I can just fill in all the empty spaces until I have a full silhouette from which to make my clipping mask, and I have a feeling I'm using the phrase somewhat incorrectly, but whatever.
Now with the silhouette in place, I can paint in the base colors. For whatever reason, I almost always start with the person's skin (or "skin," as the case may be), as you can see in the second image. The nice thing about the process of flatting is that the colors don't need to be perfect. They're just the solid, vanilla colors dropped into their proper place. Shading, highlighting, and whatnot comes later. When all the colors (unless I forgot something, which usually happens) are down, I make the clipping mask. Doing those steps I mentioned above helps to ensure the silhouette perfectly matches the lineart. It also ensures that the space beneath the lines is filled in too, something that wouldn't happen if I would just fill in the colors from a separate layer. This way, in case I do something to the lines above, there's not just a big, stupid white space left over. The final flats can be seen in the final image above.
I don't know what it was about this picture, but the process of flatting the Painter from France was aesthetically very satisfying. I'm not a fan of a blue/pink combo, but for whatever reason, every stage struck me as very peaceful and gentle. Now that I'm looking at it and trying to dissect why I felt so positively about the flats, I wonder if it had to do with the abundance of pastel-like colors. Pastels have the potential to be soothing and inviting. There's something soft about them, something misty. They remind me of how I always pictured Oregon: calm, cool, peaceful, and always snuggled under a blanket fog.
There is a distinct feminine quality about her. The Painter from France is very much intended to be very feminine in her bearing. When I first created her, my specific intention was to use the faceless look of Overcast's world to create a delicate, beautiful maiden type with a wistful countenance. She was based on images of 19th century French debutantes, I believe. While there are certainly issues with the perception of "traditional" femininity, there is something about a softly feminine character that is pure and soothing for the heart. There's something that is just good about her. I am very unfamiliar with any deeper understanding of women or a "feminine" mind, but my attempt to communicate that fair and gentle essence has been, I think, effective. In fact, this rumination is making me rethink my original conception of this character.
It might be the very specific colors in use. I don't generally care for pink, but that's when it's on its own. With other colors, pink can look quite pleasing indeed. The contrast between a pale pink and a solid yellow-green tickles my brain for whatever reason. Honestly, maybe it's just the green; it is my favorite color.
Yeah, I have no idea why I have such a positive reaction to the flats. The main reason why it strikes me as odd is because I'm either indifferent to flats or I think "Well, there're just the flats. It's okay if they look bad." Maybe I just liked them this time around. Who knows?
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