ramonn90

Practices 38/39 - Process Videos & PSD Files

Added 2025-06-20 17:01:03 +0000 UTC

Hey everyone!

I'll be adding my brush set to these posts as part of a new experiment I'd like to run in my shop. If you're a Patreon subscriber at this tier, you already have these brushes. Anyway, let's dive into the last couple of practices.

Red Pepper

The useful thing about choosing such simple subjects I can finish quickly is that I can play around with more colour, values, and textures—some of them not very obvious at first sight in the reference. If you consider trying this approach, make sure to choose simple-shaped references balanced by a complex combination of values that create contrast and volume, or at least a picture in which the light creates all sorts of colours beyond the ones the subject has. That way, the challenge stays interesting, at least in my opinion.

Japan Subway

The composition felt complex due to its perspective, which combined with the colours, I found challenging to try. I tried to build up the composition through drawing and vision, with no guidelines, mostly as a way to practise my accuracy. But eventually, I used my brush called “Perspective Point” to make corrections. It kind of bothers me when perspective is off in these kinds of compositions—it feels lazy not to get at least the basic structure right.

Talking about being lazy, I kind of was with the details of the posters and other complementary information. You have to choose your battles, and I just wanted to nail the perspective and lighting. I chose to keep the spots where the light hits with little to no texture. In contrast, I created many brushstrokes with similar dark values for the shadow, to create some sort of harmony in the balance.

Gigantism Portrait

So I believe the anatomy of this man I just painted is a consequence of gigantism. I quite like painting portraits, especially the ones with very distinctive shapes that break the silhouette—they're more fun and interesting to look at. By choosing a black and white picture, I felt more comfortable spending time using many different textured brushes and value tones. When trying these shaped portraits, I'd like to recommend people stretch and distort the line art, which is the base for everything else, with no particular direction—mostly to challenge reality and come up with very weird yet authentic results.

Boots

My practices usually revolve around faces, animals, food, and places, but not so often around costume materials. So why not give it a try with a pair of reflective and textured boots? As you can see in the process video, it's not quite challenging in terms of shape or drawing, but the colour and values were very rewarding. I felt tempted not to render it in deep detail, as after adding a few shades, I quite liked the 2D cell-shaded result. But hey, why not push a bit? A good tip for rendering materials is to keep a hard-edged brush during the very first pass—this helps position values that often look flat on these kinds of surfaces. Later, with a soft brush, you can add extra gradients on top of those flat strokes.

Military Woman

I guess what I liked the most was her eyes, then the skin colour. I had hesitated to try this practice the weeks before because there was no great facial expression, no hand gesture, nothing peculiar besides the eyes. But that's why I pushed the anatomy towards a more geometric, simple render. This was the way I believe I added that little extra. The trick with this is: while keeping those big shapes very triangular and simple, within those shapes, have enough values and colours to make it look three-dimensional. So it's a combination of flat silhouettes with volume.

Torii

As you might already know, I'm a fan of Japanese culture. I saw this landscape with very dark woods behind the torii and stairs coming from an interesting perspective, and I thought I needed to try. When I pick landscape references to paint, I’m guided mostly by feelings—like an intuition I believe comes from the need to visit the places I paint. Like, I’d like to be there. Of course, I try to use references with certain light, colours, and so on, but it’s not strictly technical. And I think that, in some way, brings me joy while I practise.