Audrey in Mcqueen

 Step 1: Posed and positioned.

 Step 2: Establish room and subject. At this stage things to keep in mind are value, and suggestion of colors.

 Step 3: To achieve the face that people will recognize from a far, use blocks of color to carve out the general position of the eyes, nose and lips, don't put in the details yet. Once those elements work together nicely to present a blurry version of her face, and you can tell when standing a few steps back, go ahead and fill in the details.

Rachel in Mcqueen

 Rachel Weisz is one of the most beautiful actresses in my opinion, and this particular Mcqueen dress fits her quite well. The easiest part of this painting for me is creating the mood I had in my mind. In my head, the light on her is sharper and brighter, but that didn't work out well on the actual image. I wanted the background to contrast strongly with the garment she had on; one is run-down and dusty while the other is shiny and expensive.

 Step 1: Decide on a pose and composition. In this case, she is in the center turning slightly side ways from the "camera".

 Step 2: I began establishing the atmosphere for the enivronment, suggesting Rachel's position in the imaginery space.

 Step 3: filling up the volume and staying within the color palette I planned for this piece.

 Step 4: Preliminary designation of fabric details for the dress and the footwear.

 Step 5: staying in the darker side is like anticipating for the climax during intimacy. I make sure I have all the ground work established, along with fixing the value and saturation before moving on to adding in the lighter values. This way, I automatically build a strong focus later on without the need to worry about the painting becoming too muddy or boring.

 Step 6: As I add in paint strokes, Rachel's face started to morph out of character. It is always important to step back and look at the whole picture from a far. If you can make out who she is from far away, the minor details are secondary.

Rachel in Mcqueen

Virna in Mcqueen

Virna Lisi is one of the most beautiful actresses I've seen. Loved her in Queen Margot and How to kill your wife. For this series, I choose actresses from way back into the film history because I believe the beauty they had is lost in today's hyper-sexualized pop culture. Anyways, here is Virna in Mcqueen I visioned, and I hope you enjoy this.

 First stage for me is sketching a draft and then blocking in the color I had in my mind for the painting. It is always good to work in big brush stroke in the beginning to get a feel of spacial and surface orientation.

 Step two, I added in the clothing and footwear details.

 Refining as I see fit.

 The skin needed alot of work. I also fixed her facial features.

Final cleanup and color correcting.

Sigil

This painting was originally framed from chest up to a bit above the left hand, but expanded into a complete figure painting. I was somewhat addicted to painting the fabric, because I find it really calming. The same goes with painting hair. The process is basically finding obscure shapes in the designed silohuette that fits with the full form yet yield some kind of character within that visual focus.

The gold silk was abit of a challenge. It took me a couple of tries to figure out the pattern in the way it reflects light and itself. You can check out the milestones below: 

 I've probably said this before... I strongly dislike documentary steps when I work. I like to run with it once I began and not stop untill I've reached a certain point when the project is well established. Stopping and taking snapshots really takes away the momentum and once I lose some focus, it is all downhill from there :-/. The milestone above was probably way past the early stages. I changed it from a close up to a wide shot, added in the extra hair clumps, and I've already rendered out the face.

 Worked on the cloth and the shadows. Used soft light layers to adjust the lights and darks.

 The hands were bothering me so I changed them. You can infer an artist's ability usually by looking at the way they treat faces and hands. Knowing that I had to push myself to not be lazy with these focus points which I usually was too lazy to tighten up or fix.

Almost there! I also altered the face in the previous step.