London-based artist Brian McLaughin shares with us his unique approach to digital portraits, and provides some information about his background in traditional media, as well as what currently inspires his work. Following his words you will find more of his portraits and a link to his portfolio, where you can enjoy even more of his art.
I painted these head shots a couple of years ago. I was working as a concept artist for a games company at home (Ireland). At the time I had played around with photoshop but still found digital painting a hard process to engage with. I had been working in traditional mediums and then scanning these pieces and working over the top of that, but I always found that these resulted in a messy struggle between texture and airbrushed marks. I came a across a few online tutorials by Ron Lemen on gfxartist these really got me interested I realized that it was possible to paint digitally with the exact same approach as oil painting, no filters or vectors just using a wacom tablet and some simple brush adjustment.
I usually start a portrait with a quick pencil sketch which I will scan in, but this is very loose I prefer to paint rather sketch I love the speed of blocking in areas with colour. I’ll usually throw a middle value down then start blocking in the main shapes, picking out some of the shadows all the time trying to keep lose and not get caught up in detail too early. Then I’ll start paying attention to skin tone, working from photos I always find that skin tones get washed out so coming in with strong colours at this point is a good idea and then break them down. At this point I usually work with a 60 % brush, this allows me to start breaking down the stronger shapes and colours before moving into more detail and highlights.
I’ve always been a big fan of portraiture, I enjoyed working in oil while in school, it wasn’t until I went to university to study design that I got interested in digital. I still work in both oil and digital and approach the two in exact same manner, to me there is no difference between them although I do enjoy working with a huge canvas and making a mess, that said the speed at which you can work digitally is great and a lot more forgiving, its weird I’ve found myself painting in oil and thinking ‘Undo’ after making a bad stroke!
At the moment my favorite portrait artist has to be Jenny Savile, I love the scale and chaos of her work all held together with just few moments of detail. That said Graig Mullin is a digital painter that I have massive respect for and who has influenced my work both digitial and traditional. I think there has been some fantastic examples of how portraiture has moved from simply being an accurate depiction of a human to an art form that strives to capture the emotion of the artist and sitter. Its great to see competitions like the BP National Portrait Award bringing attention to this area, how knows maybe we’ll see a digital entry in this next year!
You can see more of Brian’s work below and on his portfolio site.
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