MEGHAN BOEHMAN
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Lasso/Gradient Style

2/23/2015

1 Comment

 
Picture
My winter scene in the lasso/gradient style.
While I was in animation school I did a lot of background art for my fellow classmate's films. One project had over 60 backgrounds, so I created a simple efficient graphic style that looks good. It works best for organic backgrounds set in nature, but you can manipulate it however. I've done 3 pieces for 3 different seasons to showcase this style, and so I can talk about my process. I painted this chunk of grass to easily show my steps:
Picture
Blocking out good silhouettes is important (for anything but especially graphic styles). I usually start with a sketch, but this time I selected my shape with the lasso tool, picked two green colors, varying slightly in hue, and filled it. I made a new layer, selected different shapes for leaves and separate grass stalks, and filled those with another gradient. Next I go back to the base layer, select areas for shadow, open up Hue/Saturation and darken and saturate it. I do the same for highlights, expect I make it lighter and more yellow. Then I added some more details on top. I duplicated my grass and put some in the foreground, and filled some tiny circles to imply flowers.

Last, I took a photo texture of a leaf, cut it out around my elements, and set the layer to "Soft Light", lowering the opacity as desired. (An easy way to select the layer is to press command+click on the tiny box on the layer palette, click shift to add selections to additional layers.) I like to select textures that go with the subject of what I'm painting, but that aren't necessarily a normal texture. For instance, I put spring flowers on tree trunks if the scene takes place in springtime.
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My preliminary sketches for Winter and Spring.
If I'm painting an actual scene, I start with preliminary sketches to figure out composition and and subjects. I'll usually make a fairly final sketch and then do either a gray scale or a color study before I get to the lasso tool.
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Sketches and color studies. Colors are usually very close to final.
Once I start blocking it out, I fill all the basic shapes with gradients before I start with detailing, shadows and highlights. This helps me to visualize the scene and see if the composition is working without getting distracted with pretty textures and colors.
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Blocking --> Lasso detailing --> Texture overlays
The nice thing about this style is it can go from looking pretty plain at the blocking stage, to having a lot of visual "tooth" as my artist friend Rachael Briner likes to say.
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The texture (far right panel) can make it look pretty, but without good blocking and shadows and highlights, it's not going to add anything.
I hope this process was informative and not too self explanatory. Email me if you have any questions or need clarification on this process or anything else I've done. I am happy to help.
Picture
Spring!
RESOURCES I LIKE
-My sister Jessica Boehman has a cool blog for cool art things:
http://www.hansmyhedgehog.com/blog
-Chris Oatley has a blog for new artists featuring a lot of great resources:
http://chrisoatley.com/
1 Comment
Winnie R link
9/21/2021 12:44:55 am

Lovely post thanks for posting.

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    Meghan Boehman Art

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