Inc Behind The Scenes:
Color Sketches To Final By Neil Blevins Created On: Oct 15th 2017
Many of my images appear in my brain fully formed. I know many artists
like exploring inside the medium to discover their compositions, and I
do that now and again, but much of my more successful work is already
well planned out long before I touch the pencil or the computer.
But now that I am inspired, I am afraid of losing that inspiration, the
vision. So my first task is to find the fastest way to get all the
basics of the image in a tangible form. Details are just details, I can
do that almost mindlessly. But my initial goal is to capture the
overall image: color, form, lighting, as immediately as possible
So I use whatever medium works best for a particular image. Sometimes
that means traditional pencil and paper. Sometimes that means going
into Photoshop and painting flat colors that represent the more
detailed work to come. Sometimes it means going into a 3d program and
blocking out the basic positions and camera to get the composition.
Once I've captured that essence of the image I want to make (the
process is usually no more than 30-60 minutes), I can let the image sit
and return to it later, where I will use 3d rendering, photographs, and
hand painted elements to construct the final detailed painting. Or as I
like calling them, "Digital Collages", since I feel the term painting
no longer truly captures the digital image making process.
