Painting “Noble Savage”

Finished my entry to OPA this weekend. I submitted “Sunset at Pine Tree Forest” and this painting of a mountain man.

For this painting, I knew that the powerful value contrast was very important. I wanted to keep the colors muted (staying in the grey and brown range) and exaggerate the values. So I did a value comp in Photoshop.

*Click to Zoom

Working Out the Values with a Comp

This time I simplifying the values to only 4. Sometimes I will go to 5 values organizing it like this:

1. Shadow – Reflected Light
2. Shadow – Core Shadow and Dark Accents
3. Light – Dark Halftone
4. Light – Light Halftone
5. Light – Highlight

If you’re not familiar with some of the terminology, reference my tutorial on Direct Light.

So, with this value comp I decided to combine the highlight and light halftone values to get a simplified 4-value study.

Detailed Close-ups