Genesis Heat Set Paints - Paint Tutorial

This is the beginning of a portrait of my son Jack. I laid him out, did some shading and then was sort of lost.
I wanted to make his face colorful, which was something new to me. I really can only paint what I can see.

This was my sad attempt to put color here in there and he was just getting stranger and stranger looking.
So, I decided that I would let the computer show me how to place the right colors.

I took the previous picture, loaded into my computer and pulled it up in a program where I can go and do all sorts of fun things to photos. This is a HUGE aid to me when I get lost and don’t know where to go next. I put in into the illusions and had the computer paint him in “finger paint”. It shows me where the colors need to go.

This was the next photo I took after taking the advice of the computer program. It is looking much better, but know that I need to lighten him… too dark.

This is the final portrait. I like the way he turned out, even though he looks a tad surly. (Didn’t want to give me a nice expression for the photo… I warned him that I can only paint what I see!) I still like it. I looked at the computer picture all the way to the end. I highlly recommend that anyone starting to paint, do this. I show my students how it is done so they don’t have to have to make up the colors, just paint what the computer photo is showing you it is suppose to look like. I often do it first with the actual photo that I am doing the painting with to lay out my pallette with all the colors the computer is showing me to use. Great fun and takes a LOT of the guess work out of the begining stages of a painting.