Hunger Games

Draw the girl on fire with Ilya Kuvshinov

Ilya Kuvshinov treats a painting like a multi-layered 3D model to help him portray Katniss Everdeen from The Hunger Games.

You can approach digital painting in a number of ways. Some like to paint as they would traditionally, while others base their art on photographs or CG renders. You can also use your tools in any way you like, creating new visual styles and working processes.

Yet even working digitally, there are limits to how you can adapt your art to the digital canvas. For example, for my private illustrations I usually work on between one and three layers all the time, just as I would work with traditional oils on canvas. Unfortunately, the same approach isn’t practical when taking on commissions from a client. If, for example, they decide to change a gun design but your gun isn’t on a separate layer, then you’ll spend a lot of time tweaking the design, compared to the time required if it’s on its own layer, with textures and shades on separated layers.

Certainly in the case of commercial illustration it’ll benefit you to know and understand the capabilities of the tools you use, and how you can get the most from them. In this workshop I’m going to be showing you my way of painting an illustration as if it were a 3D model, complete with its own materials, textures, light and effect layers. This will enable you to change any element without too much trouble. I’ll help you to concentrate on the painting process to create all elements of the illustration at the same time, so you can show your piece to the client at any step and it’ll still look like a complete painting.