Finishing a Painted Portrait

Here I show how I finished a partially completed acrylic painting using Autodesk Sketchbook and iColorama.

This is my photo of my painting. I used acrylics and also collage elements.

I imported the photo into iColorama where I cropped it (Form>Crop) and enhanced the tonal separation (Adjust>EQ preset 2 at low opacity) and/or contrast (Adjust>Levels and moving the Min Input and Gamma sliders very slightly). I sharpened slightly using Effects>Sharpen preset 4 with a low to medium radius. I find these adjustments are necessary to get the best looking photo of my artwork. It is easy to make these adjustments in iColorama, but iColorama is not so good for painting. I will use Autodesk Sketchbook for that.

I saved the image to my camera roll. I opened Autodesk Sketchbook and imported the image. I wanted to add some shadows. So on a new layer above the imported image, I changed the layer mode to Multiply and the layer opacity to 50% and I painted with the “streaky pastel” brush Using a purplish dark color) in the areas I wanted shadows. Then I used the Hard Eraser at a very small size to scribble over the layer, particularly on the right side and bottom of the canvas.

I want to reduce the busyness of the background. So on a new layer above the other layers, I used a green streaky pastel to paint over some of the background. I changed the layer blending mode to Darken because I wanted the black lines and other very dark areas to show through.

Then on a new layer above the previous one, I painted with the streaky pastel and the same green color to cover up a bit more of the background. I left this layer in Normal blending mode.

Now I wanted to tame some of the highlights. So on a new layer above the previous ones, I painted with the same green streaky pastel over some of the highlight areas, and I reduced the layer opacity to 50% to get the degree of transparency I wanted.

I wanted to add a shadow on his cheek on the right side of the canvas. So on a new layer above the other layers, I changed the layer blending mode to Multiply and I used the same green streaky pastel to paint in a shadow over that area, and I changed the layer opacity to around 50% to get the depth of shadow I wanted. I saved the image to my camera roll. At this point I imported the image into iColorama and, as above, I tweaked the tone, contrast and sharpness.