Rihanna Digital Painting by Kyle Lambert

Posted on 28. Nov, 2009 by DAS Team in Face, Tutorials

Photo-realistic painting requires a large amount of time, patience and skill. Digital Art Secrets have managed to get in contact with digital artist Kyle Lambert to learn about how he painted this amazing digital painting of Rihanna.

Let me introduce myself, my name is Kyle Lambert and I am a digital artist that focuses on photo-realistic digital painting and illustration. I say this in most interviews, but as amazing as they seem, I don’t really see my photo-realitic paintings as works of art. To me they are more about learning about color mixing, accurate drawing and understanding what it is that makes an image look real. The techniques I have developed doing paintings such as this one of Rihanna I now use for my every day work as an artist.

Below I am going to talk to you about how I painted this image of Rihanna. It is not a step by step guide with instructions on what shapes to draw and what colors to pick, but more of an overview of the process I go through when doing a piece like this. I hope it is of interest.

Stage 1

Typically I begin a painting by laying down a rough background color. This could be a dark color if I am painting a night scene or green if I am painting a forrest scene etc.. In this Rihanna piece I went for the blue/gray from the original photograph. Unless there is a reason to do so, I typically begin my paintings with a gray color such as this to keep the environment neutral.

Stage 2

Then with a generic skin color for Rihanna I painted in a rough head shape. This is to suggest where the ears, chin, forehead and shoulders should be. I then loosely painted in white highlights for the eyes and and face to help position them and black to give an indication as to where the hair will go.

Stage 3

The next stage is to begin to introduce accurate details as to the location of the eyes, lips and other facial features. In this piece I did this with a slightly darker color than the skin color.

Stage 4

Once happy with the position of all the features, I will then start to mix unique colors for different areas of the photo such as the lips and eyes and begin to add more complexity to the range of skin tones. In this piece I used quite a large soft edged brush to achieve a smooth soft skin surface.

Stage 5

The final stage is the part that takes the longest time to do. To achieve the photo-realisty quality in a painting, there is no secret. It is all about zooming really far into your painting and then treating each tiny area like a mini painting of its own. Typically for the last 4 hours of a painting like this I use a 1px brush and paint in each hair, wrinkle and highlight individually.

My Big tip for painting images like this is that it should look right when you are looking at it at 300% zoom and 13% zoom. So when working on detail, don’t forget to zoom out and see how your details effect the entire image.

For more of Kyle’s work you can visit his online portfolio or follow his work in the following places.

Kyle’s Portfolio:

http://www.kylelambert.co.uk

Twitter:

http://twitter.com/kylelambert/

Facebook:
http://www.facebook.com/pages/wwwkylelambertcouk/105486863114/

Flickr:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/kylelambert/

DeviantArt:
http://kyle-lambert.deviantart.com/

YouTube:
http://www.youtube.com/user/kylelambertportfolio

RSS:
http://kyle-lambert.blogspot.com/feeds/posts/default?alt=rss

All the images that have been used in this article have been shared by permission for use from Kyle Lambert himself. You are not allowed to copy,download or redistribute these images without his own permission. If you want to see more of his artwork, you can visit any of the contact links listed above. Thank you.

Tags: kyle lambert, rihanna