Timelapse. Portrait of the stargazer

Hi everyone!

In this timelapse I show my process on the Stargazer portrait. I’ve also attached the Procreate file, which makes it easier to see how the work is built up.

There’s no complicated layer work here, so once you get the simple logic of it you’ll be able to repeat the process on portraits like this. I’ve attached the brush I used for the whole thing too.

The first important step is priming the canvas. I prime it dark right away, with a big brush and sweeping, chaotic strokes, laying a bright pink layer underneath so it shows through here and there and adds extra interest.

Then I block in the silhouette of the head and shoulders by eye and immediately try to make it more interesting — stretching it a little, chopping it in places, simplifying somewhere and, on the contrary, complicating it somewhere else.

Once I have the overall silhouette of the head with the shoulders and hair, I create a layer with the silhouette of the face and start working on that alone. Working up the face has a pipeline of its own: first you find the general proportions (where the nose goes, the eyes, the lips, the beard), finding the color of neighboring planes as you go. And when enough of those planes have built up, with the anatomical and geometric structure of the face respected, the face is worked up enough.

Once I’m happy with that, I switch back to the main silhouette and work it up. There are several important compositional points here:

1. The shapes have to break into at least three values — light, mid, dark.

2. The masses of those shapes have to break into at least three: large, medium, small.

3. There has to be a focal point, where the detail and the strokes are densest.

4. The scale of the brushwork has to vary: small strokes, medium ones, and large ones in the background — that way nothing turns mushy.

5. For a balanced color scheme, use close, muted colors and then add a small amount of bright accents. Next to a warm we put a cool (or a less warm) so that contrast appears.

When you pick a new color to paint another plane with, don’t just change saturation and brightness — shift the hue a little too, because when the value changes the color has to change as well. Otherwise you can end up with a picture that’s sad in color.

Good luck! ✨