"White Bearded Man Portrait" Corel

White Bearded Man Portrait

Back to Bearded Men Digital Portraits in today's exercise. I saw this portrait online recently and was immediately taken by the man's countenance. I just wanted to digitally paint him. So I downloaded from Morguefile and began to think about the endeavor.

To give greater detail to the image I opened it in Corel Painter Photo Essentials 4 first. It began as a grayscale image, I used the Watercolor Sketch tool, Rough Paper, Saturate color (grayscale,) Dry Bristle Brush. I digitally painted it there for the sketchiness. This gave me a great piece to Digitally Paint by hand further in Corel Painter 11.

After I saved the large iteration I opened in Painter 11. I used my color palette with the Flesh tones and Earth tones appended, my current favorite palette. I used the Digital Watercolors Brushes, starting with a Coarse Dry Mop brush. I began to paint the fleshtones selecting ones darker than usual, and laid a background to work with. I added colors as I went selecting almost randomly. I varied the size of the brush as I painted, smaller to larger, back to smaller.

When I came to the Beard I selected the Liquid Ink Brushes for greater detail in his white hair and beard. I chose very small strokes for the beard and varied them only a bit as you can see, some larger some very small. This gave me a great effect for some realism sketchiness in the beard.

I painted the eyeglasses as Tortoise Shell, as the details indicated and the beginning photograph had shown. I selected a Digital Watercolor Green and some Yellow for the sweater, and background, adding in a touch of each to the face and eyes. I had layers of Digital Watercolor and Liquid Ink I selected all layers and Dropped all. This blended much of the colors together, as you will notice the green about the eyes. An unexpected result, perhaps a unhappy accident for the eyes only.

I saved the large iteration and opened in Corel PSP Pro X3, viewing it there I upped the colors by 33 in Saturation Vibrancy. I always use Vibrancy toward the punch that move brings to the pieces I paint digitally. I did not use Curves or the Smart Photo Fix at all on this image. Satisfied with the end result I added a layer with my signature, sizing and placing it, then merging the layers to one. Saved a large iteration then resized for display in this post.