Painting on top of Line Work

This is a very well known and probably the most common way of painting in general. The line work can be done both traditionally (and scanned in) or digitally and new layers with value and colour are placed above it until the lines disappear and a painting forms. Beneath is a nice example from sketch to final artwork by the artist Rene Aigner.

Image by Rene Aigner.

Tim von Rueden also presents his work process nicely. To see his approach of scanning a sketch and getting it it ready for painting go ahead and watch the video beneath. It includes scanning, cropping and separating the pencil line work from the background.

There are plenty of methods how to paint over sketches, but for my next project I chose to use the multiply setting and slowly add colour to build up the scene.

I started off with a basic paper sketch which I scanned in and imported to Photoshop. 

After adding some quite standard colours I decided the scene was looking to boring and needed something different to make it more atmospheric. I therefore decided to change the lighting and go for a darker mood and feeling.

The new lighting allowed me to play greatly with value and saturation and I particularly like the way the red roofs in the sunlight turned out. Furthermore a mysterious lighting from inside the building creates tension in the image.

The lighting is definitely the strongest aspect in this artwork and the perspective is off quite badly. For the next piece I would therefore want to spend more time on planning on the proper perspective before jumping into the painting process.