Verve : fluid painting

pilou

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VvZt3nMeCh0

pilou

Speed portrait by Taron
I've talked about figuring out proportions first, getting the lay of the land, so to say. Then gradually to work inward to the details themselves, but always keeping an eye on their relation to the surrounding elements.
In this example I found a picture of the aging Spock on the web. I figured he would make a nice subject.

I started out with a simple sketch to get the placements and proportions right.
Then I blocked in rough shadows mostly just to confirm that my eyes are not fooling me and to make appropriate adjustments. The warp tool helps amazingly on this quest!
Some more details in the sketch for more of the same reasons and some more mild warping.
I then started to block colors, also to get a feel for the whole thing "filled out" really.
Lighting experiments, color experiments and further mild reactions to the proportions and smaller details based on painted areas.
Now I look at the whole thing differently, squinting in a way and also trying to ignore what my brain wants to see, but what really is happening in terms of values. I did turn the original photo black and white and raised contrasts to see where my brain was fooling me. It helped in the process of detaching my eyes from details again, which makes one mistake values in relationship to the whole. It's like as if you look at one bright place where there are darker spots and you gravitate towards making those darker spots as dark as the side of the face that is in shadow, while this isn't true at all.