Featured Artists-Craig Burt Collection

Painting by Numbers

"Premonition Padmé"

This one is another of the digital colored paintings. That is, a black & white biro drawing scanned then colored-in on the computer.

1. Is the inspiration for the picture. I was looking through images of the American actress Christina Ricci and found this one. The tunnel in the background reminded me of the round circular hallways of the Millennium Falcon, that reminded me of Star Wars, that reminded me of Episode III, that created a painting in my mind with Padmé and the round doorways of the junction room of the Tantive IV. That is the room where Vader strangles a rebel in 'A New Hope'.

2. Is the sketch of the idea basically laid out.

2a. With the painting in mind I needed to find images to draw from for the room. This is the main one used. I think it is from a cut scene from ANH. Other screen-captures from the DVD were used to find the details for the room on the left-hand side of the painting.

2b. Is the photo of Natalie Portman used for the face. To be flip and rotated to position needed.

3. Is the fresh scanned biro drawing. It seems to be all drawn in there from the start. I don't think I needed to do any digital editions after the drawing. From here it was straight coloring-in. Actually now I remember I did do a digital move of the lower right-hand part of the circular doorway. It wasn't quite lined up with the part above the console in the drawing, so moved it to the right on the PC.

3a. Is the start of the coloring process. This is done pretty much the same way I do oil paintings; that is, layering of colors from dark to light. Similar to using paint it is best to do the background first, but not for the same reasons. With paint you should do a fair amount of finishing of the background before doing too much detail on things in the foreground because it is easier and more efficient to paint the closer things over the background than the reverse. With the digital coloring you don't have that problem but is still best to do more of the background first as it is the largest part of the image and helps you form the picture overall.

3b. Here you can see the darkening of the colors here through the use of various grades of transparency in the flood-fills. Remember to keep a collection of the colors you're using. That's those rectangles of colors on the bottom of Padmé's dress, the palette. 

3c. Is almost the finished picture. One of the advantages of coloring on the PC is that you can save your work at various stages with different file names. If you do this you can avoid disastrous mistakes because you can simply go back to the previous saved versions if the continued progress is not what is wanted. That is the reason I have a few images of the various stages of the painting. You do a part that you think will work, save and continue working and save with a different name if you are unsure if it's working and compare the two versions.

4. Is the finished version of the picture. Looking at it I still like it. Even though her pose is fairly static there seems to be a feeling of drama and movement to me. This is mainly due to the look of apprehension or fear on her face. Overall I like these digital colorings, perhaps I should do more of them. The combination of the smooth look you can get with the shading in contrast to the hand drawn lines works well. 

Back to Painting by Numbers