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I Hope You Will These Materials Helpful, Inspiring or Just Plain Fun To Watch!:)
I Hope You Will These Materials Helpful, Inspiring or Just Plain Fun To Watch!:)
making of Judith
always found Judith to be one of the most fascinating characters there arent many
strong women characters in ancient history and she is definitely one to remember. Heres
a shortened version of her story:
In the second century B.C., as the powerful Assyrian army invades the Near East, the town of Bethulia
is besieged by the cruel and domineering Holofernes, foremost general of the Assyrian
emperor Nebuchadnezzar. If Bethulia yields, the whole country will fall into Assyrian hands. Discouraged,
the citys elders agree to surrender the famine-stricken city if they are not rescued within a few days.
Judith, a young widow and most unlikely savior, challenges them to take responsibility for the future of
their community. She enters the Assyrian camp where Holofernes, smitten with her remarkable beauty,
invites her to a banquet. When he retires to his bed in a drunken stupor, they are left alone in his tent.
Judith takes up his sword and decapitates him. With the Assyrian army thrown into confusion, Judith
inspires the Israelites to launch a surprise attack from which they emerge victorious.
My first attempt to depict this character took place around four years ago and
I never managed to finish the work. During the following years I kept coming back to the
theme and right now I cannot even count the number of times I battled with the subject.... The
image you see I started somewhere in December 2008 and it took me a very long time to finish.
Being silent for the past 1,5 years, I thought it would be a cool thing to come
back with something special. I therefore decided to document the whole painting
process. Making of Judith consists of a pdf step-by-step tutorial as well as nearly
6 hours of video recording, which you can view at my blog: http://dahlig.blogspot.com
I hope you will these materials helpful, inspiring or just plain fun to watch! :)
Marta Dahlig|The
making of Judith
Summary:
Software used: Adobe Photoshop
Brushes used: Ragged Hard Round, Airbrush and occasional
custom brushes
Time spent: 35-40 hours of basic work + 5 hours for touchups.
1 Theme interpretation
2 Starting out
(Video 1)
Marta Dahlig|The
making of Judith
5 Composing colours
While I have to admit that I lately treat
the colour palette composition process
rather loosely, here is an example of an
exercise I practice for shade picking
perhaps some of you will find it useful.:)
Basically, I start off picking a character
midtone as well as the main lightsource
colour. What I then do is simply play
with those hues, applying the lightsource
colour on top of the midtone using
different brush (not layer!) modes.
Marta Dahlig|The
making of Judith
11 Discussing silk
Marta Dahlig|The
making of Judith
13 Carpeting
15 Beautification (Video 5)
Marta Dahlig|The
making of Judith
Marta Dahlig|The
making of Judith
20 Thoughts on organza
21 Closing comments(Video 6)
So, this is basically it. After taking on last look at the piece
I added some last minute textures to the background with
my texturing brush as well as some golden jewelry to the
character to underline the richness of the scene. Whew, after
hours of working, I can finally consider myself done!
The process of preparing these materials was very challenging, yet still fun for me,
and I hope you found it interesting. In case of any questions, feel free to drop me an
e-mail to marta@marta-dahlig.com