Trista Hunt

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For my portrait of Trista Hunt, a local biker girl model, this was the photo I used in her portrait.

In my workflow, I like to use CYMK yellow to serve as my contour line color of choice. Here, in this screen shot, I have drawn out the key features of her face, and upper body. The areas outlined will be filled in with vectored gradients and elements with color to produce the portrait.

After completing the outline, I breakaway from drawing in Adobe Illustrator, and sample colors from the reference photo to build a custom CYMK color palette. Visible, are the color ranges for her face, eyes, and chest, with separations to make color selection easier for painting.

The fun begins! Her photo to the side, I have begun to draw out her face. I started with several radial gradients to add in color. Following, I switched gears with the bristle brush tool, in which I used to paint with. This tool bracket is visible to the right, on top of the layers panel. See the nose ring?

The torso and the top saw action in stage four. I colored in the top first, with a bright pink to help guide me as to where painting shades and strokes were to be applied for her chest, arms, and collar bone area. I also filled in several key shadow shapes with gradient colors I had drawn out previously. It is starting to take shape.

I painted in her top with both lighter and darker pinks, violets, yellows, and golds, to bring out the detail. Did you notice the belly ring, and bikini bottom strap? Her right side was quite tricky to paint in detail.

After painting in her top, I then switched gears, and focused on her hair. I started this section off by laying out gradients with several light tan and white fills, as a foundation to paint on.

I started to paint in her hair, on her left side, at her hair part. I began with a series of darker tans, and came back to lighter tans with a mixture of browns. This was tricky; - I bounced between multiple brush presets for the bristle brush tool for this effect.

I simply repeated what I had drawn from her left hair, and did so again for her right side hair. To bridge things over, form right to left, I added in darker shading strokes in the hair part to bring in a field of depth on her head. I also added in hair shadowing on her chest.