It's the (martial) art: Elena vs. Marco virtual spraycan

While I fancied about drawing another virtual spraycan picture on the facade of my house like this, I decided to experiment with Photoshop instead of going through the lenghty preparation that watercolors or oil painting nee. With the little free time I have, completing a watercolor takes me at least 3 days and an oil painting almost 3 months.

This time I was driven by 3 ideas:

1) doing graffiti - the truly postmodern art - without looking silly at my age
2) learning more Photoshop, that I believe can be the new leading medium in visual arts after 6 centuries of oil painting
3) drawing Elena and myself fighting, always a funny subject

Photoshop digital painting
Click on image to enlarge

So I made a quick, rough sketch, took a snapshot of it with my Nokia camera, and fired up Photoshop.

Then I followed a great tutorial by Melissa Clifton about colouring line art. I read a few tutorials, but Melissa's is the best because it gives a concrete and practical approach, without leaving out the details and supporting difficult points with accurate, step-by-step explanations.

I also discussed with the Master of the Temple the results, and he gave me useful suggestions on how to tune the lights and the shadows. In deed, the blending of the graffiti with the background picture was a bit odd because of the different reflection given by the metal framework and the glasses.

I quite like the final picture, Photoshop graffiti is an interest subject to investigate. But it is not a shortcut - it took me about 3 days to complete.