How Lois van Baarle created “Red”

Lois finds it more intuitive to paint on just one layer. With no need to keep track of different colors on multiple layers, she’s able to maintain an easy flow of drawing.

Lois applies the key colors without focusing on blending just yet. She fills the hair and clothing with orange, then fills the areas of skin with a pale peach using a soft round brush. She uses Replace Color to modify the Fuzziness, Hue, and Saturation of the peach to define the highlights on the face. Then, she highlights the hair with blue and locks the transparent pixels on the top layer to change the color of the faded edges of the hair without “spilling” the color onto the rest of the canvas.

Throughout this phase, she alternates brush sizes for refinement and uses the Eraser tool for cleanup as needed.

Lois perfects the colors through intuition and experimentation. She starts by choosing colors, then plays with sliders to tweak the Hue/Saturation/Lightness and Selective Color until she’s happy with the result.

Lois periodically duplicates a layer and works on a new one to track the progress of her drawing. The previous layer shows the image at an earlier stage and allows her to make sure the project is progressing the way she wants.

About the artist

Lois van Baarle has been drawing since before she can remember. She took some art classes along the way through elementary and high school, and a bit in college, but is mostly a self-taught artist who finds inspiration in artwork she finds while browsing the Internet, watching movies and animated films, and taking walks through nature.

Lois likes to keep it simple and doesn’t add too many tools that could disrupt her progress. When choosing brushes for a project, she usually picks one and sticks with it, since switching brushes takes her out of her flow.

Lois practices sketching and speed painting to continue improving her skills as a digital painter. Sketching allows her to place more emphasis on flow and expression than on anatomical precision, and it reduces stiffness in her final drawings. Early on, she liked to use mechanical pencils (nothing fancy), art markers, colored pencils, and brush pens for inking. More recently, she’s been happy with her drawing tablet so she can create anywhere she happens to be. Lois focuses mostly on character design. But she’s worked with animation, both personally and professionally, and is currently in the process of producing two animated shorts.