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High key painting

How to draw Mockingbird Avenger.  High key painting. Well, this post I am painting a figure in so-called "high key."
What is high key painting? High-key painting is usually quite homogeneous and mostly free from dark shadows. So from the scale of value range if 0 being black and 100 is being white. High key painting will be a painting that displays only from 50 to 100 or mid grey to white. Some can even go from only 70 to 100, which will be really pastel or almost white opaque.
In contrast to Chiaroscuro which often have strong contrasts between light and dark, usually bold contrasts affecting a whole composition. And that what I usually do in my painting and concept art. Sometimes I even use darker scale in value range. Most of my work, and most concept artists, are basically in the mid spectrum, usually from 10-90 in value scale or a little less.
I hope my statement makes above sense. ;-)


In this post, a high key figure painting. It is just an experiment because I got a bit bored with speed painting or typical portrait or figure this morning. So I thought what could I do to make me excited to paint today? I attempted a few really quick high key paintings a few years back. See how to draw high key blue hair girl and draw high key blondie in jeans.  I actually love the look of high key painting.  So I pick one of the previous unfinished piece I did and revived it. In this arrangement, I only use really really light value to paint. I am painting using the value scale of 70 to 100 (*100 = white, the far end right of the brightness bar on HSB in Photoshop). That's a very small range of value to work with, but it would be challenging. And I end up enjoying the process a lot more I thought I would.
There are a few things I figure out along the way. I can use the richness of color to compensate for dark value without having to change the real value range (light and dark). And even though I have a small range to work with, it seems to be enough for me to paint. I think, in traditional medium, pastel (chalk, not oil pastel) and water color would be awesome with high key painting work. Anyway, I will probably do a few more of these and discover more things and learn more about it.


Here is my almost finish high key figure painting

Below are step by step how I achieve high key painting above
To see the previous step with video tutorial go to draw high key blondie in jeans.
And yes, I painted with color from time to time.  :-)


high key painting step by step

How to paint high key painting

It is not quite finish, I know.  I didn't have enough time to paint hands and the rest of the jeans.
This one use value range of 70-100 (*100 = white, the far end right of the brightness bar on HSB in Photoshop) 
high key figure painting
To download the bigger image go High key figure painting

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