Digital Painting in Photoshop: Phlegyas

This is a character painting done in Photoshop CS2 of Phlegyas from Dante’s Inferno. While the character may not be totally accurate, I always imagined him as being more robust and more warrior-like than some of the other paintings portrayed him. This painting took around 6 hours to complete and used a variety of the custom brushes in Photoshop. I had a separate layer for all of the major elements – water, boat, skin, hair, cloak, armor, leather, mounds, sky, etc. This made color adjustment really easy. I also worked with the brushes all set to lower opacity (50% or less) so that the paint blended together and took on a more natural paint look. I also used the smudge tool set to finger painting frequently. I think my favorite part of this painting is the boat and the water as well as his eyes. I had done three color comps for this scene and now I plan to go back and shift the color of the layers to see the final painting rendered in the different color schemes. I love layers! Enjoy.