Yup. I finally found not one, but two pieces of art by Foster at a decent quality, and this single panel from the sunday-strip is the first one to get the treatment.

Originally I was going to try and emulate Fosters own way of colouring, but then I couldn't figure out what media he used ( ?? yes, what did he use..) so I got tired ot thinking about it and went and tried a combo of some oil-like stuff and "standard procedure" in Photoshop. It's turning out well enough, but I'm a bit stumped as to how to achieve what I'm thinking here.

Obviously, it should be fairly light, as it's in the middle of the day, and she's taking a bath to cool herself off. But then there's the question, is there a secondary light in this frame?? And if it's noon, would the sun be shining trough the leaves of the threes in the background? Hard to tell.

I tried creating some realistic water for this one, in Terragen, but couldn't get the right perspective.

So, I could really use some tips on the colour-holds on the water btw. And of course, the water itself.

stage 1
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Stage 2
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PS: The trees are currently in the primer-colour, because I haven't yet decided wich colour they should be, since I can't quite figure out what TYPE of tree's they are.

I dunno about coloring, but I like the second one better.

I'll make some notes and post 'em up for this a bit later, if you are interested

NATURALLY, Mr Sokoliwski!

Hanzo: Glad to hear you seem to be liking the direction I'm trying to take.

Your work's very vibrant and "alive" Predabot. I dig it.

Maybe watercolor? Common for older artists. You might be able to emulate that in corel Paint. It does a really good job of emulating that type of media.

I like them both as well. Think they're looking good. I like the way the top one's hair looks.

Let's see.

First off, I'd go with an even lighter blue in the sky background. Something to differentiate it more from the blue in the water.

Now, I've tinkered around with this image a little bit, really just playing with lighting. I've dropped in a major light source, indicated by the shadow under the nose and jaw. I don't know if this was exactly the kind of help you were looking for, or if I'm just mucking around a bit too much

For the water, you've got a good start going - it sounds like you were using a filter or other process for the reflections. For me, I much prefer doing stuff like this hand-rendered, with a combination of gradding and airbrushing into selections and just working with the paintbrush tool.

With both the figure and the water, I've put the prominent light sources above and to the right, leaving the water below and to the left of her the darker blue pattern you've got. I'm just really big into defining light sources like this.

My first impulse on a secondary light source would be to have light reflected up onto her from the water - however the shading drawn onto her arms doesn't seem to really bear that out. So, I'd keep any secondary lighting ot a minimum, at least on the figure.

Some nice dappling of light through leaves onto the tree trunks and the bear in the background might work out quite well, however

Obviously, this was all lo-resolution painting that I was doing - you should make things much smoother and more interesting than I did

The colour holds for the water are looking okay so far...however, I can see a bit of a conflict with the caption box.

You've put a texture into that caption box. With the texture of the water around it, however, it is creating a rather odd effect, almost like the caption box is slightly translucent, and the texture of the water is creeping through. If that is what you are wanting, then it's all good. However, I figured I should mention it, as it was the first thing I saw when I looked at what you had been doing.

Thanks for the tips! Ok, create light on tree-trunks in leaf-like shapes, brighter sky, yeah I see what you mean.

This is the original rez of the piece tho, since I so often have trouble finding decent-sized pieces by the old masters.

What I meant about the water originally was to use a program I've used before tho, and actually model it in 3D, with the proper perspective and ripples, and then paste it in like a texture. Alas, I sucked too much at it. So as you see, I proceded to use sort of the same thing you do, brushes and grads. ^^

You're sort of right about the caption-box too, but if it's distracting a bit, then I think I'm going to tone it down slightly.

OH, btw. The bear, what do you think about his base-colour? I mean, is it fairly accurate? I tried using a photo for ref, and as far as I can see, he's far too dark in some areas. I'm thinking I should use a much less saturated brown on the trees there, but here's the catch, I was talking to some mates, and I think we came to the conclusion that those trees may well be PINE-trees, and not leaf ones.. This poses a few problems, since pine-trees aren't grey. Hmm...

Here's the latest work in progress on this one.

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v309/ ... eta_v3.jpg

EDIT: I did some more work, a bit of preliminary rendering on the shadows here and there.

Finally. A small update. More than 6 months later... 0_o

I'm not quite certain about the bear, even tho it took me an ungodly amount of time to put in the light in his fur...

Finally. Just about done... almost. I'm sure there's some small tweaks left, but I'd say this piece is pretty much done now.