PAINT ABSTRACT PORTRAITS

Learn how to create surreal portraits with Procreate and Photoshop libraries with this guide from Ken Coleman

- Ken Coleman

This tutorial for me was a fun journey of discovery, as I have recently embraced Procreate as my go-to finishing and painting application, replacing a lot of desktop editing. In my personal work I have learned to value the power of the cloud and Adobe’s cloud libraries. As someone who loves building and prepping their own stock elements for artwork, I’ve developed this tutorial to work on Photoshop on desktop as well as straight from the iPad, before finalising the artwork in Procreate.

You can either follow the full development of this project, or simply load the library file into Photoshop, and kitbash to build an abstract portrait using the same techniques without the use of the desktop application if you wish. I love discovering new ways to work and that I can now sit on the couch and ‘sketch’ beside my family, creating work at the same capacity as if I was devoted to the desk. The portability of my personal library and workflow has levelled up!

1 Prep and cut out

To begin my image I prep all my stock elements by cutting out anything I need with the Lasso tool. Once I’m happy with my initial face image, I duplicate the layer, desaturate it and set it to the Soft Light blend mode. I merge these layers and use the Camera Raw filter for a final prep. I usually bring shadows up 50% and highlights and whites 50%, finishing with an increase in clarity of 25-50%.