Jane Coram's pics

[SaraCarter33]

Jane those paintings are absolutely gorgeous i was absolutely breath takin when i saw your paintings.




You are a very talented painter, fantastic job.

[Phil Carter]

Hello Jane,

Like everyone else on this thread, I too am in awe of your obvious talent. You have depicted things in such a brilliant way.

It is so difficult to pick one lot from another, but I admit my favourites are two of the three paintings from posting No.9.

In one, you have achieved the impossible, making Mary Kelly's room look like a cosy home. The atmosphere is a complete opposite and strikes home the simpleness of what a person's life is, and the things around us within our place of residence to make it a home. I am utterly gobsmacked by this painting. It is soft, and gentle, a total contradiction to the raw hate in the MJK1 photo. Totally brilliant. This is my absolute favourite.

In another from the same posting, the aftermath of the peek through the window scene, is so life like it is almost photo like, not a painting. It leaves a feeling of exactly what those two men saw, and what feeling it gave their brains and stomachs. A truly incredible presentation and accomplishment.

I echo others and thank you for your paintings and sharing your talent with us. Ripperologists, it seems, are very proud of you, and rightly so.
My grateful thanks for showing me the impossible is indeed possible.

my very best wishes

Phil

[j.r-ahde]

Hello Phil!

Yes, I agree with you!

And I personally think, that Jane has made the most plausible portrait of MJK. Of all of us trying to make one!

All the best
Jukka

[Jane Coram]

Hi Everyone,

Thank you so much for all the nice things you've been saying. I actually forgot that I'd put this thread up!!!

I know I haven't done any for quite a while, but I was sort of running out of things to paint, but I will try to do some more when I can. It's just finding enough hours in the day!

Once again many thanks for all the lovely comments. I better get painting.

Much love

Janie

xxxx

[Bob Hinton]

Congratulations

You have made me feel as if I was actually peeking back in time to those places and it was very spooky!

What a stunning talent.

[Phil Carter]

Hello Bob,

Indeed, that is the feeling, along with perhaps a sensitivity that touches the right chord. An amazing talent Jane has. Capturing the atmosphere of the individual place and time on canvas in such great depth.
Stunningly brilliant.

best wishes

Phil

[SaraCarter33]

i wish i was talented like jane and i loved how she went into such detail in here paintings.

[j.r-ahde]

Hello Sara!

Don't be shy, just watch the "Some works of art, please!" -thread and post your works there!

All the best
Jukka

[Jane Coram]

Hi,

I'm not going to be able to get this finished tonight, but I'll post up what I've got done.

I use Photoshop 7, and I'm not sure if Paint Shop Pro has got matching tools, but I'll try to give you the alternative technique if I think there might be problems. I'm assuming that anyone mad enough to want to torture themselves trying to follow this, will have a goodish working knowledge of their paint programme. Lol.

I'm going to be using the famous sketch of Kidney. I don't actually know what colour his eyes were, so I've gone for a light brown. He was actually a few years younger than Liz, and I only remembered that when I got stuck in, so ignore the grey hair at the sides, I'll get the old Grecian 2000 out and get rid of the grey.

I've made it 15cm x 23 cm to work on at 200 resolution. You don't need to go any higher than that for paintings really. I am working in RGB, but if you are going to print it out, you are better off using a CMYK canvas, otherwise you might lose some of the true colours when you print out. It does make it a bigger file size if you use CMYK.

It's helpful to print out a copy of the sketch to have at the side of you for reference, rather than struggling to switch between pictures on screen.

Start off by choosing a soft edged paintbrush to block in. I use 35 - 45 pixel brushes for most blocking in at this size, because it doesn't have to be posh. In fact you can just slap it on. It's only a guide. If you make the opacity of the paint brush quite low, then you can still see the lines through it, and it helps a lot.

[Jane Coram]

Right, so far so good. I don't think I've forgotten anything vital. Lol.

Once you've done that, you need to put a bit of shading on the cheek hollows etc.,

I usually use the colour picker and make the shading a darker version of the basic flesh colour. That avoids him having a pinkish hue of one part of his face and a yellowish hue on the other because you've picked a slightly wrong colour. Been there, done that a lot of times! See sheet below for the easiest way to do that.

Once you've got your darker flesh shade, just block in over the top, and start building the colour up gradually.

I'm afraid I don't know if there is an equivalent of the colour picker in Paint Shop Pro. Sorry

Nearly slipped up big time there! You do need to decide which direction the light is coming from. In this case it's dead easy, because the artist has done it for you. You can see that the light is coming downwards from the left. The shading has already been sketched in for you.

[Jane Coram]

Next we can shove the eyes in, but I'm only putting them in roughly for now. I'm not trying to make it look like him at the moment. I do that right at the end. His eyes are actually a bit small in most of these screen shots. I'll sort it out later. I'm also not too sure if he's got side whiskers, I'll sort that out later as well.


Right -- eyes. These are not nearly as hard as they look when you know a few tricks.

First just block the colour in roughly. I use a 5 - 9 pixel brush for the eyes on this size canvas. Don't worry too much about getting them looking totally right. There's a trick you can use later to see whether or not they are exactly right or not. Just get them blocked in for now.

Once you've blocked the colour in roughly, use a semi-soft edged 9 pixel brush to put in the highlight with white. You can guess where the highlight should be from the shading you've already got on the image. Just literally spot the highlight in.

[Jane Coram]

Now we need to try and make the iris look as if it's a bit transparent and glassy. (Not suggesting he was on drugs or anything. Lol)

Photoshop has got something called a Dodge Tool. I'm not sure if Paint Shop Pro has an equivalent. Basically all the dodge tool does is lighten an area. It can be done in a very controlled way, using different opacities, which gives the transparent effect. It takes a bit of practice, but it can be very effective.
See sheet below for how to get the best out of it.

This will give the iris a rounded look. You can also use the dodge tool on the areas of flesh that need to be highlight. If you're using Paint Shop or a programme with out a dodge tool, then just pick a much lighter shade of the flesh or iris colour and you should be able to get the same effect.

[Jane Coram]

Hair --

This is really just a case of building up and up over a lot of different stages, but it's quite easy.

Use a fine paintbrush, hard or soft, just to scrawl thin dark lines on the hair and moustache. You'll see what I mean from the pic below. It looks a mess, but it doesn't matter.

Once you've done that you need to use the Smudge Tool. This is the equivalent of using your finger or a cotton bud if you are painting in oils. I use my finger all the time when I'm painting in oils, and I often forget and try to smudge the screen image with my pinky. I did it just now. Lol.

The Smudge Tool blends in the hard edges and gives it a soft and natural look.

See sheets below.

[Jane Coram]

I've blocked in the background and rest of the colour. Just a tip about the background. I usually stick to darker colours for the background because otherwise the figure disappears into it. That's just my personal preference, a lot of other artists use lighter backgrounds and it works well for them.

I don't usually put the background in until I've blocked in most of the face and hair because it sometimes throws me a bit on colouring and shading. Again, just my preference.

I cropped the image down a bit as it was too long and thin.

From here on in it's just using a mixture of paintbrush, and smudge tool to build up the hair and everything else really. I'll go through the other stages tomorrow for anyone that hasn't slipped into a coma. It needs to have a lot of detail put into it.

Here's where I've got to today anyway. I'll finish it tomorrow quite easily. I did say it was quicker than oil painting!

Hugs

Jane

xxx

[Jane Coram]

Hi,

I just realised that some of the images didn't upload. Very helpful.

These are the images for the colour picker and the shading from post 70. The darker shade is for the hollows of the cheeks and under the jaw.

I bet I'm more confused than you. Lol.

I can do a proper set of sheets for anyone that thinks they'd like to have a go. Just pm me.

xxxxx