Blades in the Dark Playbook Portrait Art Style
I thought it might be neat to give Sokolov’s Self Portrait (below) the Blades in the Dark treatment for the artist playbook I’ve been toying with.
I’m not completely useless with Gimp et al. but I’m hardly an expert, and I’m not entirely sure how to go about it, has anyone got some tips on how to achieve that Blades in the Dark Playbook Portrait feel?
I assume that John Harper uses a somewhat more professional tool set than I’m used to, but maybe I’m not the first to look into it.
#ArtistPlaybook
I would LOVE a tool that “Blades-ifies” art — it seems like it could be relatively doable with a custom filter of some sort. But that’s way outside of my wheelhouse.
I use GIMP for most of my photo editing. I haven’t tried it, but I bet if you set it to greyscale and then adjusted the Posterize setting you’d get something close.
Greyscale is obvious, but posterize removes in-between tones from the image.
So say you’ve got black, dark grey, light grey, and white. If you set posterize to 3, then you anything dark grey and light grey will be blended with the same color: grey.
If you set it to 2, then anything black and dark grey will be set to black, and anything light grey and white will be set to white.
I would try something around 10 and see how that looks.
It looks like Stefan Struck and Michael Prescott had some tips back in this post : plus.google.com – I am working on a character portrait for ‘Owl,’ my Xeno Mystic for Scum and V…
…and Sean Winslow had some ideas back in this one : plus.google.com – So, here are the final versions of my character portraits for our Scum & Vill…
…so hopefully between the those and David Schirduan’s idea, there must be a solid solution. I’ll check it out over the weekend.
Here’s a first attempt… still too much detail, but I’m this is as far as I get before it all starts to look like a smear.
https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/0i7x7pvv-sN1cYsXyq1KY0TTU95Xmza6vE6RayKDoGREXSa7oKaSGp-Y4G4HERoZsGQq2SzwOV3CRA=s0
Here’s something I did quickly. I use the cutout filter while modifying levels, blurs, and layer transparencies on top of one another to get the fidelity I’m hoping for.
https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/9IlATDPHzXNANIRzD6Viz2AIM0Yw0zYLCK56leocHiRAuxPuPBkfMPRVE6mYbILKIMx5wg2_cCa0K7-SqcoIHoiGZmDnWJJryg=s0
Filters will get you part of the way, but for my pieces, I have to get in there and do some drawing to get the look in the book.
funny – I thought it looked like a vampire so I used that same image for Scurlock once
It looks like you may want to fill some of the color blocks with spatter, noise or ink textures. Also grab a brush tool and fill in some of the details with that dark, dark shadow.
Always feel like I should back up my talk when offering advice. Traced over Sokolov with three different layers of white/grey/black and then filled with texture. I’d wager that John is doing something similar when “bladifying” an image. It’s a fun trick either way.
https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/_Q9C8ZBIDcCBx8uTZWRnAV9UB8zrVWVgbpvwl3noFIsYfeGT9bJQ1qs-QeLCTchSE_g1NloCf4HzAyyHTz4cLetfQzey8oU7PcY=s0
Galen Pejeau I love it!
I’d need to check the artwork in the book; it doesn’t strike me as blades-esque off-hand, but it has a wonderful lovecraftian feel to it. Immediately makes me think of Pickman’s Model.
Renaud van Strydonck Thank you! I dig the moodiness of your version.