October 200766

Workshops

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The legs are the stars of any

pin-up piece, so they must have

great prominence in your artwork.

Eventually, I decide that a standing

pose is the best way to showcase my

character’s long legs.

ainting pin-ups can be a whole

lot of fun, no matter whether

you go for the old-school

vintage cheesecake kind of look

or if you want to add a modernised twist

to them. You don’t have to be a pin-up

artist to create pin-up art, but to achieve

the special look and feel, you’ll need to

spend some time researching the old pin-

1 Back-story and rulesThe term “pin-up” was created in

the early 1940s and originates from

images with erotic content that you could

rip out of magazines and newspapers or

from calendars that you could pin up on

the wall. I believe the reason that this

genre of art still appeals to so many

people is because it has elements of being

sarcastic, naive and timeless.

You can still create modern pin-up art

based on the old guidelines. There are

three things to remember about pin-up

art. First, the stars of the piece are the legs;

they should be long, slender and smooth,

have grace and a sexy silhouette and

posture. Second is the innocent

expression, mostly depicted either

smiling showing perfect white teeth, or

looking surprised, which is often linked

to slapstick kind of comedy situations.

Finally, details such as cloth folds or

wrinkles in skin can make the painting

too complex and realistic and might take

away from the pin-up appearance.

See the creation process of a modernised pin-up artwork from the start and get the know-how to do it yourself, with the help of Henning Ludvigsen

P

OLD STYLE PIN-UP ART… THE NEW WAY

up masters such as Alberto Vargas, Gil

Elvgren, Billy de Vorss, Joyce Ballantyne,

Zoe Mozert, Edward Runci, Earl Moran

and Haddon Sundblom to mention a few.

It’s a good idea to try to keep things

simple in this type of illustration,

especially when it comes to the folds on

clothing or human skin. Even though a

hand looks realistic with the finest of

details, it might not work for the pin-up

genre. Smooth things out, and aim for

straightforward approaches.

Play around with anatomy. Pin-up girls

are generally likely to have much longer

legs and thinner limbs than are realistic

and you can really accentuate their curves

quite far in order to make them even

more full bodied.

3 ReferencesEven though pin-ups don’t have

realistic anatomy, it’s still important to

look at reference photos. If you have a

helpful friend, set up a quick photoshoot

so that you have something handy to look

at while painting. Only real reference

photos can aid you as to how light and

shadows works, and how skin and fabric

folds. Also, having access to a good

reference library doesn’t hurt. For this

piece, I discovered that it’s almost

impossible for a real person to hold this

pose. So the reference doesn’t have to be

perfect, just something for guidance.

2 SketchesBased on the client’s description,

I make some sketches. The theme was to

be a classic GI Jane kind of character, with

a sassy camouflaged uniform with red,

Martian-type colours and a scarified

terrain for the background. After a few

experiments in sitting poses, the client

suggested standing to show her legs.

October 2007 67

In depth Pin-up art

2

Henning LudvigsenCOUNTRY: Greece

CLIENTS: , Fantasy

Flight Games, Max

Protection, Spiral Direct

Henning is a

Norwegian

digital artist

with a

traditional art

education and more

than 20 years experience

from the ad agency

industry and five years

as a computer game

developer. He is

currently art director

at a computer game

development company

in Greece.

www.henningludvigsen.

com

DVD AssetsThe files you need

are in the folder

called Henning

Ludvigsen in the

Workshops section.

Download a demo of

Photoshop from www.

adobe.com/downloads

UNI22.tut_pinup 67 9/8/07 6:27:36 pm

4 Base sketchI started in medium resolution to

free up resources for making the sketching

process as fast as possible. Starting too big

can dampen creativity. To get the body

shape, I used the grid technique to copy

some references to get her anatomy in the

right proportion before I transformed the

sketch into a more extreme posture.

5 Get in shapeHaving a block background, I turn

on Lock Transparent Pixels in the Layers

window. This way I can’t paint outside the

existing pixels in this layer. I prefer doing

shape before colour and start in grey

tones. Using a hard edged brush, I go over

the character with rough strokes.

6 Colour meLet’s apply some base colours!

I make a temporary mock-up palette to

colour pick from, and apply this to the

character with my brush set to Colour

mode. This will tint the greyscale base

version of the painting. Now I can easily

see that my values weren’t as dark as they

should have been, because it looks flat.

This is why it’s important to check both

your greyscale and colour values.

7 Colour me againBefore rendering, I scaled the

painting up to a larger format. A normal

hard edged brush will get you far, and it

embeds your characteristics in each brush

stroke more than soft brushes. Change

the Brush tool back to Normal mode and

start rendering the character over and

over again. This can be tedious, but it’s

what makes the painting. The more effort

you make, the more you and your viewers

will enjoy your art. I introduced vague

colour variations throughout the piece to

prevent monochromatic colours.

October 200768

Workshops

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5

6

7

Hide your filtersUsing automated filters

can be your worst

enemy. The trick is to use

them subtly so that the

viewers don’t notice

them. Blend the layer

with the filter effects by

playing around with layer

blending modes and

opacity. Textured

brushes will cover up

the effect, and the effect

itself will add further

texture to your work. The

best advice is naturally

to do everything by

hand, and you’ll find you

appreciate your work

more that way.

UNI22.tut_pinup 68 9/8/07 6:27:42 pm

8 BackgroundBackgrounds are not incredibly important for the pin-up genre, but if you do include one make sure it doesn’t

take attention away from the girl. It’s important to introduce the background before the final decision of the overall

colour scheme so that the character can mesh better with the environment. I kept the brush strokes very rough just

to hint at the jagged rock formations. I also added some crates and barrels to populate the canvas.

9 Face and hairThe face and hair make this girl

pretty. I spent time on her face as there are

no shortcuts here. Look at old pin-up

paintings for inspiration. First, the hair

was shaped with a hard edged brush, then

refined with a Dotted hair-brush, then

single strands of hair were added. Start

with a dark base and work towards

brighter values, layer by layer of hair.

10 Make upI find make up hard, so I keep it on

a separate layer so that I can easily do

changes to her face without having to

send her back to the make up room. Add

a layer with the blending mode set to

Hard Light and softly apply the make up:

a rosy glow in her cheeks and chin, some

eye shadow, and finally mascara, applied

on another normal layer.

11 Refine the silhouetteOne of very few purposes I can

think of for the Smudge tool is for refining

the outlines of my characters. Using a

semi soft brush with strength set to fairly

high works nicely, and makes the

silhouette appear semi soft. Make sure to

edit the silhouette so that it shows

interesting lines and curves. Photoshop’s

Liquify tool is great for major tweaks.

October 2007 69

In depth Pin-up art

Straight linesShift

While using any painting tool, hold Shift to automatically draw astraight line between two points.

10

8ke a

9

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16 Grain and noiseAs digital artworks often result in

very clean colours and values, I prefer

applying a vague layer of noise on top of

my paintings. Add a new layer on top

with the RGB-values 128, 128, 128 and

run the Add Noise filter, set to 400 per

cent, Gaussian. Run the Spatter filter a

couple of times, and then run Blur More.

Set the blending mode to Overlay and

adjust the Opacity slider down to around

three to ten per cent.

15 Apply soft glowApply a soft glow effect by

collapsing all the layers into a new layer.

Make sure this layer is on top and run it

though Filter>Gaussian Blur. Then set the

Layer Blending mode to Linear Dodge

and Opacity between 20 and 40 per cent.

14 Final tweaksThe last thing that should be done

is going over the entire piece, zoomed in

and armed with a smaller brush to fix

minor glitches and errors. I also added

more backlight bouncing off the

silhouette of the character to connect her

more to the background.

13 Get a sweat goingFor our soldier girl to look hard

working, she’ll require additional work

on her skin. Sweaty skin is tricky, but one

way of achieving the look is by painting

the highlights of wet skin on a layer set to

Overlay. Use the Brush tool with a

Textured Noise brush, white with the

Eraser tool and no dark colours. Sweaty

skin looks noisy because of pores and

when pearls of sweat attach to body hair.

12 Camouflage meSince our character is located with

the infantry stationed on Mars, her

camouflage needs to match her

surroundings. After refining her clothes,

I started painting the camouflage on two

new layers; one for her outfit set to Hard

Light blending mode and 50 per cent

Opacity, and another one for the rocket

launcher set to Overlay blending mode,

and 80 per cent Opacity.

October 200770

Workshops

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Mess it up!Digital art can easily look

too smooth and artificial.

After finishing a painting,

why not create a layer on

top of all the others

where you use a textured

‘randomisation’ brush?

This creates interesting

inaccuracies and gives

the impression that your

painting contains more

details than it actually

does. Play around with

the brush creation

options and find a

setting that suits you.

Brushes like this usually

work great, particularly

for highlights.

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