For this scene, I painted out the two central Hazmat workers who were lifting a body bag. The painted in details didn’t need to be particularly accurate since they would mostly be covered by the workers except in a few spots where it might peak through as the workers moved.
I discovered that in these early paintings I didn’t always paint figures completely opaque. I often would let the back ground color show through. To make the figures opaque I had to duplicate the painted layer and alpha lock it. I then painted that second layer white and put it behind the other painted layer. This makes the figures opaque so that the bright windows for instance don’t show through the paint.
The first scene I did with these steps, I didn’t follow through on making the figure opaque. The scene is of a woman floating above her hospital bed on a respirator. I decided the fact that she was partially transparent added an ethereal effect to the scene. I might go back and paint her body more opaque and just leave the dress transparent. Then again she is rather ghostly now and I might live with that look.