Silber: Process

Didn't go into great detail this time, because I did a lot of experimenting.

Getting right to it:

The rough sketch. Before I got to this pose I did a bunch of little sketches. Really loose, and I found that using kind of a fatter brush keeps me from getting into details too quickly.

Lineart. Refined some details as I went, shifted the angle of the arms and hands, etc. Pleasantly surprised at the hands - I have so much trouble with them still! It's really frustrating. :(

Here I started with the underpainting technique explained in the LehoPachi commission (check out the how-to links from some other great artists there), and then applied the flat colors, and then just squashed them all to one layer so that I could 'eyedrop paint' with the colors. This has it's benefits over trying to manage a million layers, but can also be hindering too, so it's just what works for you really.

So yeah... forgot to take another process screenie after that. ;) It went rather fast actually once the base was set. Lots of details, some texture brushes, and then a layer on top of the lineart to fill in the accents and final lighting elements. Viola!

Thanks for reading! Comments, feedback, rotten tomatoes always welcome. :)

Dragonqueen - Process

So I tried to remember to save screenshots while I worked on this one. :)

 

Started with a rough sketch, using a soft grey color brush, set to maybe 80% opacity. You should be able to build up the lines just like when you use a light sketch pencil. Digital work just imitates natural media, after all.

 Once I'm fairly happy with the linework, and I start noticing I'm zooming in and trying to piddle with details, I make a new layer and switch to a more hardier pen type, opacity ~90%.  Zoomed up it looks so sloppy! XD

Wanted to make this more than just a pretty girl, so I modified the canvas a bit to make room for the next thing....

Sketching the "big" Alexstraza.

Painted the BG a warm neutral-grey color, and started laying out flat shades for the figure. In this screen I cheated a bit and did a little pre-emptive shading just to make sure I liked where my light source was going to come from.

More flat colors. These are all mid-tone base colors.

Closeup of the figure in flat colors.

Mooore flat colors. Right now I have all of these on their own layer, but after a while that gets tedious and it's time to consolodate.

Starting to paint the dragon in the background. She's done all on one layer, with one or two brushes.

Messing with layer values (overlay, multiply, etc) to see how I'd like to set the dragon in the background. 

More color shifting, and some more dragon details, so that she matches the figure.

Going back to the figure, starting to shade and define the flat areas. Since I'm kind of sloppy with my colors, I keep the separate layers for this and lock the layer's transparency.

Details and textures on the leather/mail bikini. I took one of my scatter brushes and added a texture to it, through a leather pattern found on CGtextures.com. I defined the file as a "Pattern", then applied it to the brush.

More details. Shaded the textured parts by setting the layer to Multiply, and shaded underneath it with a duplicated layer that had nothing but flat color on it to start.

More details. Still have a ton of layers, and they got to be a huge pain at this point. Ready to flatten.

Flattened the figure (but not the BG) and added some final touch-ups and global shading for definition.

Closeup of the details on the figure. Done! :)

LehoPachi Commission - Process

Leho & Pachi Commission.

So, to start things off (again!) I'll post up my most recent commission and the process I used:

This is about an hour's worth of work - really sloppy lines, just to get the feel of the scene and get the proportions mostly worked out.

I wasn't sure about the scene so I did most of what ended up being the background in this step, though hid it later on...

 

... to try out a new technique that involved shading the characters on one layer in black and white before applying any color.

This is something that artists Sandara and Genzoman both outline in their respective how-to's on Deviantart.

It was a little akward but enjoyed it.

Here, I've created a new layer in Photoshop, and set it to Multiply to do the color. This was a little different than I was used to, as I typically eyedrop the color as I paint, and you can't really do that on a multiply layer. The color was intended to be flat at this stage, picking up the shades from the bnw layer underneath.

I also warmed up the BnW layer with the color adjustment tool - the black was just too harsh.

It worked out okay, but I think I was a bit heavy on the shading for the color. I think I'd use a different color than black next time and see how that goes.

 

Added in some details, polished up the color on a new (normal) layer, and called it a day.

Total time spent: ~6 hours. 

Size: 11" x 14"

That's it this time! I'll be breaking it out more in my next pieces for the purpose of this blog. These screenies were mostly taken for the commission progress updates.