Genkigeek - Part 1: Sketch to Lineart

Woohoo! This time, I recorded the process from the very beginning. This is the first part, from sketch to pre-color ("lineart", but I cant really call it lineart anymore... its much more than that!)

This picture is part of a blog design I'm working on... more on that after part 2. :)

Time spent so far - ~70 mins?
Click picture for larger view.

Please enjoy!


Genkigeek - Part 1: Sketch to Lineart from kristi b on Vimeo.

Video Length: ~10 mins
Speed: 600% normal speed
Medium: Photoshop CS4

Music: The Third Eye by Pillows, Gold by Lamb

Part 1 of 2 on recording a piece of art from start to finish. I did switch computers midway and missed a slot, hence the fadein. I also couldn't find appropriate music for the last 30 seconds or so - sorry! I'll plan that out better next time ;)

Photoshop Inking Video: Nym

Hey!

I realized I never posted this video here. I did this a few months back -- hopefully I'll have time to create another video sometime soon.

The sketch was done in pencil (I dont do that often, honestly), and the inking was done in Photoshop CS5, with a Wacom Intuos tablet.

Pencil to Lineart - Nym from kristi b on Vimeo.

Lolth: The SpiderQueen

 This was something I wanted to do for a while. If I'm not relaxing by playing video games, I'm usually into one of the Forgotten Realms paperbacks. While not a big fan of Drizzt, I do really enjoy the Drow culture and their twisted goddess; Lolth.

(click the image for a larger view)

Lloth, the Queen of Spiders or Queen of the Demonweb Pits, is the goddess of the drow^[4], a chaotic evil deity who revels in chaos. She patterns her life and the lives of her worshipers on a regimen of chaotic acts and the veneration of spiders. The way that new-born spider broods tear each other apart to survive especially appeals to her. She promotes this by encouraging her worshipers to kill their rivals, thus ensuring that they are the strongest of the 'brood'. Her love of chaos often makes her appear mad but the wise see her as a calculating individual who is always several steps ahead of those who believe that they can anticipate her. She is cruel and domineering, forcing her will upon her followers and her enemies, a will which instructs the strong to crush the weak in the most torturous way imaginable. source

 I painted this with heavy influence from the Renaissance period painters depicting their monarchy.

I spent nearly the entire weekend working on this - probably about 18-20 hours.

Here's some of the details at 100% size. The file was about 6000 pixels wide. :)
Most of the detailing I did by hand, such as the lace and the spider webs. The only pattern I imported was the dress, as that would have taken forever. >.>

I don't have many process images for this, as I was experimenting alot. However, I am really happy with how I worked through the 'lineart' and will definitely be using it again for the next picture.

Thanks for taking the time to check this out! I'm very proud of this one.

WoW Art: Warlock Blood Elf

Been a while, but I finally am getting around to doing some personal/fun artwork. :D
This is (YET ANOTHER) fanart from WoW - I will be moving away from it.... at least that's what I keep telling myself but I know better. *ahem*.

(click for larger view)

Download a widescreen wallpaper of the art here (updated to better quality)

I remembered to screen cap this one throughout the process. :)

The rough sketch - My goal was to distort the proportions and go for a more stylized look. I wanted more personality in this picture. Attitude! I didn't expect her to be a DDD-cup. Yeesh.

I make a new layer and refine the shape a little bit more.

Yet another layer and sketch on the clothes. I had a lot of fun with this one - this outfit is based off of the old PvP "Season 2" set. In my opinion the best looking gear-set they ever made. ;)

ANOTHER layer, and start working out my linework. Next time I'm going to go back to doing this process all on one layer. It has it's benefits doing it this way, but it's also kind of tedious...

Time for color! I rough in the background and start shading the form. Way too many layers for this one.. >.>

Working out details.

I went back and adjusted the background, and then the colors of the dress. The dominant red BG was over-powering the figure, and didn't help with backlighting much.

And.... i forgot to screen after that. Once all the color was in place, I smooshed all the layers together (except the BG) and added in lighting details and refined many of the edges. I also colorized the linework to make it blend better.

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.