Just briefly for some context, I'll describe without going into too much fantasy detail. Our character Vin, lives in a land shrouded in mist. Some people are born with special abilities which basically lets them control metal for different functions. Vin can control all of them, people like her are called Mistborn and they propel themselves through the lands and cities by propulsion of metal. Their signature mark is their Mistborn cloaks. There, that's the easiest I can sum up the basic premise of the picture (and story)!
Anyhoo, I liked the idea of this drawing because I knew it would be more challenging than my previous digital painting. To start, it's based on a human figure, an area of art where I find myself weaker at. Second of all, the clothing and poses of the character in particular are quite elegant and ethereal as described in the books. The cloak in particular is described as ragged and long with ends like tendrils of silk metal. And third of all I was impatient to start so the drawing itself ended up quite basic in comparison to the finished product:
Original Drawing
Starting with the skin, and the moonlight has moved to the top left.
So I moved the moon to the top left corner, out of sight and decided that it would be represented with a glow. This made plotting out the colouring process much easier and allowed me to practice lighting the face and arms with greater definition. After some time I was pleased enough with the facial features, they were slightly Neanderthal but hey, it's all a learning curve for figure drawing right? Her clothing came out better than I expected with multiple layers (literally layers in Photoshop) applied until it began to look natural and have depth. However the main challenge was on the horizon, the tendrils of the cloak:
The tendrils proved a tough one!
I'd I spent 60% of the time on this digital painting making sure I managed to make these look as good as possible. In the end I didn't get the exact look I wanted but there was definition and fluidity there; I was happy with. So I took the stance of "it ain't broke, don't fix it" for fear that I may end up trying to improve things but end up making irreparable damage (and undoing all of that time I spent working on them!):
Tendrils, Check!
So with that the rest of the digital painting began to fall into place easier. The brunt of the work was figuring out the tones and colours, and then also capturing the look of the tendrils on the cloak. It proved a pain in the ass achieving primarily the second of the two, but it paid off as I was basically in the home stretch. I began filling out the legs and second arm, these proved less difficult and after the amount of time shading, erasing and altering the cloak, the legs and arm were naturally much easier to do. After another short amount of time I had them set in place and only came back to them to make minor shading adjustments:
All in place, this gurl need her hair done!
So with that, the only final piece in this character painting was doing her hair. This proved once again a little more difficult as I had opted to go with black hair. This meant harder shading in relation to the light and it was also an effect in digital painting I hadn't encountered yet. After a brief tutorial and setting up the right "brush" for the job I managed to capture a look I liked trying to make it appear as natural as possible. I don't think the final look of the hair is perfect by any means, there's certainly a lot of problems with it but I was pleased with my first effort.
As with my previous painting (I had finished the central character/subject of the picture), all that was left was the background. And as with the previous digital painting I opted to change to a more simple background than was initially planned. In the original drawing I quickly scribbled in some buildings rising out of the mist as the character is primarily based in a city in the books. However I decided that I didn't have the knowhow or time to starting painting buildings digitally (yet!) so I took a more simple ethereal approach: mist! With that said and done, I wanted to make it swirl downwards and have it enveloping the world below Vin, like it had a life of its own. It clings on to Vin as she launches above it and you can see some lights glowing on the land far below.
In the end I think the effect I wanted to give this picture was the character blissfully breaking away into the freedom of the moonlight from her misty world below, almost as if it is soothing her and letting all her worries drift away. The final picture I think is an improvement on my skills from the previous Water Dragon picture. And while I can certainly see a multitude of problems such as disproportionate parts of Vin, not entirely natural posing and some odd shading/lighting (amongst a multitude of other things), I'm very happy with the final result. One problem I plan to rectify in my next panting is to make it less soft. It wasn't intended in this picture but thankfully it sort of lends itself to the atmosphere, I think!
Vin, Mistborn - Final Picture
So that's number two in the bag and another for the portfolio. If you've read this far I'd also like to say that if you ever need help with something along this line of work I'd be happy to lend a hand. For my next painting it will be a Game of Thrones picture, fan fiction of Danaerys and Drogon, and don't worry it won't be spoilerish. It will be an entirely made up scenario! And if you've made it THIS far into the blog, thank you for taking your time to read about my adventures in digital painting!
Until next time, CAOI BEETCHES!
No comments:
Post a Comment