Ive made blogs before, but have always lost intrest in them after a month or two. This time though, things could be different. At the beginning of the semester this year, i finaly decided on what i wanted to do for the rest of my life. I took the advice of many intelegent people who told me to do what i love, and what im good at . Ive been alot happier ever since. Art is everything for me, and i put all of myself into my work. This is my surest sign that what im doing will carry me and support me the rest of my life.
Anyway, im rambling, lets get started.
Tonight im gonna work on some concept art for a story I came up with a while ago. It’s based in a heavy fantasy/horror setting and mixes both medival and rennisance technologies. Some may recal the Ebberon campaign setting for D&D, well this is basicly the same thing. I never finished the story, and actualy the writing i do have is missing at the moment, probably never to be found. The drawing is of a member of and elite guard, in this case, its going to be an orc.
I start out with a wireframe sketch to easily position limbs and get an idea of perspective.
Then I move on to what I like to call a Proportion sketch, which basicly give me a better understanding of how the limbs will be placed and what perspective they’ll be in.
When im done, I’ll erase the wire-frame leaving the proportion sketch.
Now its time to start adding some detail. On a new layer, I quickly sketched in some armor.
Dark shading- Using a soft airbrush I layed down some shadows, using the detail I had drawn previously as my guide.
Highlighting- When im done with the shadows, I usually switch from black, to white and airbrush in some highlights. This can go back and forth for some time until I get it right, but it adds another dimension to your shading.
Facial detail- I made a new layer and just for the sake of making his face im gonna get rid of all the shading by painting in with white. I want to convey the idea that wile this character is obviously very strong, he’s also not that bright. To help me do this, im going to draw the eyes in low, as if he’s peeking over the neck guard of his armor, to show that the armor is a bit too big for him or was awkwardly donned. This will add to the feeling that he’s clumsy and will give him some character.
After the face was done, I added shading, and an ear just to put everything in perspective. I also added more detail to the helmet and neck area. The screenshot doesn’t show it, but after I was happy with his face, I merged the layers, leaving me with the detailed sketch and the Erased wireframe sketch.I want to keep the erased wireframe sketch throughout the entire drawing as a guide, because it keeps me from bulking him up too much while im zoomed in on specific areas.
So, on to the rest of him.
For the feathers on his helmet I took a small, and fairly strong (about 83 strength) smudge brush and fanned outwards away from the curve of the feather. The smudge tool is probably one of my favorite things to use in Photoshop but its important not to get carried away with it. Its easy to use it for seamlessly blending shading and softening lines but be sure to keep zooming out to view ‘the big picture’ because you can lose a lot of detail doing this.
At this point, ive gone around and added detail to the rest of his body. I switched up the shoulder pauldrens to imply that the armor is makeshift, and fixed some of the shading I didn’t like, but he still needs something… Lets add a cape.
There are so many ways to show movement when drawing fabric, and everyone has their own style of making these folds so don’t be intimidated by making flowing robes or banners flapping in the wind. The folds I drew were sketched in pretty quickly but I wont worry about it yet since im going to throw it into Corel Painter when im done, and can take my time.
This cape also added some depth to the drawing and bolsters the implied line created by the feathers. The viewers eye is now drawn across the triangle shape of the sketch.
Learning the basics of composition and design will greatly improve your work. I know it has with mine.
Ok, So there’s one more thing I want to add before I start thinking about a background and color.
He’s got to have a weapon.
Something Heavy.
But first, I need to make more room on my canvas. Im going to highlight the cape layer, and the layer that’s got the rest of the sketch on it, and then make a quick selection using the lasso tool.
I hit Ctrl-t to ‘free transform’ the image. Once I got the size I wanted, I changed the canvas size so that it was basically turned horizontal. W: 11in H: 8.5in.Now im able to fit the war hammer in. :)
And to add even more depth, ive added a shadow.
Im done with the sketch for now, there’s nothing else I want to add. But even with everything done, I still feel like he could use some more detail. Time to bring in some textures.
Looking through my Textures folder I came across some good ones for this character, who I realize now, needs a name. We’ll call him Grawl for the time being.
Here’s some chain mail texture I brought in, its to big for the spots I want it in so im gonna play around with the skew, perspective and free transform options until they fit nicely on the legs.
Once the chain mail is in place, I set the layers to overlay, to get the underlying sketch to show through…
Blending it with the detail I had drawn and giving it a great effect.
I can tweak the levels using the ‘Curves’ tool to make if fit more with the rest of the drawing and change its color with the Hue/Saturation option.
In this case, I darkened and de-saturated the mail.
I do the same with his left arm.
And for the cape, I found a cool Burlap texture.
Now for some color.
I merged all the layers together, except for the ones containing my textures, which were merged into a layer of their own. Then I made a new layer, in between the sketch and the textures. Im going to make a new layer for each section of color I paint on Grawl, the reason for this being, my love of experimenting with blending modes.
For the armor I picked a dark gold color and set the blending mode to color dodge, which gives me a nice metallic shine with the shading underneath. This is a great time to let your imagination run wild. Experiment with everything and anything, I cant stress that enough, it is, in my experience, The best way to learn.
After playing around for a while Grawl’s all colored in.
I merge all the layers with the background one at a time so I don’t loose any changes I made with the blending modes. And then duplicate the final layer. As a finishing touch, I change the new layer to RGB and browse the filters Photoshop provides me. I used the Diffuse glow filter to show light reflecting off certain points of the drawing. Lastly I lowered its opacity, letting the original painting show through a bit., and added my signature.
