A Little Bit of Process

Alright, so I have neglected to be very active on The JAR lately and I feel bad about it... So, since I have something new that I am working on and can show, I decided to reveal some of my imperfect, ever-changing process.  Please, bear with me on this.

In reality, everything starts on paper with random, unfocused sketches and doodles.  None of which are pictured here.  I have a few pages of heads and faces that I was playing with before becoming interested in one that had an old, worn, and rather royal feel to it.  So I drew it some more in different angles and positions until finally deciding on a simple profile.  I wanted to keep it simple since I intended to try out some new brushes in my work.

Once I had a rough idea, I jumped into Photoshop and continued where I left off on paper.  I redrew the head again using my pencil drawing as a reference.  Only this time I planned out a body for it as well.  I had trouble deciding on a pose and what style armor he should have.  At one point I played around with a sci-fi theme but I quickly dropped it.  Eventually decided on something more basic like what a barbarian might wear.

Two of the better body sketches.

Once I made a decision, I then worked on refining the pose.  His balance was off and the legs seemed somewhat stiff and unnatural.  Adding more/darker lines to what I liked and whiting out areas that I didn't want worked well for me here.  I also noted what I need to take reference for, namely his hands and ears among other things.

Refining the sketch.

Next it's time to work out a color pallet.  From the beginning I wanted something cool and blue so that's where I started.  I tried out several shades and hues before settling on a muted teal as a base.

Picking out a base tone.

From there it was a matter of deciding on a skin-tone and other color shapes.  I liked the idea of red skin in an icy environment.  This stage is very rough and messy.  Staying inside the lines is not a priority: I just want to work out what colors work well and where.  Once I have a basic understanding of what I want I then start laying in blocks of value.  I decided that a gradient going from light to dark helped focus the eye on the sword and his head as well.

Playing around with shapes and colors.

In order to help me pay attention to value groupings, I place a black/white filter over top the image and periodically turn it on to get an idea of what the image would look like as a greyscale.  I also add a dot of black and white and move it around for comparison.  Proper value depth is a problem of mine that I still struggle with so I tend to check this often.  I also regularly flip the painting horizontally.  This is to aid in spotting defects in the painting such as poor figure balance, lopsided anatomy, or a lopsided composition in general.

Value comparison.

Finally, this is where the painting stands as of this post.  I recently edited a brush to give me two-tone and really speckly strokes to help add some texture since most of my paintings turn out looking really smooth like clay.  It's not a perfect integration yet, but I rather like it and think it's something that I am going to stick with.  Now it is time to take a break from working on his head and move to other areas to help prevent the risk of over-working his face.  I still need to add the darkest-darks and lightest-lights to the painting.  Those will come later.

Where I am as of this posting.

Head detail showing texture brush.

Alright, so here is the 'finish'.  It is pretty likely that I will go into this again some time in the future, but for now I am moving on!  Check out this and other works of mine on my blog: Zachary Wojnar Illustration.

Final result.