Hey guys,

it has been a longer absence again and I apologize. So hopefully something to make up for it.

I decided to take part in the monthly Character Design Challange (CDC in short) over at Facebook.

The theme this month was: AZTEC WARRIOR. And since I love animals so much, I decided to do a anthropomorphic lizard dude for this.

I followed a very streamlined process this time and waited until the very with painting freely. I think it paid out.

Most importantly thanks to Christian Retzlaff and Jan Drenovec for their feedback.

See the GIF below for the whole process.

Trying to get a better grip on simplification and shapes with this.

So since I am working on a character-illustration, I realized my portrait-skills are lacking in certain areas. So it is back to studying:

After doing the first 2, I decided to change my approach. So instead of copying as close as possible, what the photo has to offer, I settled on 5 colors first. 2 for the shadow-side, 3 for the light-side.

Since I was asked, how I define the colors, here's a little explenation. The darkest color for the light-side is at the same time the most saturated (the midtone), it then gets lighter, more yellow and less saturation towards the highlights and redder/bluer and less saturated towards the darks. So the most saturation occurs in the area, where light and dark meet. This can go meta-physical here, but lets not ... :D

I then mapped out the shapes as close as I could. Especially the shadow-shape is something, that can be treated with a lot of care here. Even done a lot of edge-refinement pays off later.

After the initial lay-in, I continued with overpainting. In this phase I also add dark and light accents here and there. In the end I was surprised how straight-forward and easy this approach is and I am very happy with the result.

I tested this approach on another portrait and recorded the steps (below). Since it produces the same satisfying result, I can safely say, that this process is solid. I love to work like that and for the first time in a long time, studying is fun again.

Hope it helps you to crack colors and gives you some inspiration on how to approach your next project.

Cheers, Flo

Process GIF

So after a lot of noodling and the result, that you can see below, I decided to do some studies.

The first is a portrait - sketch, following Chris Legaspi's youtube video, the second and third are something I haven't tried before. Instead of doing a seperate painting of a photo, I simply enlarged the composition and added elements to fill the empty spaces again. I did it to a level, where I was happy with the result, at the moment. I then used what I learned and applied it back into the painting.

So this is where I am at currently. I will work on it more and do some studies for the clothing and anatomy, that I am not understanding.

My take-away is this: doing themed studies to solve certain problems is way more helpful, than just copying some random image, because there is a schedule suggesting it, or someone else said you should do it.

I hope this helps you to solve your visual problems. :)

After doing some client work, I wanted to get back to my study-habit.

I worked on this for a couple of hours, felt like it takes way too long. And it didn't happen 'til the end, that I found out it makes sense to paint from dark to light, when adding those patches of forest on the mountain.

I like how the waves turned out and doing the drawing was quite fun as well.

I still need to find a good way, to portray the closer trees. Maybe using a foliage brush might help, but I am not to fond of those. They look very stiff and mechanic to me.

Today's study is to practice color and brushwork. It was a lot of fun, to carve out those shapes :)

After doing a ton of work for Ulisses that I can't show, I wanted to do something for myself again.

So I joined the art-challange from the "Swatches" - facebook group. We are to paint a planeswalker - like illustration. The AD is Clint Cearley, who is a Magic The Gathering artist himself.

I couldn't let this opportunity go by unused. To have him look at my work is invaluable.

So here it goes.

Moodboard - Design and Pose Sketches - Value Sketches - Drawing

Next would be color - sketches and then rendering.

Deadline is 10 of July.

Onwards!

I did another spit-paint, which is a painting that is supposed to be done under 30min. It took me longer so I can't post it in the facebook-group or else I will be banned. So I just post it here. The topic was "goat bodyguard". I used 3 differente reference images for this.

I tried to stay lose and just suggest at the realism.

Hope you like it.

A digital figure painting, to get better at workflow and values.

Sorry, but I forgot where I found the ref.

These were done to help me on commission, that I hope to be able to share soon.