Captain Marvel - The Marvels -- Exclusive 11/23 (Patreon)

Captain Marvel is one of those characters whose design is a lot more complicated than it looks -- in fact, that applies to a lot of on-film superheroes. Costume elements, patterns, textures, and colors are all very specific, and I really want to ensure all those details are accurate in my drawings. It didn't help that, out of both hero suits that Carol wears in The Marvels, this first one has fewer in-depth images available, and it's just a tad more complicated than the one she wears later (with the big chest star). I still think I got a few things off -- but hopefully, no one notices. XD

When I can, I also like to spend a lot of extra time on the face; it's one of the last things I do on the figure, before I put in a background. I'll do the head in a separate layer, starting with a sketch, and then doing a lineart and colors under that. Once that's done, I'll duplicate the head layer group, and flatten that copy, so I have a single flat layer with all of the head details (skin, hair, eyes, and all the shading for each). From there, I'll start cleaning up and refining the head and face; I'll flip the layer and fix any misalignments, whether that's with a full skew transformation, or by going in and manually moving one of the eyes up or down, or rotating a crooked smile into place. When it comes to drawing likenesses such as Brie Larson's here, while I do spend a good bit of time up-front in capturing her likeness in the lineart, a lot of heavy lifting is done by the coloring and rendering, and even then, I'll notice little details that could be improved on. It is at this stage where I'm looking at an image of Brie Larson's face up-close, next to my drawing, tweaking things to bring it closer and closer. I will also add a separate layer for flyaway hairs, another layer for the lights in her eyes, and I'll use a little smudge brush to get the "feathering" in her eyebrows and hairline. I will also often smudge away or outright erase lineart strokes within the face itself, instead relying on shading and lighting to suggest contours and soft volumes.

All that being said, I hope you like the piece! I have yet to see the Marvels, and I'll probably wait until it's out on Disney+ to give it a shot... I don't keep up as much with Marvel content nowadays as I used to...

I've also got the final piece for this month coming hot on the heels of this one, so sorry they're kind of bookended so late into the month. It's another previous poll character, so I hope you love it!