Illustration #120 (Patreon)

Hey, here's a new painting! :) Wanted to finally do a scene featuring the bath house owner lady I did some sketches of a while back. I like how her design turned out, and I'd like to make her more of a recurring character since I really enjoy the whole bath house setting. I hope you guys are into that too! She might want a more central role in the next painting she's in though. 😏

Here are the download links for the rewards for illustration #120 so you can check out the process if you want:
WIP images
Short time lapse video
Long time lapse video
PSD files

My motivation and workflow had a lot of turbulence throughout painting this picture. When I started out I kinda wanted to re-examine the approach of going into a painting without doing a thumbnail sketch first. In the past I've felt like it's a bad idea, but since my painting technique has changed a little bit since then, and particularly considering how I recently have tried to introduce more color variety into my brush technique, I thought it'd be interesting to repeat the experiment. It actually didn't feel quite as bad as it has in the past, but I'd still say it's sub-optimal. I'll keep doing thumbnails first instead.

Part way through the process of this painting I did start feeling pretty demotivated. I felt kinda stuck. When I feel that way I often find it helpful for me to pivot my approach in one way or another. For example, in the past I've made some dramatic changes to the lighting of a scene to see it in a new light, quite literally, and regain my motivation that way. This time around I decided I wanted to try pivoting the art style slightly and introduce contour lines to help define the shapes in the painting. I didn't do it because I thought it'd look better, I just needed it to be different. And it worked out pretty alright! I don't wanna recommend pivoting your art style like that when doing client work, since they expect you to deliver your usual style, but if you're feeling stuck in a personal piece, maybe try to find a way to pivot. 👍

I don't necessarily think I quite hit the mark for what I'd want the art style to look like, but as a first attempt I'm pretty happy with what I learned from it. And I think I'd like to keep exploring a style that uses contour lines like that. After adding them I felt like it was a bit easier to recognize my own shape language and spot how I can improve that shape language. I'm curious to see if that'll continue being the case.

I've got this dream of being able to make a game sometime in the future, so this past month I selfishly took the time I usually spend doing doodles and spent it looking at game dev stuff instead. I'm still very far away from being able to make anything resembling a game, but baby steps I guess. 😅

I hope you've all had a good July! Thanks for supporting me!