Process + PSD: Nott the Brave (Patreon)

Critical Role has done some amazing things for the DnD community. I'll admit I'm not the most religious listener, but I cannot overstate how much the fanart and characters and fellowship warm my heart. :3 As soon as I listened to the first episode of the new campaign, I *knew* that I had to draw Nott. I immediately had the image in my head of a sneaky, goofy goblin with a bag of gold and a shit-eating grin.

I've always had some intense impostor syndrome over painting characters, and this was what I consider to genuinely be one of the first painted designs I was satisfied with. Remember that even if you're scared you'll never be able to do something, you never know what the future will bring! 

This was her first ridiculous little doodle. I was really trying to focus on shapes and expression, and I was challenging myself to make her a excited and a little chaotic. I'd been struggling with making my character's truly expressive and did not want that to be a problem this time around!

I did a quick, messy lineart layer over her sketch so that I could slighty refine the design and structure of her face, then extended downwards to sketch out the rest of her body. I find that, when I'm sketching, it's very easy to lose the loose, gestural, expressive lines if I zoom in too close or use too small of a brush. By using a big brush when sketching, I'm forced to focus on the big shapes before going into detail.

Instead of doing lineart, I just put my flat colors under the sketch because I was worried about stiffening up her shapes and design. The drawing had a flow to it that I really liked, so I skipped lines for this one.

I made a base color layer, then put clipping mask layers on top of that- one for each material. I used the Hue/Saturation adjustments window on each layers until the values and colors feel right. I always imagined her eyes to be a bright yellow, so I actually made other color choices based on that. The dark, muted blues in her clothing pop forward her bright, light, yellow eyes, as well as the glowly golden coins spilling out of her bag.

I've now figured out all the major design decision, I started painting. I often actually paint on top of my lines, like this:

• Hidden "color" blending mode layer filled with gray to toggle for checking values while painting
• Hidden copied lineart layer to toggle on for reference
• Rendering layer
• Lineart layer
• All flat color layers in a group

I think painting over the heavy sketch preserves some good darks for ambient occlusion throughout the piece. 

Naturally after a bit of painting, I realized Flux (program that reduces the blues and boosts the reds on your monitor to be easier on your eyes at night) was on. And had been. For several hours. Oops. I had been loving the warm shadows, so I brought them back with a quick Gradient Map color layer with some masking so that it primarily affected mid-range shadows. This brought back some hue variation and richness to the colors.

Almost done!!

As I often say, I stayed zoomed out as far as possible throughout the piece and painted the large forms before going into details. Simplification of forms in light vs dark makes painting detail WAY easier, and it makes them read more believably. In this stage, it's easy to see in her feet: the top is light, the bottom and sides are dark. Instead of going in too early and painting the individual toes, I use a big brush to define the top plane vs. the sides and then leave it alone until the polish stage.

Even when the painting is done, her face will be more tightly rendered than her feet and legs because her face is the focal point!

Tah-daaa! :sparkle emoji: Thanks for reading, feel free to leave comments, questions, and feedback below. You can also find her print on Inprnt!