August Illustration+Process! (Patreon)

Hey ya'll! I've got a new illustration and process for you. I've been trying to come up with a more clean way of creating illustrations (specifically for commissions but also just for my work in general). Here's the process: https://www.dropbox.com/sh/pwwgh8wqhmid5hv/AADvLJc5BZkSJOQdHzxBk-7ia?dl=0

For this, I started by asking some questions about the piece, things like what action the character is taking and what level the camera should be at. This is something that's never worked for me in the past but finally sort of clicked recently as I tried to come up with my own set of questions rather than using lists I found in books or online. The second new thing I did here was to separate the figure and background elements with 2 gradients. I really love to try to get a lot of depth in my pieces and noticed that when I lay in a gradient over the whole piece and invert the figure, it really pops out. After that I play with the colors to get them closer to what I want, but paintings are only as good as you start them in my experience and that start really gets me thinking about the separation of elements and unifying my colors.

The third thing I did was to use a frame to help with thinking more about where my elements are in relation to the rest of the page as I tend to have an issue with rigid compositions at times. When I started doing this it really helped with just thinking about the entire piece from the very start and having everything work together better.

On a final note, this is actually a repaint of a piece I started about a year ago that never got finished. I was always happy with the idea but not the direction it was going.

Anyway, thank ya'll for the continued support! Let me know what you think and I hope you're having a good month!