November MOTM: stag beetle autumn knight - painting process // nsfw (Patreon)

here's the process pack for this month's MOTM painting--download the attached .zip to access 20 pngs and 1 gif.

i decided to include a few more shots of the linearting process than usual, because i ended up drawing the lineart 'in layers' and figured it'd be neat to showcase. i began by doing the lineart for the stag beetle knight. his design has a lot of, well, lines in it, what with the exoskeletal plates that make up his armour. it's not excessively complex, but each line is important in delineating each part of his armour, and would remain very visible on the final piece, so i took extra care to be precise. i drew his whole body, even where i knew the human's leg and face would eventually cover part of it, because it made it easier to ensure that the anatomy made sense and that the lineart looked good.

when i was done with the beetle knight lines i created a whole new layer and started linearting the human. i hid the layer with the knight to more easily see the underlying sketch, so basically i did the lineart for each character 'separately.'  once i was happy with each character i erased the lines where one of them overlapped the other. i don't always do it like this, in fact i usually draw the whole lineart on a single layer, but in this case it felt more convenient to go about it this way. having each character on a separate layer makes it easier to move things around or tweak the proportions if necessary, plus i wanted to make sure i nailed the lines of the beetle knight's armour without having to take the lines of the human into immediate consideration.

and i still wasn't done. next, i created another new layer and started adding the nature details of the beetle knight's design--the twigs and garland of leaves. after i was done i erased the lines underneath and finally merged all the lineart layers together. before i started colouring i locked the transparency of the now single lineart layer, coloured it a warm brown, set it to 'multiply,' and lowered the transparency a bit. (and yeah, i originally meant to insert a detail shot of the, uh, insertion, but decided to do a sketch of that instead.)

the rough sketch of the background elements is on a layer of its own and it wasn't around for long. i added some basic flats to the characters but before i kept colouring them i decided to paint the background, after which i deleted the sketch. i wanted the backdrop to look like a somewhat foggy autumn forest but i didn't use too vibrant fall colours, because i aimed to create a contrast between the saturated hues of the characters against the more muted background. i kept the brushstrokes very rough because i already knew i was going to add a blurry effect to it later on, so it didn't need to look detailed or precise.

back to the characters. i started adding big gradients to the beetle knight, but soon realised it would be better if i coloured each part of his armour 'piece by piece.' for this drawing i mainly used the lasso select + airbrush colouring method; i used the lasso tool to select one segment of his armour at a time, and coloured it or added a gradient using a pretty big airbrush. i didn't want his whole armour to be the exact same hue, so i made some parts of it a bit more bronzey and others a bit darker.

at this stage i decided to include the beetle knight's sword, cloak, and shield, since i liked those parts of his design and wanted to showcase them... plus it'd make that block of stone somewhat more comfy. i kept colouring the characters and gradually selected smaller and smaller areas, adding more and more detail. as for the leaves and garland i had already slapped on some basic gradients for colour variation. but i changed to a small brush and painted the leaves, berries and acorns 'manually,' making sure to have the breastplate and fur collar peek through at places.

i switched back to the lasso and airbrush to shade the characters, using a warm brown hue on a semi-transparent layer set to 'multiply.' as mentioned in the design commentary, the knight's armour isn't supposed to be shiny, but i added some subtle highlights to give it more form--this time i used a warm pale golden hue and set the layer to 'overlay.'

even with the shadows i thought the characters and the background blended together too much, so i made the forest behind them more pale and foggy and also finally created the blurry effect.  the most painterly thing in this piece is the stone slab, which i coloured using a variety of textured brushes to emulate stone texture. 

i also added a faint pale, blue-ish hue to certain parts of the characters, specifically where they were overlapped by other body parts and/or furthest away from the viewer; the beetle man's thighs, left arm, the human's right thigh and elbow. it's one of my favourite tricks for creating a bit of atmosphere and sense of depth. if you've read my other process packs you're probably already well acquainted with it lol.

the next step is very exciting and made such a huge difference--i finally added the decorative carvings on the knight's armour! i used a pale golden colour, a small brush, and drew it all on a layer set to 'overlay.' i made the lines slightly more shiny where the light hits the armour and muted them a bit where there's shadows, making it look 'balanced' rather than messy.

i was starting to feel pretty finished with it, but i still spent a fair amount of time polishing and refining the whole thing, going over the lineart and cleaning it up. after that i decided to further put the characters apart from the background by airbrushing in some pale blue patches right behind them, and created a foreground by adding blurry branches covered in bright red leaves. finally, i made the picture a bit more bright and vibrant, and bam--done.

as always, if you have any questions on this process, go ahead and ask in the comments below!

// art + characters © me.