HEYO!

This is a temporary entry to let you know that this blog will be active again soon - I had a problem with my account keeping me from logging in. And instead of dealing with it like a normal person I just sorta went back to drawing and forgot about it all.

I've deleted all old entries save for one that I find to still be relevant.

I'll be populating this with sketches, thoughts, and processes again soon.

-CMalidore

Spying Sparks - Walkthrough

Ladies and gentlemen, it's that time again. Well.... who am I kidding, it's been time for ages, I've just been busy and what free time I get goes into non art stuff (gotta rest!). But none the less, here we are, ready to go – a walk through of “Spying Sparks” in tow. This is an image that was created for The Far Wilds, a fantastic online ccg (collectable card game) group that have been kind enough to contract me for a few images over our summer of 2008.

Let's go over some specifics before we get too into this though, let's start basic. The work order came in for a square image that will see completion (ie, “print”) at 250x250 pixels. That's pretty tiny. It's also the standard size of your various ccg pieces. Anybody collect magic cards? See the art? It's about that size. There's your frame of reference. The downfall of this? Square. I hate square, many artists do. Here's why!

Compositionally this is not a horribly forgiving shape, sure you can do plenty with it, but generally speaking if you give an artist a choice, they'll elongate the image either vertically or horizontally, it's easier to make dramatic and to use long sweeping lines. Basically it lends itself to neater shapes. But we get to work with a square, so we gotta do what we gotta do. None the less, be aware of your preferences. The more we understand how we work, the more we understand our limitations and strengths.

Another point to make here, while this card will print at 250x250 pixels (it's an online ccg, resolution is not important here for sake of printing.... it's all monitor relevant here) I want to work far bigger. Once I get my sketch done (shown below, don't worry, we'll get there soon) I work at 8x8 inches at 300 dpi. This will give me ample room to play.

That aside, how about we get to work (and a quick note! You can click any of these images to see them muuuch bigger. I recommend this).

I receive my art prompt that says, “Spying Sparks” which to paraphrase, is defined to me as a group of sparks that follow an enemy around, allowing the player to see what is happening with the enemy. So I instinctively go to something classically evil looking. The character I portray will be seen from the back, we're following him after all – problem? No face. And hands might be tricky. Why is this a problem? This is a problem because those two things are the gateway into understanding a character right off the bat. We recognize things off of their faces primarily, hands are a second back up often, as they are very emotive. From here? I go to stance and posing. Ever watch a crowd of people and then see that one person walking through that happens to be your friend? You saw how they walk, and that spoke out to you. It's a defining characteristic and often enough we all walk with our own subtle style. So that's usually my third option if I can't go with faces or hands.

So as we see here, I tried to give him a wide spread out gait, a saunter perhaps. His arms are spread and I was able to throw in a defining hand, I like spreading out fingers but trying to make them tense, they look edgy and as if the figure is on guard for whatever comes their way. This guy? He's trying to be sneaky and being caught is certain death. His sword is in hand, he'll defend himself with his life. I choose a curved sword because I feel that a flowing almost water quality will be given to the composition, and I fear that a straight blade will disrupt that too much. This compliments his robes and the land, and the flow of the sparks.

I've realized that I tend to form my figures off of the belt line a lot lately, this allows me to run the legs and torso in whatever direction I need, and I personally keep better figure balance this way. And that's something that is very important to me. If a figure is off balance, we'll know it as viewers. With a little bit of off balance for effect, we visually shove the eye up to the focal area.

The figure aside, what else do we have happening? See that line that looks like a hair that's running from the right and spirals through the waist, arm, and then head of the figure? That's what I'd like to see the movement turn into at the end. We'll see how that goes.

I've also put a V shape into the background, with the figure at the focal of that. It naturally puts emphasis on him.

All of these basic shapes that I'm thinking as are important for this image as it will be very small when completed. The smaller the image, the more geometric we need to think. That's how the eye defines things. It's what the image needs to be successful, and detail can destroy that if it's not ready for it. So start big and then work smaller and you'll see it balance itself out.

I've taken my sketch into Photoshop, I've upsized it to what I need (don't upsize final art, but sketches don't matter much as you won't be seeing them in the end). My desired color scheme will be blues and purples, with the orange being the sparks themselves.

So what I do is put down a multiply layer of orange – this is an old technique that old traditionalists used to use. To use the general compliment of the tone of the image you allow pockets of orange to poke through as you lay your blues and what not over it. This doesn't work unless you understand the level of temperature and saturation though. Temperature is as you'd sorta think – the hotter the temp, the brighter it is, like looking into the sun, the saturation is the amount of color in your chosen color. For example, hot pink or a dull pale pink. So in this case, I choose a slightly desaturated orange that will provide some energy, but it feels more like an autumn day than a leaky highlighter.

Note: This technique of using complimentary under paintings? Not as important with digital work. It works best with traditional paints and how those pigments interact as they layer. So yeah, it's a give and take thing. This works amazingly well with oils and acrylics. Photoshop? It's a crap shoot. Often it looks muddy. I wanted to try it out though remembering not to over render.

Painting! For sake of saying “Custom brushes are cool, but they DON'T a great picture make”, I'm using a Photoshop default brush that's generally named: “Airbrush Pen Opacity Flow” and defaults to a size 19 I believe. What is this brush? It's got the airbrush flow enabled and is highly pressure sensative. It's a hard edge brush, but I'll lower the hardness occasionally. Using soft brushes make for art that looks like it was created with a water mister. It's hard to give definition. Hard edge brushes just mean you play with opacity more, but I've found more freedom in this method.

I've set my opacity of this brush between 30 and 40 percent, this is because I like working lightly, I hate burying my lines. I won't have everything defined for awhile, so the longest I can keep my lines the better. Work lightly, less than ten minutes if possible, you're mostly setting in value and shape here. Be messy! You're missing nothing that can't be used later. But if you cover it all up now, suddenly you have to improvise half way through your image – and this means you're taking a risk with your client's money. They trust you, so taking chances isn't always the best business trait. And if you screw up enough because of this, it's a great way to slowly lose all of your clients and suddenly have a lot of free time!

Painting v2.0! I've pushed my brush opacity up another 10 to 15 percent, I want to squash my line dependency here, so I want my shapes defined. They can still be loose, but all of the information I need should be on the canvas either now, or at the next painting step.

Notice that I've painted over half of my individual's lines. That's just fine, as I keep loose when sketching, it's all there in case I want to use it, but I'm in no way tied to those lines. I'll pick out the shapes I like and paint over the rest. I'm more interested in lighting than I am shape dependency anyway. He'll be mostly front lit, which means his back will be fairly dark, with enough shapes defined to give him depth.

When you do such strong one sided lighting it's hard to give shape, remember to put great emphasis on going around the figure with things, curvature is good!

Another note: Some of that orange is poking through subtly and bluntly in various parts of our image. It looks kinda messy, but it's adding character. This is exactly what we wanted!

I've stopped painting for a few minutes to do a quick run of texture and toning over this. I've done all painting with our default brush but since I am a texture and grunge brush addict, and I feel that this image could use some of that flavor I tend to use in most of my images (preferences are good, they define us – just don't restrict yourself to them). I only used 2 or 3 brushes and then set the layer itself to 54% opacity. It is not on overlay or multiply or anything like that – but these can create neat looks. Experiment for your self, and do what the image needs. I felt that normal worked best on this one.

I've also done a quick gradient from the top left corner of dark to clear. My dark is a dark blue/violet that I felt would offer a great push visually – forcing the eye back down a bit. I've got the lightest part of our image in front of the figure's torso now, and this creates a ton of focus. Most people pick the head, but I don't want us to focus on that, the body itself is what's giving all of our character information.

Back to painting! I've decided that it's time to give the character a push. Like, nearly completed push. I like working back and forth a bit more evenly, but when a visual hits your head and you suddenly know what you want and where you want it – you gotta pursue that as it hits. In this case, I saw what I wanted in the figure a bit more fully. I've chosen browns based off of the orange to give us some armor shaping, this importance is that it mirrors our sparks color around further, we don't want all of the orange in one spot and this ties the two together a bit. I've put blue edges on various spots to define the shape a lil further and to provide strength to the idea of him being lit from the front mostly.

Why have I not done much to the sword? It's further away, I'll likely handle it when I take care of the image props further away, like the trees. There's no rule here saying why it's a great idea though – it's just what I've decided to do. Do whatever you do with confidence and because it feels right for the image, not just because people say to do things a certain way. None of the things I do here are set ways to create an illustration – it's all a series of options and picking from that list accordingly.

Not a big change, but one I wanted to show anyway. I've gone into Layer>New Adjustment Layer>Curves to provide some more bright/dark differences. Just tightening up the balance basically. It's one of those subtle and small things that makes a huuuge differences. You can go too far here very easily.

Next round of painting puts us in the right tree line since it's on a visual line of interest. The left side sorta points us in the right direction, but isn't as important, so I want to put my energy into the right. I'm pushing down my dark values and saturation levels for depth here. I want to put in less variety so that I can put more distance and planes into this image. And when I say planes understand that I try and do 3 planes of interest. Fore, middle, and furthest. This foreground is usually going to be our subject, but not always – it's the closest spot in our image. The middle ground can encompass a lot of space, a lot can happen, but it's easy to make it very over bearing, so I then try and define out my furthest plane. In this case? Our tree to the right hand side poking out of the foggy cloud like sky line. So I mean, these don't have to be huge planes. But those 3 create a lot of depth and balance that is ample for story telling.

While doing this step, don't lose sight of your light source. And keep it where you need it. Can I light high in that tree? Sure! But it'll destroy our composition to do so. So stay aware.

I quickly placed an orange overlay layer (roughly 45% layer opacity) into the upper left side, so as to offer some variety in tone, but not be too strong. Small things are helpful, remember that.

I also painted in the rest of our background putting attention to diagonal angles (horizontals and verticals are boring!). None of this will be overly detailed, but we need to make sure that there's interest and definition. Make it a real place. Just don't make it so important that we forget that there's a character in there. I've made sure to keep my colors to balance between the light blue, purple, and brownish orange through this background.

I use a mix of hardlight layer and overlay layer with various degrees of oranges to pull out our sparks. I've saved them for last on purpose, they are the foremost purpose of this image. I've used a little bit of texture brush here for interest and variety of shape. These are two subtle steps that build up to something large.

I've sent this to my client to make sure it's on the right track, I hate getting to the point where I'm mentally complete to receive a long list of edits, if I'm at least in work mode still near the end, I don't mind changes as much. It's a mental thing for me, don't wanna bog down! Anyway, he's digging the image and just wants the sparks completed – which is great cause that's where we're headed.

I've created a flattened layer of the whole image over everything so that I can try something – I want to pull out my edges a bit. Lets kill the drabness! So I've gone into Filter>Sharpen>Unsharp Mask. Play with the settings on your own for desired effect. Many individuals erase this out for the further away spots of the image, and it creates a photo style effect for really good depth. I did not do this here... but you should try it some time, you may like it.

Either way, I like the change here, it beefs up the lighting I think.

After this I go all crazy on the sparks. This is something around a 60 to 80 percent brush opacity of a range of orange to yellow. I thin it out on the edges for a soft radiant sort of glow. I've even used the smudge brush a bit to give character to the sparks themselves... which is important to the card, we want them to have a fairy like mischievous quality. How do you make a spark look mischievous? I have no idea, but the client felt this did the job. He's the boss!

Aaaand that's our image. But we're looking at it a lil big – Below is our final that I've shrunk down to something a bit more important to how it will be viewed.

I liked the orange under painting, as it showed through in just key spots where I used less blue and brown to cover it. If you take anything away from this image though I want it to be the movement and compositional elements and decisions that go into creating an illustration. Understand how the eye moves, understand how manipulating a figure has great impact, and how color can give us an image that our clients will come back for more of.

I hope you enjoyed this walkthrough and glimpse into how I approach an illustration. If you have any questions – please ask. You can contact me here at the blog, at any of my numerous online galleries, or at my email chris@artisticways.com

-CMalidore