I've been tagged by @marchenshoujo to do a WIP Wednesday Whenever haha
(I was going to schedule this to be posted on a Wednesday, but I feel like posting it now ¯\_(ツ)_/¯)
Sometimes I get carried away and forget to save progress images of my art, but I'm trying to be more consistent about doing it now because I've realized it's a very helpful reminder that your art has to start somewhere. If you only save the finished pieces, you may forget that some pieces started as something very rough!
That being said, I still forget to save that very rough original sketch sometimes so some if not most of these will be more like in-between steps or more refined sketches (so, technically, actual WIPs haha).
This May piece from earlier this year started out as just a normal bust to test a SAI 1 update.
Then I added some flat colors. I've been doing this lately -adding color to the sketch before considering lineart- because I found that it helps me see shapes a bit better and it gives me a better idea of how everything is going to look, instead of committing to hours of lineart only to find out I don't really like the piece lol). These were simply color picked from screenshots, nothing special, so I thought "Hmm, it looks pretty bland, I wonder what I can do to spice this up" and since the background color was green I had the idea of including her rivals in her eyes! But as you can see here, they're just blobs of color since I was just testing the idea.
Then I rotated the whole thing ever so slightly to the right (and also zoomed it in a tiny bit) to make sure there wasn't too much empty space on the right side of the pic. Plus I edited the colors to make everything a bit more vibrant and fun, and went to town with some colorful shading and highlights! This is pretty close to what the finished piece became. :D
Here's an older sketch for my winter Conway piece that I use as my icon pretty much every winter (and then a few months after that because I like it so much and I forget to change it haha). I usually sketch over a colored canvas (either a gray canvas or a color that fits the atmosphere like in this case). A fully white canvas is a bit painful to stare at for me personally. The May from above was also sketched over a colorful canvas, I just made it white before saving it haha
This one didn't change much from the original idea to the finished one! I only changed the light sources to match the background. :>
This next one isn't exactly a WIP as I never really finished it, but I was waiting for an excuse to post it because even though it's rough I quite like it as it is. I've always liked drawings and photos of people with dark brown eyes where there's one very strong light source hitting one of them and the brown just ✨glows✨, so I wanted to see if I could do something like that with Conway!
(I also gave him a deeper side part just for fun 😌)
I tried cleaning it up at one point but something got lost in the process, so I left it like this. I may try this concept again in the future because like I said I really like those images and I think it'll be a great way to practice lighting!
This next one is yet another Conway piece (what can I say? I draw him a lot). I painted this one in grayscale first and then added the colors using layer modes and gradient maps (which is how I got the shading on Blissey to have that blue tinge on the edges). I don't use this technique often (I've used it less than five times I think?) but it's very fun and a great way to learn more about how colors work together in terms of contrast, value, etc.
This one is from a recent piece I posted for Conway Day! Though despite it being in grayscale, I didn't paint it that way! I was just not fully convinced by the lighting because it didn't really look like the ocean was glowing, so I put it in grayscale to check the contrast/values. It's a tip I learned while I was working on my Amethio piece because I had the exact same problem (liked the colors but wasn't satisfied with the lighting), and I highly recommend it if you struggle with that too! Just create a black or white layer on top of all the other ones and set it to "Color" so you can check from time to time. :>
(Dawn's face looks different here because I redrew it in the middle of coloring :P)
Anyway! I think that's enough chattering for today. I have a lot more WIPs to share so idk, if you want to see more you'll have to tag me again haha
Tagging: @japaneesee @owls-den @cheekyowldraws @fairrytype @sunnyknightly @torchickentacos and any artsy pals and moots who want to share their WIPs! You don't have to be as talkative as I was though, I just wanted to share a bit more than just the images!
