A Snake In The Boot

This is one of those weird fights when you discover a hickey next to your wounds.

I tried a new technique for this one and I’m pretty happy with the result. It took me like 2 hours to finish it I guess...

Someone has been in a rough fight

Would you be interested in free medu/maka sketch comission?

It could be fun, I don’t have very interesting composition ideas anyway ha ha ha.

“ Toi mon amour, mon amie Quand je rêve c'est de toi Mon amour, mon amie Quand je chante c'est pour toi “

Hey! Here’s what I did to make this fanart. Sorry it’s not a step by step, but I will however talk about the general proces of the whole thing so enjoy!

So my sketches are generally very messy and evasive. Il just try to put a form to my idea and I know I’ll work on it in more details later. It’s really just to put forms and composition and in this case, it’s just a couple so I don’t need to develop it further more.

Then I make a detailed sketch on either photoshop or Sai, but this one has been dran with Paint Tool Sai 2. I can change the proportion easier to make it more accurate and see if I quickly have to edit / change things. For exemple, Medusa’s bread will change a lot.

I then try some ambiance colours and try to decide what atmosphere to choose. The blue and green one would’ve been dark and it wasn’t what I wanted so I choose the orange one (tho on the final result it looks more like I choose the pink one hehe)

Then I colour in more details, add nuances, blush, maybe change some colours, colour lines, etc. I save all the steps. Just in case. 

I Then paint over this to make it look better. I “just” paint the same colours but with more attention to it. The coloured sketch is just there to put the colours I want.

I always start with the face, with the skin to be precise. Then I work on the other areas. To me, the faces are the most important in fanart portraits and I love to do them. I try not to put too many details ‘cause you don’t see them from afar. For exemple, you don’t see Medusa’s eyes nuances on the overall drawing.

I’m not so scared of drawing hands but I know I lack of training while painting them. But I kinda like Medusa’s, they’re not as bad as I remember drawing hands several years ago.

I never put pure colours in my drawings. Nothing is really pure black or pure white y’know. Even knowing that, I was actually surprised of how clear Medusas’s snakes were. I’ve put the layer on like 60% and they still look black for the ambiant light. 

Since the overall atmosphere is warm and kinda golden, I decided to do the blacks on her more in a purple tone, to also contrast with Maka’s hairs and the general ambience (and imo it looks goes well with her yellow eyes). I also added some light blue in the rosie shadow areas.

I rework the forms alot, like the hair. One of my weak side is my stifness but I kinda like the fresco touch it gives to an illustration (srsly my teachers were so mad with this and they genuenly don’t understand why I do this).

It was so much fun he he!

I realised I haven’t made any drawing about them during my 3 years of art school so it could be a good improvement subject. The anatomy is a little wonky but I really liked to do this style of painting again!