Isu's blog

30 mins on the first one, second one is just a color filter.

Arcane Jayce & Mel Forge Scene Redraw

Finished 29 Dec 2025 - Process notes:

Goal: finish a study that has monochrome palette

Time: about 4 hours, in multiple sessions. Usually in 30 min sprints

Best workflow seems to be:

rough mass drawing

block in the dark shadows

Switch to BW, get the tonal relationships correct & correct any feature relational issues (this is where the drawing really started to come together) (and also the most frustrating part)

diminished lights, highlights, small details

Difficult:

I’m honestly still not sure if the right side of Jayce’s face is in shadow or not.

I gave up fully trying to mimic the diminished lights on Jayce’s torso - I couldn’t get the color right just by eyeing it. I didn’t want to eyedrop & the point of the drawing was just to do the big differences anyway. Will try in a session more focused on diminished lights next time.

Noses are hard. I don’t really know where it ends, in the sinus area. Maybe a focused session on noses.

Learnings:

In the beginning stage, really tried to pay attention to the negative space between their faces and behind mel.

Metals are much easier if you do them black and white first! !! I just matched the value in BW mode and just threw a Color-mode layer on them, and it looks good!

Lining up the features on Mel’s face - really utilized the vertical plumb line method & it worked. Thanks Larry!

Proud of the neck “jutting out” of the chest muscles. (Adjusted Sternocleido mastoid and the silhouette of jayce’s torso). When I fixed it, it was like neck “BOING” coming out of the chest. It’s hard to see but I really stuck with that one!! I could have posted without fixing it!!!

Fortiche designed the ornaments on Mel’s hair with such care - it leads the eye so naturally down. Beaut!