Knavein.art

No problem! Here is my process for the ravus picture I recently posted :) Breakdown:

1. Sketch: This is normally how my sketches will look like; thin lines (because it doesn’t obstruct the actual painting when I lower opacity, and I like thin lines) but clear enough so my color will have a good foundation to base upon. I don’t tend to linger on the sketch with the intention to make it as neat as possible; it’s more of a liberal hand that would be applied to my sketches, but controlled so there isn’t any unnecessary scribbling that might inhibit my comprehension of the piece. 

2. Rough Color: I did have a rough idea of the palette I wanted to have: purple, thus every color that would end up in the piece would eventually harmonize with the purple. Lesser yellow, stronger blues, that sort of thing.

3. More stuff added

4. Here is where I turned off the sketch layer! One of my more favorite parts of the process :) Now it feels like I’ve got mostly everything out that I needed to, and all that is left to do is to paint without the lines.

5. Neatened up the background. The line is a placeholder for the sword

6. Still going! 

7. Looks like here I had changed up the folds in the clothing

8. And this seems to be the last screenshot I took.. 

Hey! you found me! Thanks!  

 I reference from photos for stuff I can’t visualize on my own, and artists like bouguereau, rockwell, leyendecker, mucha for mind fuel

Composition: 

Whenever I do a piece, the objective I have in mind is to not get bored, because once I lose interest, I lose the piece.

So for me, the composition has to be distinct enough to avoid echoing an early piece, and to immediately be recognized due to its layout. It’s gotta be new for me, and new things are fun and exciting, right? (yes they are) 

I think about the subject, the action, the actual format (whether it’s allegorical, objective, subjective, i.e. is it a symbolization, a certain scene, would you find it in real life? I tend to avoid the latter, because I find it dull and uninteresting and I hhhhhhhate that) I place priority on the human form, it’s versatile and expressive more than anything else, in my opinion. 

Here’s an example. Normally I don’t post my sketches since they’re just glorified chicken scratch, but this is the best example I could think of at the moment. It’s St. George (for my series sanctus), and normally, you’d see him like this 

(Saint George and the Dragon by gustave moreau, 1889-1890 )

or

(Saint George and the Dragon by raphael, 1504-1506) 

this.

It’s a pretty common depiction, since it goes back to medieval times. The similarities are that he’s on a horse, he has a spear/lance, there’s a dragon, and he’s attacking it.

The big picture (haha pun) is that I wanted to also have my subject be st george (side note, it’s kind of the theme of the series), but different enough from past artworks where I’d know it wasn’t enormously reminiscent of the traditional depiction. So I aim to keep the basic idea, and see what goes on from there. 

This is the first sketch I did, it was okay, I knew I’d never drawn anything like that, which is good, but composition was lacking. I wasn’t so hot about this, so I dropped it. I kinda like it so I might revisit it .  Additionally, though, it strayed a little too far from the main idea. 

Above was the second sketch, after I’d finished roughing it out, I knew immediately it wouldn’t do. I was satisfied for about 2 seconds, then I got disappointed and stayed that way.. If I put it side by side with the other million or so paintings of st george, I doubt I could tell it was mine. It was practically the same: horse, lance, dragon. The action was too similar to other portrayals.  

Definitely….nah

It’s not as similar as the previous one was, but I didn’t like it. That’s a good indicator too, whether you like it or not. I’d tried to fuse the first and second sketch because I did like the first one somewhat, but it didn’t really work for me. It’s just so awkward … 

So I left the piece for a while, and came back and did this. It was different, simpler (which can improve a piece more often than not), and I liked it. After I did most of the sketch, I said great job u idiot it only took you a week to come up with a sketch the hell is wrong with u, went to bed, and woke up happy, and normally it doesn’t take me 3 actual sketches or something to come up with a good piece, and I was getting pretty fed up before the last sketch, but good thing I didn’t give up (this time. hah) This is basically how I go about my pieces for now.

Game of Thrones  (April 17, 2011–May 19, 2019)