why so wantful? - the missioner

I will say, next time I draw him I might straight up make his pants black, because even though they're supposed to be deep/dark red, they kinda really blend into the coat tails.

His design just evolved every time I draw him, I don't even think this is his final form, because I started looking at armour boots for refs, and now I need to figure out how to logic his fashionable asymmetrical boots (which also I accidentally switched the sides of) into being more accurate-

I'll just stop myself here, mostly I'm just happy Herohim is coming along nicely. This design has given me an excuse to paint metal, and to paint white/silver hair and lipstick and that's a win imo. It's weird to do. The values look all wonky in the process lol

He was supposed to have a more shield-like magic shield (sketch) but I realised it blended into the random squiggly in the BG I made for composition's sake, so I decided to have it be that he's channeling a whole barrier behind him or something

Idk man, Herohim has become near and dear to my heart. Digital takes a lot of time and focus for me, so I'm probably going to do more sketches of him than something like this anytime soon

Sooo as it turns out, the key is that when I 'paint' or otherwise draw a face with any materials, I go in and sketch with values light enough to be worked over and shaped into something better later on, and this is usually done with a bit of an undertone colour I try to match the colours I use to.

I don't have a WIP of the blue undertone ghira, but you can see I used it because like the other Ghiras, the part of his face hidden by his hair in the sketch is faintly visible (also on his chin because I didn't have a colour or value to make it darker without it looking weird and I didn't want to break the harmony I had going on by then)

Moving on-

Then what I do is I try to add another light colour or otherwise start carving out the features so I can better build up my darkest values later. For example, pastel-pink Ghira I could keep lighter for a while, because I had the benefit of marker values that tied into the purplish-pink and were light enough to make bigger use of before moving on to darker colours.

Orangehim was the most difficult to do this with because I had no real transition shades to do this with more effectively. So out of the three, he has the biggest contrast between his lights and darks, he pops out a lot more.

In truth I actually like the second WIP of pastel-pink Ghira a bit more than the finished portrait, and I feel like if I wanted to I could've given him his dark eyes and faint purple eyeshadow and left him at that, but that's because I rarely draw pastel vibe things and I guess I'm proud I did something adjacent to that in the beginning stages.

Or maybe not, because I have one more WIP pic of pastelhim and I don't particularly like what I did to him here fhfhfhgh this part was a bit of a 'trust the process' moment for me because I didn't know how I'd come back from making his eyelid/eyebrowless area so dark and muted. I still don't think I did, but the rest of him looks good so I can cut myself some slack

Anyway, what I'm trying to say is, that's not actually how I've started painting my faces in digital art for a while now, and I think that not only can you see it, but you can tell I'm trying way too hard for some sort of kinda sorta realistic skin that keeps in generally the same colour family and has no undertone

Example:

A WIP from that one Herohim I drew digitally. You can tell I'm really trying to give him a certain skin tone that's kinda greenish like in canon, but it looks really dead because I don't start with an undertone, and try to paint keeping the colours muted and only shifting the hue from yellow to orange for example.

If I had to start over, I might try going in with a light blue sketch underneath to see if that would help, but eh, I'll figure it out

No but really, it really is the process, that's why we trust the process, we figure it out and we apply it in digital too, and that's a thing that blew my mind when I kinda realised it for myself

Because this is a painting process I've made for myself since I first decided to touch gouache, and it's worked for me and I've used it since.

Case in point, this one is I don't even remember how old, maybe two years, but I still like it and the colours because I worked on it like I did gouache portraits I'd made. A base layer (not sure if it was blue or yellow but I think it was yellow) and everything else on top, painted right on

Basically the lesson I've learned is that mayhaps instead of trying to work digitally like it's a whole separate beast, I actually try to return to my roots and trust the way I actually do things, and it might feel more like me •^•

I've basically infodumped about my random art thoughts sandwiched between the Ghiras, so thank you for reading if you've come this far. Maybe this realisation will help somebody else stuck in a bit of a rut. I will be happy if that's the case ฅ⁠^⁠•⁠ﻌ⁠•⁠^⁠ฅ

It all sounds so simple, but it's really easy to forget that digital art too is a medium, and if you don't like your art in there, it might be because you're forgetting your own process because you're getting lost in the sauce of layers and editing and resizing and ect.

Anyway, I hope the Ghirs have made you smile, I'm actually pretty happy with them! (⁠^⁠.⁠_⁠.⁠^⁠)⁠ﾉ

Honestly turns out rawing everything on one layer helps me somehow. I think it's because of the sketching phase that's now changed to be less tedious, because my digital sketches always feel off to me. I guess going in with colour like in trad painting helps me get rid of that feeling. Also Fi is just really pretty and has great colours.

I went in without reference, so after I was finished I quickly realised I didn't give her her forehead gem, and also her hair has extra tufts on her neck, but like shhh we won't talk about it. We can just say this is older Fi and she's changing shape or something, it's no biggie

What matters is - sword friend is pretty af, I'm proud of the diamond in particular, and I'm now actually excited to do more digital for once ฅ⁠^⁠•⁠ﻌ⁠•⁠^⁠ฅ

Okay so my thoughts are Fi is very much running on a lower power source/engine than for example Ghir, so if she decides to become fully human, it's because some Link really really needed the support, be it sksw Link or some other random Link.

In other words, human Fi has to, somehow, give comfort and safety vibes.

Elf-masc Fi for example has chainmail because she's gonna be out there fighting with Link in that particular iteration, and it doesn't hurt to have protection. I don't know if the little capelet works but I don't want to give up on it! I like the concept of it.

From elf boy Fi I decided to just try different hairstyles and outfits to see if something stuck, and I started toying with the idea of physical prosthetics instead of magic blue construct arms. I really don't want to remove the lack of arms, but the blue magic arms are kinda doing that slightly, so I do think I might go in a direction where she got prosthetics from Lanayru desert or something.

Braid Fi is adorable to me, she's giving village girl who's gathering herbs for tea, Bangs Fi was a very quick and meh idea - not my favourite out of these. Lanayru desert all in Fi seems pretty neat to me, but she looks like a different type of character. Although who knows, maybe this Fi ended up joining Skipper's crew after getting a taste for piracy on the sandship. Man, pirate Fi would be a cool idea actually, given how she does get a lot more actively invested in the Lanayru robots' lives then.