Some of you were interested in seeing the process, so here it is! I’m not quite sure if there is anything useful in here but i’ll try to explain how i worked on this the best i can, and if you have any specific question, feel free to ask it /o/
This was the basic sketch for this commission. I used an oval hardedge brush with some transparency to it (depending on the pressure of the pen) on a new layer (drawing directly on the background color would only bring problems later on).
I knew that character would have blue skin and was not really sure what “blue skin” would actually look like, so i started with some black and withe values for her face (new layer in Normal mode, same brush).
Once i had my basic values i was able to work on the color without worrying too much about the volume of the face. The way i brought that color in was actually a mess... i created a variety of blue layers and then played with their blending mode until i met a result that was not terrible. I then created a new layer (normal) and painted on top of this result to bring back some of the values that had been lost during this. This was by far the most chaotic part of the process and only luck made it work in the end :’)
CTRL+SHIFT+E gave me a new flat image with everything i had done until now (i had the background color in this too because i f* up but i would recommand not to do this haha). I worked on top of it on a new layer (normal) and started painting the wings, casting strong shadows under each layer of feathers to make them pop more.
i used the lasso tool to create those sharp edges, either painting the shadow or filling it in with the color gradient tool. Nothing incredible and i’m not a fan of those tools, but they ended up being very useful here to create a good base for the painting
To bring some light to the side of the character I created a new layer (put it in Color Dodge blending mode), chose a light redish color and painted with a very large and soft brush on the edge of the cape.
The brown/orange feathers and blue skin created a strong contrast that i liked, in some ways, but it also made them feel like they didn’t really belong to the same image, so i brought some of the brown from the wings on the living algas of her dress. (yep, they are alive. i took some liberties with the design compared to the ref i had. I didn’t want them to look like “a dress made out fo alga” and more like alga clinging to her skin and taking that shape from its own will? Sort of.)
Next step is really just painting on a new normal layer with the same hard-edge brush as always to create those details and textures.
I used a “black and white” layer to verify the values and this was way too “flat” for my taste so i created a new Multiply layer to create some shadows and volume:
So that’s what i ended up with and i was happy with it so i just painted in the last details and objects and i was done! (if anyone is wondering, the scribles on the foot say “REF” because i realy needed a photo reference to paint this nightmare body part.)
Final one, tadaaa. Now that it’s done i’m a bit ashamed that i didn’t have more useful things to say about that process haha :’)
The main thing i learned from this one was to always keep a “Black and White” layer on top of everything, so i can check my values from time to time.
