Whimbrel

Art process Timelapse for Sketch Portrait of Link!

Sometimes I have a solid “vision” for what I intend to create, and other times I just wing it and trust my instincts. In this case I knew I wanted to draw an intense portrait of Link, and that was it. Probably helped I was in a bad mood haha. I had some game reference handy from twilight Princess to make sure I stayed more or less accurate to the costume but the pose and lighting are from my imagination.

In this process you can see I push and pull with a lot of details on his appearance. He’s such an iconic figure but he’s also always getting redesigned as well so it was fun to explore just how badass I could depict him. There’s obviously some self-insert stuff going on here too LOL.

Once I decided to have him aiming the clawshot/hook shot at the camera, it all snapped together thematically, and the rest drew itself basically.

The color at the end is via a gradient map which is kind of a cheap photoshop hack but there is some art to it and the color contrast really heightens the drama.